Dear Editor:
When I see a grocery store item claiming “now made with REAL MILK,” I kind of wonder what the alternative ingredients were, which the real milk is said to be replacing.
It would be nice to live in a society where the food we purchase is natural unless otherwise identified on the package.
For example, we can now purchase food that makes a claim to fame as being “natural” – a caption which may have questionable validity at that – and yet we are expected to ignore common food additives known to be dangerous to our health, such as artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, trans fat, common food dyes, sodium sulfite, sodium nitrate/sodium nitrite, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), to mention some of the more well-known culprits.
How about asking our public servants in the respective government departments to authorize a change, whereby truly clean, natural, health-supporting foods are supplied as the standard, and food with additives must clearly advertise their stated claims, e.g., “Now with trans fat and sodium sulfite.” Or “Zero natural ingredients.” Or perhaps, “This product is a significant source of synthetic, petroleum-based additives.”
Eating naturally grown, organic whole foods is a wonderful ideal, but the busy pace of modern life ought to accommodate a selection of health-sustaining convenience foods. I invite the food scientists and the advertisers to take up the challenge.
April Goodman, by email
