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Six healthy sounding snack food scams

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May 23, 2013

Vegetables, antioxidants, fiber – these are all good things, right? Sure, unless they are actually just your cabbage-variety junk food masquerading as healthful food substances. With gazillions of products on store shelves vying for your attention, don’t think that food and beverage manufacturers are unaware that consumers look for these buzz words, along with pictures [...]

Food industry is hoping shoppers will look no further than ‘Facts Up Front’

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May 21, 2013

Last year I wrote about the numerous front-of-package labeling systems out there, from Safeway’s “SimpleNutrition” to the “NuVal” scoring system to Walmart’s “Great for You” label and the well-funded, industry-sponsored “Facts Up Front” – all of which I suspected at the time of being part of a master plan to encourage us not to read [...]

Newly reformulated 10-calorie sodas leave fructose levels a mystery

Posted by
May 16, 2013

Are you an ‘ex-Pepper’? If so, The Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group hopes to bring you back into the fold.  In an effort to lure what it refers to as “consumers who have left the soft drink category” the company is working feverishly to blanket the country with a new lineup of products, consisting of some of [...]

Ten food items you might be surprised to learn contain HFCS

Posted by
May 14, 2013

So just how much high fructose corn syrup are you consuming, anyway? If you regularly dine out or eat processed foods, the chances are high you’re taking in more than you might have ever imagined. Back in the 1980s, when HFCS was a fairly new food ingredient, it was being touted as “better use of [...]

Newly approved pesticide poses yet another peril to threatened honeybees

Posted by
May 9, 2013

Along with exposure to particularly pernicious pesticides and being fed a diet of high fructose corn syrup, which a new study shows lowers their ability to detoxify, our beleaguered bees may soon be facing yet another threat to their survival. On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted “unconditional registrations” for another pesticide that the [...]

Four examples of how you’ve been reading food labels all wrong

Posted by
May 7, 2013

Reading a food package sounds like it should be pretty easy, doesn’t it? You simply pick it up and learn about the product that’s inside. But there’s a war going on in food labeling, a conflict between the words and images that call attention to the package and its actual contents, which manufacturers typically would [...]

There are more ways than one that antibiotics end up in food

Posted by
May 2, 2013

While the big media “meat” of last year, pink slime, a filler in ground beef, got some extreme press exposure, there’s another additive present in meat – and chicken and pork and even farmed fish — that didn’t exactly ‘hit the fan’ as much as “mechanically separated beef scraps and connective tissue treated with ammonia [...]

Calling it ‘Greek yogurt’ doesn’t mean it’s either Greek or yogurt

Posted by
April 30, 2013

  There’s no doubt that Greek yogurt is all the rage, helping fill up the massive yogurt section of the dairy aisle with even more confusing choices. But if it’s all “Greek” to you, you’re not alone. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t want to touch it and even the National Yogurt Association wants no [...]

Seems like ‘mum’s the word’ when pet and people food makers are questioned about carrageenan

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April 25, 2013

Since the Cornucopia Institute came out with its report on carrageenan, “How a ‘natural’ food additive is making us sick,” consumer concern has grown over why a suspect food additive that is widely used, but basically unnecessary, is still in the food supply. Carrageenan, a highly inflammatory agent, is derived from red seaweed and used [...]

Consumers tell FDA: ‘don’t mess with our milk’

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April 23, 2013

What do you do if you’re the great and powerful American Dairy Industry and you want to make a major change in U.S. Food and Drug Administration food-labeling regulations, only to have your proposal met with an uproar from consumers? Well, you can then try and soft-pedal the actual aim of your petition   – with [...]

Corn Refiners admit HFCS with 90 percent fructose used ‘for decades’

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April 18, 2013

If you’ve been reading my blogs here at Food Identity Theft, you’ve no doubt heard about HFCS 90, a ‘super-high’ high fructose corn syrup formulation which, according to a leading manufacturer of this laboratory-created sweetener, Archer Daniels Midland, is the “ideal choice for reduced calorie foods such as beverages, jellies and dressings.” My previous research [...]

A spoonful of HFCS is neither ‘OK’ nor especially ‘happy’

Posted by
April 16, 2013

Just what are “happy calories”? If you have no idea, Coca-Cola is only to glad to fill you in on the principle of caloric contentment. The world’s largest beverage company wants you to know that the excess calories you gain from guzzling its flagship product Coke are really your friends, ready to be spent on [...]

Six really bad food choices we’ve selected in observance of ‘Read Your Labels Day’

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April 11, 2013

Now that the first annual Read Your Labels Day is finally here, have you shared with the world a processed food label with some questionable ingredients yet? If not, get out your phone, find a food product with one or more of our top ten additives to avoid, take a photo of that product’s ingredient [...]

Registered dietitians register dissent over ‘Big Food’ presence at their event

Posted by
April 9, 2013

Back in February, I told you about the ‘traveling show’ being staged by the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) to spread its mantra that “the body can’t tell the difference” between high fructose corn syrup and natural sugar. Presentations scheduled this year include not only three trade shows, but the School Nutrition Conference planned for Kansas [...]

Take part in ‘Read Your Labels Day’, and tell the food industry that you’re ‘fed up’ and not going to eat it any more!

Posted by
April 4, 2013

A food package is a very interesting item. While it supposedly contains something of vital importance to our survival (or just as likely, one that has been adulterated to the point where it does us more harm than good ), it is a prime piece of advertising for a company – one whose objective is [...]

Industry ‘spokesdoc’ trying to fool you into believing HFCS is the same as sugar

Posted by
April 2, 2013

In my Google news feed yesterday, April 1st, there appeared two stories at the top of the list about high fructose corn syrup. The top story listed the “health benefits” of HFCS, the second claimed that “scientists conclude” both sugar and HFCS are basically the same stuff. Now which one do you suppose was the [...]

Got aspartame? Dairy industry petition may open schoolhouse doors to toxic chemical sweetener

Posted by
March 28, 2013

The recent publication at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of a four-year-old petition from the dairy industry to alter the “standard of identity” for milk (and 17 additional dairy products) has set off a firestorm of consumer protest in the last few weeks. Although nearly all the media and Internet reports on the petition [...]

Even organic foods may harbor this ‘smooth’ but highly inflammatory ingredient

Posted by
March 26, 2013

  Since Food Identity Theft presented the Top Ten Food Additives to Avoid, I’ve been receiving email from readers who think there are some very important additions that should be made to this list. I agree – and, in fact, during the next few weeks will be blogging about the “Top Ten Plus,” starting with [...]

Our ‘awfulness awards’ recipients range from soups to cereals

Posted by
March 21, 2013

Inspired by some of the items I saw on the shelves during my latest trip to the supermarket, I thought it was time to again single out those most worthy of  “dishonorable mention.” After carefully compiling a list of products whose claims and ingredients were among the most dubious, I narrowed it down to the [...]

Judge nixes ban on large ‘sugary drinks’ that really aren’t

Posted by
March 19, 2013

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed ban on sales of so-called “sugary drinks” in super-size containers bit the dust last week when state Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling rejected Bloomberg’s prohibition as “arbitrary and capricious.” New York City delis, restaurants, food carts and movie theaters had all readied for the new rule, due to [...]