DailyDirt: Food -- What You See Is Not Always What You Get

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

These days, it actually takes some effort to find food at the grocery store that contains fewer than five ingredients. Processed foods contain so many ingredients that it might be better to just avoid them altogether. But even when you think you're getting "whole foods," they may actually contain hidden ingredients. When did food get so complicated? Here are a few things that will make you think twice before you decide to eat something. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: adulterated, food, healthy, ingredients, nutritious, organic


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Apr 2013 @ 5:25pm

    I only eat inorganic foods...

    Salt tastes great.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    ChrisH, 12 Apr 2013 @ 6:19pm

    I don't think most people eat organic foods because they believe they're more nutritious but because they don't want to eat the harmful additives that are present in many non-organic foods.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Loke., 13 Apr 2013 @ 3:44am

    Only...
    People are wrong.

    Organic food contains more poisons than non-organic.
    Bacteria and other decease from organic fertilizers, and poisons from fungus and that the plants themselves produce when stressed or harmed.

    Properly handled conventional farming methods have the potential to be better than organic in all possible ways.

    I'm not saying this is done. There is no market for it today. That market i dominated by the "organic".
    If there was a market for environmentally friendly and poison free food, that's what we would get. Now we get organic. Organic is not environmentally friendly and poison free. It's "natural" and free from synthetic poisons. Plenty of natural poisons in it. And the natural way of growing it is not necessarily the most environmentally friendly way.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Apr 2013 @ 6:52am

      Re:

      "Properly handled conventional farming methods have the potential to be better than organic in all possible ways."

      "If there was a market for environmentally friendly and poison free food, that's what we would get"


      Nice try Monsanto rep

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Apr 2013 @ 6:58am

    "Potentially harmful ingredients that have been banned in other countries around the world are still legal in the U.S."

    Yeah, those commie socialists over there in the EU doing all their freedom hating banning of yummy ingredients. Thank goodness the good ol' us of a does not force detailed identification of all ingredients in the food you eat. Otherwise food producers might have to work a little harder and get less profit - oh the horror.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    madasahatter (profile), 13 Apr 2013 @ 10:14am

    Bans

    Actually the bans work both ways. Sometimes the US is slow to approve some ingredient or drug that has been approved in Europe. Thalidomide was banned in the US while being approved in many countries.

    Regulatory approvals and bans follow statutory procedures and are (allegedly) based on scientific evidence. One confusing problem is most people do not understand that "dose makes the poison" or almost all substances can be poisonous under certain circumstances. Substances normally consider poisons generally are toxic at very small amounts - teaspoon of arsenic or thallium is toxic to an adult many times over but the same amount of sugar is not.

    The real question is not "Is it toxic?" but "How much is needed to kill someone?". Related is how much is in food products if one eats a reasonable amount.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Apr 2013 @ 2:07pm

      Re: Bans

      No, the question *is* "is it toxic?", because what doesn't kill you doesn't necessarily make you stronger. Sometimes it "just" messes with your thinking processes, or screws up your immune system a little to give you allergies or neurological problems. Or gives a 9 year old girl large boobs, or reduces men's sperm count. And things can affect different people different ways.

      Personally, I seem to have an adverse reaction to GMO tomatoes. Not heirloom tomatoes, just the GMO ones. I was told flat out by a poster on an Ars entry about Monsanto & their GMO products that I was wrong to want labeling on all GMO foods, it should be okay to sell GMO tomatoes without a label because it is believed that they only adversely affect a very, very small percentage of the people who eat them and it cost to much to label everything for just a few people. By "adversely affect", I assume he meant anaphylactic shock, which can kill you, which is what happens to me, but really, we have no idea how these things affect anyone in the long term, and the general population should not put up with being set up as a corporation's guinea pigs.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    bioforge (profile), 14 Apr 2013 @ 12:28pm

    File this under the "I want my time back dept"

    I just read three great articles that I want to believe, but did not give one reference to any study or research that was talked about in the content. Truth is things like GMO are not all bad, things like Hydrogenated oils are. Let me help sell my point with two universities that back their points with research.

    http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/transfats/
    http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmp e080e/Spring05/projects/gmo/index.htm

    Your welcome...

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.