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You couldn’t stomach the truth about food

Emma Jane

by Emma Jane

12 Jul 05:40am

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Filed under: Chemicals, Fast Food, Food, Health

30 comments

Squabbling continues over whether grocery tycoons should be able to tell whoppin’ great health benefit-related porkies on the packaging of their foodstuffs.

Would you like some porkies with that? Pic: AP

On one hand, it seems only sensible and responsible that cereal empires be prevented from claiming that their all-natural branbiotic pooflakes guarantee digestive regularity, cancer curation, permanent age reversal, and so on.

On the other hand, what if this fetish for frankness is extended to other food domains?

No-one will give a tinker’s cuss if the aforementioned pooflakes are billed honestly as tasting like toasted cardboard and as containing more numbers than recognisable edibles as ingredients. (Mmmm! Tastes like a chocolate milkshake only calculator-y!)

But so very much of the food industry is based on lies told either by commission or omission. If fib-less-ness is enforced as a legally required food-selling policy:

* My favourite East African eatery will have to rewrite its menu entry describing its green bean side dish as offering a “fresh explosion” in the mouth (though its description of another vegetable dish as “quite green in appearance!” will probably be able to stay).

* All fast food outlets will be forced to replace their bright posters of pert burgers and nubile chippies with sad snuff shots of limp poppy seed buns oozing beige cheese, grey mayonnaise and leached lettuce shreds.

* Brussels sprouts will need to carry danger signs warning that they will taste like undeoderised underarm no matter how poshly they’re cooked. 

* Sweets and lollies will be permitted to be sold in packets reading “the ability to bribe your ankle biters might very well be worth the childhood obesity”.

* Fast Food Brand X must own up that its commercially produced strawberry milkshakes contain a grand total of 59 ingredients including ethyl methylphenylglycidate or C12H14O3 (which is deemed harmless for humans but has caused testicular atrophy in rats and something called “positive sister chromatid exchange effects” in the ovaries of Chinese hamsters).

* Meat pie makers will be required to announced – in large neon letters – that their product contains bone scraps, spongy minced gristle, connective tissue composite, and buffalo perineum.

* All processed food manufacturers will have to admit that – based on recent real life product recalls – there is every chance their colas, chicken lasagnes, French fries, tinned fruits, pizzas and baguettes will accidentally contain condoms, steel bolts, bomb parts, tropical spiders, baked German cockroaches and sewing needles threaded with green cotton respectively. 

Ah, yes, fellow masticators. Let’s think very carefully about this truth in food-vertising business. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character from A Few Good Men: the truth? We can’t stomach the… blgghhhh…

Most commented

30 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • Tim says:

      07:57am | 12/07/12

      Mmmm, snouts and entrails.

      Reply

    • Joan Bennett says:

      08:30am | 12/07/12

      That’s why it’s good to eat actual food that you made from scratch.  Anything pre-made/packaged has goodness knows what in it, so why would you touch it?  All these people who reckon they don’t have time to do real cooking, how come you have time to follow all these TV series which previous generations didn’t?

      Reply

    • fml says:

      09:04am | 12/07/12

      Is it because the previous generations didn’t have tvs?

    • Lorraine says:

      12:57pm | 12/07/12

      Yes, Joan, That solves the problem very nicely.
      The homecooked food tastes great.
      Real food is made by real cooks in their homes.
      That does not mean buying a package mix and mixing it up, start from scratch and do the whole lot yourself.

    • Inky says:

      04:25pm | 15/07/12

      Well hey, when I no longer have to finish work at 10pm I might actually have time to cook dinner for myself.

    • Mahhrat says:

      08:54am | 12/07/12

      Change two things in advertising:

      No adjectives, and
      No subjective judgments.  All claims must be backed by double-blind, accredited testing (that would realistically cost more than it’d be worth, which is the whole point).

      Advertising should consist of nothing more than being easy to find once I commence searching for it.  It is and should be treated as the red-headed step child of communication.

      Reply

    • JustMEinT says:

      09:05am | 12/07/12

      Fast food = processed and chemically laden = no good for you = will cause illness= and may contribute to your death!
      MUST agree with Jaon B in the above comment and do cook from scratch. Actually one of my big arguments is that we are currently in the third (may be fourth?) generation who does not know how to cook a meal from scratch…. we need to go back to cooking classes in school - Home Economics….. whatever you wish to call it, and learn nutrition, cooking and purchasing skills, and basic home cleanliness etc. If younger people are taught these things, then they can pass the skills onto their parents and their own children in time,

      LESSON for today = don’t eat processed junk unless you want to become a health statistic.

      Reply

    • Laura Anne says:

      12:20pm | 12/07/12

      I just want to comment that I’m Gen Y and I cook from scratch all the time and so do a lot of my friends in the same age group. I see what you’re saying and I agree to some extent, but its certainly not a blanket problem across the whole generation.
      I cook dinner every night with meat and veges and take the leftovers to work the next day - occasionally rice and very rarely bread. I also cook pizza from scratch (dough included) and bake occasional treats like biscuits, tarts, pies etc - all from scratch. I rarely eat out. A lot of my friends do the same. And I work 40-50 hours a week in a corporate role. My mum worked full time growing up and never had time to cook so I didn’t learn from her, I’ve learned from blogs, cookcooks and cooking shows. So it is possible. Tastes way better too…

    • Bear says:

      09:17am | 12/07/12

      America is the last place anyone would want to mimic. They think big, fatty or added bacon makes it good. what’s wrong with taste?

      Reply

    • iansand says:

      10:44am | 12/07/12

      What’s wrong with added bacon?

