One of the most popular words in the food business these days is “natural.” Sometimes it seems as if everything sold in the supermarket is natural, including detergent, soap, shampoo, pet food, and candy bars. The meaning of the word “natural” is obvious, right? (If you answered “yes” to that rhetorical question, take a piece of paper and write a one-sentence definition of the word “natural” before you continue reading the rest of this discussion.)
In the food business, the word “natural” doesn’t mean anything. A food labeled “natural” or “all natural” can contain any number of chemicals, including flavor enhancers, thickeners, emulsifiers, and preservatives such as BHA and BHT. Does this list of ingredients agree with your written or unwritten definition of “natural”? The last time I looked, the dictionary definition of “natural” said something about “not artificial, synthetic, or processed,” but then maybe those government agencies and the food manufacturers don’t use the same dictionary you and I use. Maybe they use their own private dictionary, the one they write but forget to publish so you can read it.
In 1980, Consumer Reports magazine reported that “Langendorf Natural Lemon Flavored Creme Pie” contains no cream but does contain sodium propionate, certified food colors, sodium benzoate, and vegetable gum. When L. A. Cushman, Jr., who chairs American Bakeries Company, the Chicago firm that owns Langendorf, was asked about this label, he explained that the word “natural” modifies “lemon flavored” and the pie contains oil from lemon rinds. “The lemon flavor,” Mr. Cushman is quoted as saying, “comes from natural lemon flavor as opposed to artificial lemon flavor, assuming there is such a thing as artificial lemon flavor.”
Then there are “Pillsbury Natural Chocolate Flavored Chocolate Chip Cookies,” which contain, among other ingredients, artificial flavor and BHA. “We’re not trying to mislead anybody,” claimed a company representative, who explained that the word “natural” modifies only “chocolate flavored.” I guess you’d better brush up on the syntactic structure of modification if you want to be able to read food labels these days.
A great example of the doublespeak of food is the claim on the label that the product doesn’t contain something it wouldn’t contain anyway, a kind of negative doublespeak. For example, ajar of jelly or jam may have the words “no preservatives” on it. Since sugar is all the preservative jams and jellies need, they have never had preservatives added to them. The same is true for canned products, which are preserved by the heat of the canning process. So think twice before buying the can of corn or the jar of jelly just because it is labeled “no preservatives added.” You might also notice that these magic words are usually accompanied by that other magic word, “natural.”
The use of the word “natural” on products reached a certain degree of absurdity when Anheuser-Busch proudly advertised its newest line of beer, “Anheuser-Busch Natural Light Beer,” which the Miller Brewing Company derided, and then attacked. Miller correctly pointed out that beers are “highly processed, complex products, made with chemical additives and other components not in their natural form.” The fight between the two big brewers caused some concern in the beer industry. The Wall Street Journal quoted William T. Elliot, president of C. Schmidt & Sons, a Philadelphia brewery, as saying, “One thing they [other brewers] are worried about is all the fuss over ingredients. Publicity about that issue is disclosing to beer drinkers that their suds may include sulfuric acid, calcium sulfate, alginic acid, or amyloglucosidase.” So much for natural beer.
After eight years of trying to regulate advertising claims in-volving “natural foods,” the Federal Trade Commission decided in 1982 to give up. Companies are not required to make a calorie disclosure for foods that have such magic words as “energy,” “natural,” or “lite” on their labels. You’re on your own when you try to figure out what these words on any food label mean.
Deep-Chilled Chicken
Even that all-American food, chicken, can be the victim of deceptive labeling. You may have learned at one time that, at a temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, water and other things freeze. But chicken doesn’t freeze at that temperature, at least not according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the chicken processors, who consider processed chickens “fresh” not “frozen” if they have been chilled to twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Bill Haffert, the editor of the trade journal Broiler Industry, said in 1981 that the industry term is “deep-chilling” and that such chickens have not been frozen but “deep-chilled” and can therefore be sold as “fresh” chickens. Maybe the people who thought up this doublespeak should be packed in ice and have their temperature lowered to twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Then we could ask them if they’re “fresh,” “deep-chilled,” or “frozen.”
But even the twenty-eight-degree standard hasn’t really applied, because chickens are considered fresh and not frozen if government inspectors can depress the flesh of the chicken with their thumbs. So in 1988 the Department of Agriculture announced that it was considering a new policy. The word “fresh” could not be used on any chicken if it had been frozen or previously reduced to a temperature of twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit or below. The chicken industry immediately fought the proposed standard. It makes you wonder just how “fresh” all those “deep- chilled” chickens being sold these days are. The next time you buy “fresh” chicken, you might ask whether the chicken has been “deep-chilled.”
Picowaved Food
The latest innovation in the food industry is irradiated food, or food that has been treated with ionizing or gamma radiation to extend shelf life or kill insects. While ionizing or gamma radiation isn’t radioactive, it is suspected of causing chemical changes in food, changes whose safety has been questioned by some scientists and consumer groups. But the government and the food industry decided to go ahead with irradiated food.
Now, nobody in the food industry wanted to put the word “radiation” on a food package. As Ellen Green, a spokesperson for the National Food Processors Association, said, “The word ‘radiation’ is a scary word.” What, then, could the food industry and the Food and Drug Administration do? At first the FDA recommended that irradiated food carry labels referring to “gamma” and “ionized” radiation, but the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency with final say in these matters, opposed any form of labeling. However, the agency gave in to public pressure and sought a “creative” solution. It considered the labels “gamma” and “ionized” to be “too negative,” so it chose the word “picowave” instead.
The word “picowave” has no real meaning. It was created by a company in California and was designed to be similar to the word “microwave,” which is a completely different kind of radiation, but it’s a word very familiar to the public. Thus, foods that have been irradiated will be labeled “picowaved.” An industry spokesperson said that, “from a public relations standpoint, it is more pleasant to the ear than gamma radiation or electromagnetic energy.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler called the labeling “an important step forward for consumers.” Said U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum, “It’s the ultimate in untruth in advertising.”
Picowaved food will also carry an international symbol which looks like a little flower inside a broken circle. The circle is supposed to represent the radiation facility. There is a black dot in the middle of the circle, which is supposed to represent the source of the radiation, and the petals of the flowers represent the irradiated food. Before you buy the picowaved food with the cute little flower symbol on it, you might ask