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It’s food, but not as we know it

What is food?

For the purposes of ensuring a booming food industry the basic definition of food adopted by most government agencies is vague and non-committal and goes something like: “any item that is to be processed, partially processed, or unprocessed for consumption”.

Can you see what’s missing here? This definition is all about processing. It does not address what’s actually in our food, whether it enhances or damages health, how it was grown, the state of the soil or water or the welfare of the animal it comes from, how processing might have destroyed the integrity of the original foodstuff, or indeed whether it contains GM organisms or pesticide residues.

How we define ‘food’ is relevant this week for a couple of reasons.

The US Food and Drug Administration has just opened up consultation on a petition from the dairy industry to change the definition of milk and other dairy products to include any product that contains added non-nutritive sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose. Worse, Big Dairy is further lobbying that, having changed the definition of dairy products to include these sweeteners, it should no longer be required to list these toxic ingredients on the label.

If you believe the food manufacturers, this change would be a public service since, according to the petition, children – for whom obesity is a pressing problem – aren’t eating enough low calorie dairy products because of the stigma attached to ‘reduced calorie’ labels.

The whole thing beggars belief but, in fact, is part of a disturbing trend which sees governments (and to some extent the public) rolling over and allowing multinational corporations to redefine food in their own warped way.

The Coca Cola Company is also involved in working for the ‘public good’ with the launch of its Coming Together campaign. Complete with an infomercial video that launched this week, the campaign tells the story of all the good work the company has done, and continues to do, to ensure we make informed choices about food and health.

It trumpets the fact that, as far back as 30 years ago, the Coca Cola Company was looking after our health by putting Diet Coke on the market.

There is of course, no mention of the facts that: a) the era of the diet drink has made no positive difference to our health, indeed our overall caloric consumption has risen dramatically over that time and; b) non-nutrive sweeteners are harmful to health and have even been implicated in weight gain.

No, the thrust of this bizarre passive-aggressive social messaging campaign is: if you’re fat it’s your fault for making bad choices.

Neither the dairy industry nor Coca Cola make any mention of the context in which our food choices are made, nor of our increasing understanding that no two people and no two calories are the same – nuanced and complex issues which they prefer to disregard.

So, here are a few good choices you can make from this week:

• Favour substance and sustenance over hot air and hype. To this end, ensure your own definition of food is one that is grounded in nutrition: “Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body.  It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals and is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism’s cells in to produce energy, maintain life, and/or stimulate growth.”
  
• Stop drinking sodas – diet or otherwise. They have no nutritional value whatsoever and are the largest single source of excess sugar and/or harmful sweeteners in our diets. If the Coca Cola Company (and others) goes bust as a result it will be its own fault for making bad choices.
• Let the FDA know you’re not going to put up with this dairy industry nonsense. I urge our many followers in the US to submit comments speaking out against the redefinition of milk and dairy products before the end of the consultation period on May 21, 2013.

Pat Thomas, Editor