Duped...

It would seem that we know what 'natural' means. Do we? Of course, it means normal in some cases, naked in others, un-adulterated in others - but really, what does it mean? Is aspirin natural because it comes from a part of willow tree bark? Can we claim that everything is natural because everything is essentially derived from materials found here on Earth?

When we get into these gray areas, we end up forgetting why we care. We care because we fear things that get too far from their natural state - for good reason. We have a knack for inventing things that kill us - rather, we have a knack for swallowing the snake-oil salesperson's pitch - and the snake-oil that often does more harm than good.

Which brings me to the point of this blog - duped. I opened the cupboard earlier at work, and saw "0g trans fat" on a container of "Coffee Mate" - that powdered stuff that tastes artificial, is artificial, and replaces that horrible substance called 'milk' in our office - where we do have a refrigerator that stays mostly empty...

USans have a long history of eating up the pitches of big corporations that want to sell us something. The most notorious, of course, is the cigarette industry. I needn't mention it again - too obvious. But then there are all the health trends. Trans Fat being one of the recent biggies. The 'discovery' is made that says, yes such and such an element will help or hinder us in our foods, and the news media kicks into gear, the health industry, the food industry all jump on the bandwagon and promote removing or adding whatever the element is from/to our diets. Hook, line and sinker. We fall for it over and over again and over the decades we have gotten so used to trends as a part of life that in some cases, we have permanently disfigured human beings from badly considered products, trends, additives etc. Thalidomide is a great example - a wonder drug, pain killer that tended to badly deform children if taken by pregnant mothers. Another discovery run amok was nitrogen fertilizers - which were applied more and more liberally to farm fields increasing yields and profits for years, until we discovered that our drinking water was poison and babies began dying from a rare condition caused by excess nitrogen in the water. These are the ones that demonstrate that we make big mistakes, but then we keep making them. The meat and dairy industry influenced the diets of USans for over 50 years with ads convincing us that a good meat and dairy rich diet was good for us. Heart disease took off, people accepted such atrocities as MacDonald's and Burger King as food choices and our national health began to decline despite advances in medicine. Don't get me wrong - it wasn't entirely about MacD and BK - it was about the overall acceptance of terribly unbalanced diets as meals.

We have been duped over and over again, and though many treat the movements that promotes local food, back-to-the-land, healthy balanced diets and eliminating artificial (everything) from our foods as elitist granola crunching causes, in most cases when we look closely at cultures that have not been influenced significantly by the snake-oil-sales people, we find that the people eat normal, natural food - food that looks like what it is, that is not squeezed from tubes or processed to death, added to and subtracted from - and that they are healthy people.

I really don't intend to preach here, but I do intend to point out that the importance of being critical consumers is growing all the time. We must change our ways so that we become more wary of the ways that our big systems fail - meaning, the way that a huge corporation can sell us something that isn't good for us - the way the whole system of promotion and news gets on board, and even the way detractors can make the issue bigger rather than quelling it - are all problems we face. We are vulnerable and gullible and advertisers know it.

We've been duped hundreds of times into accepting diets and methods and products that were supposed to be good for us, or at least, not supposed to harm us, and yet consistently we find that endemic products are actually harmful (soda).

Be critical and let grocers know that you don't want the products with pheno-this and poly-that in them - despite the compelling arguments that they are safe. Until 20 years or more after a product is introduced, we won't know what is safe - it's that simple.

Keeping it simple...
Andrew.