going through the coupons this week, i found three head-scratching ads:
sounds great, right? whole grains! in the U.S., most chickens eat feed made of corn and soybeans. pastured chickens, on the other hand, eat grasses, insects, etc. when chickens (or cows) live indoors and eat a diet of cheap corn and soy, they aren't as healthy or nutritious for the consumer. the whole grain thing is a total red herring.
the phrase "all-natural," though appealing, is unregulated and completely meaningless. while i was looking for a picture, i found a blog where the writer said after boiling land o lakes eggs, the brown color wiped right off.
that doesn't sound natural to me.
at the grocery store yesterday, i noticed the phrase "all-natural" on a lot of meats. one package of chicken thighs claimed to be "all-natural and hormone-free*". the asterisk then explained that in the U.S., it is illegal to give homones to poultry.
they might as well be bragging, "we didn't give 'em anything illegal!"
navigating the health-washing is enough to drive a person crazy.
the next ad that got me going was touting this new product:
disposable hand towels. like paper towels, but more expensive. because we really need to be throwing more things away, and washing hand towels is such a drag.
it's so weird how opposite things can be trendy at the same time. more and more people are reusing water bottles, lunch boxes, and grocery bags, and we're yet we're aggressively marketed disposable crock pot liners, hand towels, and swiffers.
does using disposable products really save that much time? it sounds unnecessary, expensive, and wasteful to me.
this last ad intriged me:
the giant tomato tree! "A super-growing tree that z-o-o-m-s high as a man IN JUST 3 MONTHS!" it promised yields of over 60 lbs.
now, i love me some fat, juicy, tomatoes, and for a minute there, they had me going. i may be a newbie gardener, but i know one thing: tomatoes do not grow on trees.
not only did this ad smack of fantasy (um, it's a cartoon), but it's also likely a GMO--genetically modified organism.
tasty, perhaps, but i think i'll pass.
5 comments:
Very interesting post! I agree that packaging can be so TRICKY. But even though we know that it's easy to get sucked in. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post!
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So true! I just finished reading "animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver ---anyone else read it???? Anyway, her family made the commitment to living off of their land and animals (and some comunity markets) for one whole year. The book is really interesting and even has recipes for each month at the end of the chapter. I was inspired - it's a good read!
oooh, loved animal, vegetable, miracle by BK!! good read indeed anonymous!
just wanted to let you know i was back. first post is up, but i still need lots of tweaking and personalizing lol.... you were right, tho... just jumping back in and practicing again is the remedy!
misty
Oh Amen. Things are so mislabled or misleading. I'm sure I am still being duped in some areas, but I cook from scratch as much as possible and I think that probably helps.
Here is one I ran across recently. An automatic hand soap dispenser for your bathroom...so your kids don't get germs off of the dispenser. Now wait a minute. Don't you get the soap when your hands are germy anyway and THEN wash them? So the germs from the soap dispenser shouldn't matter. You're gonna wash them off ANYWAY! Just one more thing to put batteries in and buy refills for!
packaging is so deceiving! You have to be so careful and I'm not gonna lie I find I have been duped on more than one occasion.
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