{"id":145276,"date":"2015-03-31T20:26:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T20:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=145276"},"modified":"2015-03-31T20:27:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T20:27:27","slug":"the-empire-strikes-back-poison-is-natural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/the-empire-strikes-back-poison-is-natural\/","title":{"rendered":"The Empire Strikes Back: Poison Is \u201cNatural\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor James F. Tracy
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/p>\n

The processed food industry is seeking to turn back the global movement toward organic and non-GMO food by promoting its often unwholesome products as healthful and nutritious. In mid-March the Associated Press released a detailed report<\/a> on how Coca-Cola commissioned fitness and nutrition \u201cexperts\u201d to promote its high-fructose corn syrup-laden soft drinks as part of a healthy diet.<\/p>\n

Through the month of February, blogs and newspapers published pieces from the writers in observance of \u201cHealthy Heart & Black History Month.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a network of dietitians we work with,\u201d a Coke representative told the AP, who would not say how much the company pays such spokespersons. \u201cEvery big brand works with bloggers or has paid talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pepsico has likewise embarked on similar public relations campaigns to push its FritoLay and Tostitos-branded snacks in local television programming as part of healthy eating, AP observes.<\/p>\n

The most recent development in the food giants\u2019 undeclared campaign to be perceived as wholesome involves the use of the purportedly \u201cnatural\u201d sweetener Truvia into products in lieu of the more notorious aspartame or sucralose additives.<\/p>\n

For example, Old Orchard fruit juice is celebrating \u201cNational Nutrition month\u201d by announcing<\/a> its Truvia-infused \u201cCranberry Cherry reduced-calorie juice drink as part of its expanding Cran Naturals line of naturally sweetened [sic] juice cocktails. At just 55 calories per serving,\u201d the company\u2019s press release gushes<\/p>\n

Old Orchard Cran Naturals features 50% less sugar than traditional 100% cranberry juice blends, while still offering the great taste and benefits of cranberry juice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such a promotional campaign rests largely on the Truvia brand\u2019s heavily promoted yet dubious association with stevia and an overarching ignorance of how the sweetener is produced, let alone its potential effects upon ingestion.<\/p>\n

Like aspertame (Nutrasweet, Equal) and sucralose (Splenda), both of which are neurotoxins (e.g. here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>), Truvia is approved as safe for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration, which might be immediate cause for concern. The sweetener is also made by Cargill, the major fertilizer manufacturer. As Natural News<\/em>observes<\/a>, \u201ca study published in the journal PLOS ONE (1) found that Truvia acts as a potent insecticide that kills fruit flies which consume it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2014 the New York Times<\/em> published<\/a> a detailed (and largely sympathetic) examination of the sweetener research and development industry. In that report the paper of record noted that \u201cTruvia contains very little stevia, by weight, and briefly acknowledges \u201cits main ingredient\u201d as being \u201cerythritol,\u201d a sugar alcohol.<\/p>\n

Cargill makes the erythritol that comprises Truvia from GMO corn, or, more specifically, \u201cyeast that may be fed with genetically modified corn sugar,\u201d the Times<\/em> notes.<\/p>\n

In fact, the sweetener contains almost no<\/em> stevia. It is made from about 99.5% erythritol, and 0.5% rebiana, an extract from the stevia plant. Thus, fruit drinks are now being sweetened with a GMO-based substance that can kill bugs and cleverly promoted as \u201cnatural\u201d by including stevia as a trace element. Moreover, since the adoption of a given sweetener for us in a host of beverages is a key objective of its manufacturer, Old Orchard\u2019s use of Truvia might be better seen as a prelude for its use in a much wider array of other juices and soft drinks.<\/p>\n

In 2013 Cartill resolved a deceptive marketing lawsuit <\/a>for presenting Truvia as a \u201cnatural\u201d sweetener. As part of the settlement the company agreed to set up a fund of $5 million to refund purchasers and change its labeling to more accurately describe how Truvia is produced.<\/p>\n

As the consumer departure from unnatural nourishment picks up steam, the transnational food cartel will be seeking to head off the move in increasingly deceptive ways\u2014some of which could actually endanger one\u2019s health. This is a battle that pits the food manufacturers\u2019 spinmeisters and advert execs against the broader public. Coca-Cola\u2019s attempt to pass its beverages off as healthy and Cargill\u2019s promotion of a pesticide as safe and natural are early examples of exactly how low this sector will go to maintain market share and the bottom line. Caveat emptor.<\/p>\n

Professor James F. Tracy is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. James Tracy\u2019s work on media history, politics and culture has appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and opinion outlets. James is editor of Union for Democratic Communication\u2019s Journal Democratic Communiqu\u00c3\u00a9 and a contributor to Project Censored\u2019s forthcoming publication Censored 2013: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2011-2012. Additional writings and information are accessible at memoryholeblog.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor James F. Tracy RINF Alternative News The processed food industry is seeking to turn back the global movement toward organic and non-GMO food by promoting its often unwholesome products as healthful and nutritious. In mid-March the Associated Press released a detailed report on how Coca-Cola commissioned fitness and nutrition \u201cexperts\u201d to promote its high-fructose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-145276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}