Until 1982 this stuff was called “salvaged meat,” but for some reason it just wasn’t selling, probably because manufacturers were required to label the amount of “powdered bone” the mixture contained. Then the U.S. Department of Agriculture came to the rescue. Suddenly “salvaged meat” became “Mechanically Separated Meat” and the list of ingredients on a label would no longer have to include “ground bone.” All that would have to be listed was “Mechanically Separated Meat” and the amount of “calcium” in the average serving.
The meat processing industry still wasn’t happy, though, so in 1988 Bob Evans Farms, Inc., the Odom Sausage Company, the Sara Lee Corporation, and Owen Country Sausage, Inc. petitioned the Department of Agriculture to allow hot dogs and other products to contain up to 10 percent MSM without listing it as an ingredient on the label. Read those food labels fast, because soon even the innocuous phrase “Mechanically Separated Meat” will no longer be there. But don’t worry; the amount of “calcium” per serving will still be listed, because the ground bone will still be there.
Lite Up Your Life
Words sell food, and they sell beer, too, but you have to ask yourself what the words really mean. Diet beer was around for years, but it certainly didn’t sell. After all, what real man wants to belly up to the bar and order a diet beer? Them’s fighting words, partner. But along come the marketing geniuses of the Miller Brewing Company, who changed the word “diet” to “lite,” hired a bunch of ex-jocks to extol the virtues of “less-filling” beer, and sales history was made. So now it’s all right to drink diet beer, because it’s not diet beer, it’s “lite” beer.
We’re dedicated to becoming a nation of lightweights (or is that liteweights?). We’re watching what we eat. Even restaurant menus offer light meals and slim platters. No one really knows what a light meal in a restaurant is, except it seems to contain a lot of lettuce. We may not know what light foods really are or what makes them light, but when it comes to buying light foods in the supermarket we know one thing: They cost more. Today you can light up your life with any kind of food you want. There’s light milk, light spaghetti sauce, light frozen dinners, light mayonnaise, light cookies, light potato chips, light ice cream, and even light ketchup. Legally, a manufacturer can call a food product “light” even if it contains only a few calories less than a comparable product. You probably didn’t know it, but regular ketchup contains only fifteen or sixteen calories per serving. Now comes the light version, for more money, which offers eight to nine calories per serving.
The Cooperative Extension of New York State warned consumers in 1984 that, just because such words as “natural,” “light,” “life,” “health,” “nutrition,” “country,” “nature,” “harvest,” “fair,” and “farm” appear on packages (along with pictures of sheaves of wheat, farms, green valleys, streams of clear running water, and farmers toiling in the field), it does not mean the contents are farm fresh, wholesome, organic, or healthy. After all, when was the last time you bought a loaf of bread that was anything less than “fresh baked”?
The Fine Print of Food Labels
The next time you wander through the supermarket, try reading the small print on the labels of a few products. You’ll find Wrigley’s Orbit chewing gum is, according to its wrapper, “not non-caloric,” that Lance’s “naturally flavored” spice drops contain natural and artificial flavors, and that Original New York Seltzer claims on its label “no sucrose” but does contain “fructose syrup.” (By the way, it’s not made in New York, it’s not seltzer, and it’s not original, but just another soda pop.)
Nabisco’s 100% Bran contains wheat bran, sugar, malted barley flour, salt, fig juice, prune juice, and other stuff. So just what does “100%” in the name of this cereal mean? Or try Armour Potted Meat Food Product. Do you have any idea what a “meat food product” is? What does “potted” mean—that it comes in a can? The word “product” reminds me of those famous “meat by-products” in dog food. Take a close look at the label on this “meat food product” and you’ll find that it’s made of cooked beef fat tissue, partially defatted beef fatty tissue, and sodium erythorbate flavorings. Just like mom used to make.
The label on the Kraft Deluxe Macaroni & Cheese Dinner pro-claims, “Complete with rich, creamy cheese sauce. Made with a blend of natural cheeses and other fine ingredients.” Those “other fine ingredients” include milkfat, sodium phosphate, sodium alginate, and artificial flavor. According to its label, Durkee Grandee Spanish Olives are “stuffed with minced pimentos.” However, the list of ingredients includes not minced pimento but “pureed pimento.” Thus it is hardened pimento mush that is stuffed into the olives.
You can always try Café Français, an instant coffee that captures the famous flavor of the French recipe by using vegetable oil, corn syrup solids, sugar, instant coffee, sodium caseinate solids, trisodium citrate, dipotassium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides, silicon dioxide, artificial flavors, lecithin, and tetrasodium pyrophosphate. Of course, if you take “cream” in your coffee, there’s always your choice of Coffee-Mate, Cremora, Coffee-Rich, Coffee Dream, or any number of other brands of “non-dairy creamers” containing such nondairy ingredients as corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and one or more of the following oils: coconut, cotton seed, palm, and soybean. They also throw in some mono- and diglycerides, sodium caseinate, disodium phosphate, sodium citrate, and potassium stearate. But, don’t worry; your fake cream has been “ultrapasteurized.” I wonder when plain old pasteurization stopped being good enough?
The side panels on the package of Arnold Italian Crispy Croutons explains how, in the early 1800s, the French made croutons by cutting long loaves of bread into small pieces, drying the pieces, and then frying them in butter or oil. Then you read that “The delicious crunchy-crisp croutons in this package are directly derived from the original French dish, but the method of preparation has been adapted to modern lifestyles and standards.” The modern method of preparation includes adding such tasty ingredients as ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, calcium propionate, potassium bromate, disodium phosphate, artificial flavor, and other touches to improve on the classic French recipe.
But at least bread is bread, you think, and the label on a loaf of bread is pretty straightforward. You’d better think again. According to the Code of Federal Regulations there are twenty- seven chemicals that can be added to bread, but the food manufacturer doesn’t have to list any of them on the label. Even for the ingredients that do have to be listed on the label, the manufacturer can use a little doublespeak. In 1985, the Center for Science in the Public Interest revealed that the source of “fiber” in a number of popular “high-fiber” breads was nonnutritional wood pulp. To reduce the number of calories and increase the amount of fiber in the bread, some companies had replaced some of the flour with alpha cellulose, which was sometimes listed as “powdered cellulose” among the ingredients on the package. None of the companies listed wood pulp among the ingredients. All of the companies defended their labeling as “not deceptive.”
The food companies have never let up in their efforts to use words that mislead. On the NBC-TV ‘Today” program on September 9, 1987, Richard Frank, speaking for the Committee for Fair Pizza Labeling, a food industry lobbying group, argued for the use of a “low-cholesterol cheese alternate” on frozen pizza. In other words, Mr. Frank wanted Congress to approve the use of fake cheese on frozen pizza, and he wanted to use it without calling it fake cheese.
At least you don’t have to read a list of all those ingredients on a bottle of wine. In 1981 the Wine Institute convinced the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to adopt a