When it comes to food safety, our choices for personal health and wellness seem to be out of our hands these days.
If I choose to avoid aspartame, MSG, or GMOs, I really don’t know if the food I am buying has these ingredients in them, or not. Avoiding altered food is no longer an easy choice.
Product labeling – accurate labeling – is a consumer right and a service ALL manufacturers should be required to provide. Food safety is the #1 concern, and consumers should always have the facts about the products they choose to buy.
Apparently, this is not the case anymore. If we want to know what’s really in our food, we have to “fight” for that right. Food labeling has become a nasty game and a roll of the dice.
Your guess is as good as mine, but it shouldn’t be this way.
Why’s Labeling Such An Issue?
That’s a good question.
It shouldn’t be an issue at all. It’s just a label; an identification; an informed choice.
So, why would Big Agra spend $68 million to stop their GMO products from being labeled if they didn’t have something BIG to hide?
From Aspartame To GMOs
It’s smart for any consumer to buy quality products. Today, however, we are watching the quality and integrity of a buy-sell market deteriorate. Merely a few decades ago, consumer products were crafted with pride. Back in the day, competition raised the bar on quality.
So, what happened?
A couple of things went wrong:
- The competition was bought out, and today, the majority of manufacturers are owned by the same “Mother ship”;
- Private companies went public on the NASDAQ and stockholders became more important than the consumers;
- Large corporations now fund global governments, and this has tainted true health and safety regulations;
- Big Pharma is attempting to puppeteer worldwide health;
- Big Agra is attempting to control the world’s food supply.
We’re playing some sort of game, and the rules keep changing.
Get Em’ On The Run
There’s a bright side to all this madness. We may actually have Monsanto and Big Agra on the run – the manipulators, I mean. As people become more involved and more aware of this profit over health business, the end game becomes more clear.
The manipulation of information is now being challenged; the monopoly on the global food supply is fracturing; and the Big Corps are now forced to spend more money covering up their game.
Here are some examples:
Aspartame and Neotame
When NutraSweet® first came on the market, the red and white swirl logo was plastered everywhere.
NutraSweet was proudly labeled as the new “sugar-free” fad. Over time as the harmful side-effects of aspartame spread, and after NutraSweet lost its patent, aspartame sales dropped, and the product branding as sugar-free diminished with it.
Today, aspartame is found in more products NOT labeled sugar-free than those labeled sugar-free, and the mandated PKU warnings for aspartame are printed in smaller fonts hidden on the back of product containers.
Consider a stick of gum, for example. Many gum packets containing aspartame and the diet sweeteners are not labeled sugar-free, and the ingredients are only on the outside of the package – not on each, individually wrapped piece of gum.
Aspartame is not properly labeled in medications, either. Your pharmacist may have an ingredient sheet that states aspartame is in your meds, but YOU are not aware of it because your meds are not labeled “sugar-free”, and aspartame is not clearly marked on your pill bottle.
Neotame is another labeling mess. It remains a mystery how neotame escaped the FDA warnings required for PKU because, like aspartame, neotame contains phenylalanine, which is fatal to those with PKU. Neotame is merely another version of aspartame – a new generation of the same ingredients.
No one knows what products contain neotame – NO ONE but the manufacturer.
GMOs
The info battle on GMO labeling is one hot topic, and talk about a roll of the dice …!
The required labeling of GMOs is currently being debated in courtrooms and in public voting booths, forcing the Big Corps to spend millions of dollars to avoid losing this battle.
Washington State
Processed food and biotech companies spent over $22 million to fight the public ballot initiative to label foods as genetically modified in Washington State. The proposal started out with overwhelming public support, but plummeted as money poured in from the opposition.
The Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, an industry group being investigated for illegally funneling money into the Washington fight, is now preparing to take on a federal ban to stop all future attempts to require GMO labels.
California
California failed to pass a GMO labeling law last year after the Big Agra giants spent $46 million to stomp out the strong support requiring GMO labeling. Other state legislatures have passed labeling laws, but they won’t go into effect unless more states sign on.
Does any of this make sense to you?
Oregon
It appears that the next ballot initiative will be in Oregon, and more than 20 other states are considering labeling laws.
GMO labeling has become quite the game. Right now, though, health, wellness, and environmental concerns aren’t allowed to play.
If this issue weren’t a true threat to the Big Corps, Big Agra wouldn’t be fighting so hard – spending millions of dollars – to keep awareness away from the public – away from you.
Why would anyone spend $68 million to stop their products from being properly labeled if they didn’t have something BIG to hide?
