ignorance - ignorance (an aside from the dailies)
I was reading AOL's headline news articles, one of which is a piece on products in food.
It began with the shocking news that many dyes use bug products to achieve their color, right along with a brilliant multi toned photo of Yoplait yogurt. About half of the article was talking about how unspecified people of an unspecified number were petitioning to the FDA and that "The Food & Drug Administration has received numerous complaints over the issue and is now in the process of considering a proposal to require color additives like the cochineal extract to be disclosed on the labels of all foods that use them." What the FDA is apparently concerned with is the non-disclosure of products used in "artificial flavoring" for allergy patients and vegans. The article however wants a demand for a label listing "crushed bugs".
I can see where people may not realize that this common way of obtaining dyes might still be in their products. When you see dyeing discussed on the telly it's always in white suit coated labs with glass vials, machines that spin, eyedroppers and plastic ventilated goggles. But anyone who wanted to know what carmine (or cochineal extract) is could frankly just look it up.
The second half of the article goes on with language clearly shocked and outraged that there are coloration products in farmed chicken and salmon, fed to birds to get golden egg yolks, added to bacons, juice and white frosting.
I'm sorry. Perhaps this is nothing but my reaction to certain Chicago Aldermen trying to call out fast food as the monstrous instigators of obesity in this country because of their use of Trans fats, trying to get them into a meeting where they can be publicly chastised for it, and pushing law to ban products with Trans fats from being sold in the Chicago airports, but when did we so completely embrace ignorance in exchange for personal responsibility?
I know we have a pretty rigorous program with the FDA compared to other countries, but when did we decide to turn over even our consumption of products to Big Brother? It's absolutely beginning to freak me out.
Yeah, I'd love better labeling on products; but I feel like I'm discussing those people, the ones you meet every once in a while who have never seen a real apple off of a tree, undyed and unwaxed, and think it's diseased.
And on a personal note, how can you NOT want to know exactly what you're putting in your body? We're in the fad of organic foods. This is largely disclosed information. I mean, I eat a lot of crap, but at least I know it's crap. THAT grosses me out more than bug parts in my yogurt, that people will put things in their body, include products into system, and then are shocked and horrified and blame others that those things are there.
And even more horrifying, I still contend that everything's related. The great massive swirl of it all.
It began with the shocking news that many dyes use bug products to achieve their color, right along with a brilliant multi toned photo of Yoplait yogurt. About half of the article was talking about how unspecified people of an unspecified number were petitioning to the FDA and that "The Food & Drug Administration has received numerous complaints over the issue and is now in the process of considering a proposal to require color additives like the cochineal extract to be disclosed on the labels of all foods that use them." What the FDA is apparently concerned with is the non-disclosure of products used in "artificial flavoring" for allergy patients and vegans. The article however wants a demand for a label listing "crushed bugs".
I can see where people may not realize that this common way of obtaining dyes might still be in their products. When you see dyeing discussed on the telly it's always in white suit coated labs with glass vials, machines that spin, eyedroppers and plastic ventilated goggles. But anyone who wanted to know what carmine (or cochineal extract) is could frankly just look it up.
The second half of the article goes on with language clearly shocked and outraged that there are coloration products in farmed chicken and salmon, fed to birds to get golden egg yolks, added to bacons, juice and white frosting.
I'm sorry. Perhaps this is nothing but my reaction to certain Chicago Aldermen trying to call out fast food as the monstrous instigators of obesity in this country because of their use of Trans fats, trying to get them into a meeting where they can be publicly chastised for it, and pushing law to ban products with Trans fats from being sold in the Chicago airports, but when did we so completely embrace ignorance in exchange for personal responsibility?
I know we have a pretty rigorous program with the FDA compared to other countries, but when did we decide to turn over even our consumption of products to Big Brother? It's absolutely beginning to freak me out.
Yeah, I'd love better labeling on products; but I feel like I'm discussing those people, the ones you meet every once in a while who have never seen a real apple off of a tree, undyed and unwaxed, and think it's diseased.
And on a personal note, how can you NOT want to know exactly what you're putting in your body? We're in the fad of organic foods. This is largely disclosed information. I mean, I eat a lot of crap, but at least I know it's crap. THAT grosses me out more than bug parts in my yogurt, that people will put things in their body, include products into system, and then are shocked and horrified and blame others that those things are there.
And even more horrifying, I still contend that everything's related. The great massive swirl of it all.