    • Coal Train says:

      11:06am | 12/07/12

      Bacon is pigs gift to humanity, think of it like a peace offering. A delicious, mouth watering peace offering

    • Audra Blue says:

      04:38pm | 12/07/12

      There’s no food that can’t be made better by adding bacon to it.

    • Ken Harris says:

      09:58am | 12/07/12

      Oh Goodness next thing you know you will be asking for truth in politics…. politicians to tell the truth and not take bribes!  Well if we can ask for truth in the food industry surely we can ask for truth from politicians?

      Reply

    • JustMEinT says:

      10:01am | 12/07/12

      What is wrong with properly prepared bacon? What is wrong with non hydrogenated fats like lard and butter? The fat is bad for you mantara is wearing out! It has been proven to be a lie perpetuated by industry as a self serving falsehood.

      Reply

    • T says:

      10:27am | 12/07/12

      Grease me up baby, I’m going in.

    • Jack says:

      10:46am | 12/07/12

      Brussels sprouts taste like underarms? Get out of my country, terrorist.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      04:06pm | 12/07/12

      ...and that’s after Warnie’s done ten overs, but a recipe for sprouts, speck and lentils, which I ripped out of the Sunday Mail looks promising, cause after you boil the sprouts for 4-5 minutes you then cook them in oil with the speck for 2 more until golden brown.

      I’m gonna try it tomorrow.

    • Ridge says:

      11:21am | 12/07/12

      I think all foods should have the ingredients readily available (or even better, the macronutrient amounts!).  Then you can do your own research.

      If you rely on advertisers to make health/life decisions for you, you deserve everything you get.

      Reply

    • jimbo says:

      11:32am | 12/07/12

      Fresh milk and fresh strawberries mixed together taste like nothing.  Of course you need the rat poison stuff to make it appeal to our modern pallet.
      Modern bread has so many additives in it, there is no room for the flour but hey, it lasts for weeks!  I am now food intollerant to everything but chemicals so what will I eat if they ban them? Children can adapt to living on nothing but sugar.  A lot of parents have proved it.  Sure they don’t live all that long and you need a truck to move them around but they are generally happy enough.

      Reply

    • Ridge says:

      01:51pm | 12/07/12

      What. The actual. Hell?

      Fresh milk and strawberries tastes great together.  Even better with some honey and vanilla.  What on earth are you referring to by ‘the rat poison stuff’?  If you mean artificial colours and preservatives, then that makes it taste fake and rather crap compared to natural flavours.

      What’s wrong with modern bread?  Have you actually looked at the ingredients, please name one brand that doesn’t have flour as the majority ingredient.  Also, additives are sometimes a good thing.  Fibre, for example, as most westerners don’t get enough anyway.

      Lastly, no human can adapt to living on nothing but sugar.  And nobody has proven it, especially with children.

      I understand your post was supposed to be in jest, but c’mon man.

    • Audra Blue says:

      04:41pm | 12/07/12

      Actually strawberries and fresh cream taste better together.

    • rory robertson (former fattie) says:

      11:56am | 12/07/12

      Reliable nutrition information is critical in the fight against obesity and diabetes. Unfortunately, the contribution of excess sugar consumption to obesity has been exonerated by high-profile but over-confident scientists with strong links to the sugar industry and other sugar sellers. No surprises there I guess, but what’s interesting is that this deeply flawed paper with its spectacularly false conclusion was published in a supposedly peer-reviewed science journal. That’s allowed in science? Whatever happened to quality control? I’m arguing for the shoddy academic paper’s retraction by the authors, the journal and/or the University of Sydney. It’s all documented at http://www.australianparadox.com/ If you do nothing else, simply check out whether Dr Alan Barclay and Professor Jennie Brand-Miller’s own charts - Figures 1-4 - show the relevant sugar indicators trending up or down. Why not take part in my $40,000 Australian Paradox challenge (see #12 on LHS)? It’ll only take one minute.

      Reply

    • Ridge says:

      12:23pm | 12/07/12

      That site had too many colours, big fonts, bold and underlined text.  Too hard on the eyes, sorry!

      What’s the summary of your argument?

    • jimbo says:

      02:23pm | 12/07/12

      @Ridge.  Yes your last paragraph was correct and I was jesting, sort of. But while Froot Loops and McRubbish keep being a popular choice of discerning parents then maybe I am not far from the truth?

      Reply

    • Audra Blue says:

      04:43pm | 12/07/12

      I used to inhale Froot Loops, Coco Pops, Strawberry Pops, caramel Space Food sticks and pineapple flavoured Quik when I was a kid.  And I was skinny as a rake.  Probably had something to do with the fact that I was constantly running around.

      I tried Froot Loops a while back and they don’t taste the same, but I’m not sure if that’s because my palette is different or the food is different.

    • Ridge says:

      05:03pm | 12/07/12

      The food industry is just like any other industry - it’s driven by its consumers, not the other way around.

      That is, if you don’t like the product, blame the consumers.  Good products are out there, but nothing will improve until parents make better choices for their children.

    • Shep says:

      07:59pm | 12/07/12

      Wot, the big grocery chains won’t be allowed to lie anymore, that’d be unAutralian.

      Reply

    • Peter Thornton says:

      09:40pm | 12/07/12

      Is this news? Jesus H freakin’ Christ! Who eats pre-preapared, processed, canned, frozen>thawed>barely digestible meals anyway? Total hambeasts and nobody that counts as far as I know. Or hayseeds from the up Norf!

      Reply

    • Dools1 says:

      09:53pm | 12/07/12

      Wow never thought I’d see perineum in a punch article. And a buffalows at that.

      Reply

    • ChrisF. says:

      11:50pm | 15/07/12

      “Pooflakes” should be henceforth included in the Macquarie Dictionary of Unstandard Australian English.

      Reply
 
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