December 9th, 2007 at 03:18pm
Under Food Alert
Greetings, Readers,
Can you help me with this problem? I would like to find a source for Dill Pickles that meets the following criteria:
- Organic
- Do not contain natural or artificial flavors
I would like to find a source for Sweet Pickles or Sweet Pickle Relish that meets the following criteria:
- Organic
- Do not contain natural or artificial flavors
- Sweetened with cane syrup or another natural, unprocessed sugar (not sweetened with plain old table sugar)
Neither Whole Foods 365 Brand Nor Cascadian Farm Pickles Are Chemical-Free
Go to any regular supermarket in America, along the lines of Safeway or Ralph’s and you won’t see, and won’t expect to see, organic pickles. Claussen’s, Vlassic’s, etc., and the other pickles you likely remember from childhood may have tasted good to you, but they are a concoction of pesticide-laden cucumbers and bizarre chemical additives. Surely, not something you should put in your mouth.
So, you continue on down the road to your natural foods store - be it Whole Foods or another store offering organics, eager to get your hands on some human-friendly pickles to bring dash to a winter potato salad or zest to a summer sandwich. You start looking at the labels of what’s available and that sinking feeling sets in.
Whole Foods used to carry Cascadian Farm pickles before making their recent Napoleonic move of replacing most of the brand choices in their markets with their own 365 label. But, in this case, it hardly matters. Read the ingredients on Cascadian Farm’s pickles and you will see that ugly two-word phrase: natural flavors. This means chemicals from the New Jersey Turnpike that are being used to trick you and your tastebuds into thinking you’re eating a tasty food, rather than actually eating a whole, wholesome, natural food that has been prepared with care to actually taste tasty. So, Cascadian Farm’s is being dishonest, hiding behind FDA legislation that allows them to put food on market shelves without disclosing the ingredients of that food.
Next, you pick up Whole Foods 365 Brand Pickles and you have an episode of deja vu. Aping the very products they’ve replaced with their own company brand, Whole Foods is being dishonest, adding ‘natural flavors’ to their own pickles. Where, may I ask, is the value or justice in calling Whole Foods Pickles organic if they contain chemicals? Natural flavors are not organic…they are mystery meat chemicals made in a lab by white-coated scientists who will not tell you what they are putting in the jar of ‘food’ they are concocting. Natural flavors are a legal lie to you, the consumer. All you know when you see ‘natural flavors’ on a label is that the manufacturer of the product has something to hide.
And these are my two choices where I live. The 2 ‘organic’ pickles available here contain natural flavors. As a result, I’ve had no pickles in months and both my husband and I are feeling depressed. I’ve spent hours on the Internet, looking for a place to order organic pickles without chemical additives and have come up empty handed.
Can you help me? Is there an organic pickle brand where you live that doesn’t contain natural or artificial flavors? Can you read some labels in your home town and see if ANY company in the USA is actually producing wholesome pickles any more? If you can find a US company that meets my criteria, I would surely appreciate you sharing a link and ingredient list with me in the comments, below.
I did contact Whole Foods to ask them why they are putting chemicals in their pickles rather than providing a ‘whole food’ that tastes good because it’s made properly. Unfortunately, they did not respond, and this represents the 3rd inquiry I have sent to this huge corporation without receiving a reply. I used to be Whole Foods’ #1 fan, but as the years go by, I become increasingly less impressed with the Whole Foods corporation. Their success has turned them away from their original commitments and they are becoming little better than Safeway in their care for their customers’ needs or health. What a let-down!
I did not bother to contact Cascadian Farm, having attempted to have rational dealings with them last year over the fact that they punch holes in their frozen vegetable bags, allowing their food to be freezer burned and filled with industrial dirt on its way to your table. They feel this is a reasonable thing to do, and couldn’t seem to understand why I disagreed.
Unfortunately, the first step to eating well in America is to realize that the FDA does little to protect consumers from toxins and pollutants that should not be eaten. My long-term plan about the pickles is to begin to grow my own cucumbers and make my own pickles when my husband and I can afford a piece of land of our own. We’re hoping this will happen in our near future, so that we can be more self-sufficient, depending less and less on unscrupulous corporations to feed us. My mother used to make her own pickles, and believe me, they put to shame anything you’ve ever eaten out of a commercial jar. We’re working our way toward this type of self-reliance, but in the meantime, we’d surely like to know if you know of a company that makes real pickles that taste good because they’re made well. Please, do comment if you can.
By admin
August 19th, 2007 at 08:01pm
Under Food Alert
Proposition 65 was enacted in 1986 in California. Its purpose was to make it mandatory for citizens to be alerted to the presence of harmful chemicals in food and drinking water. Lead is one of the chemicals targeted by this proposition.
Today, I went grocery shopping at my local market, and I needed to pick up some vinegar. Imagine my surprise when I found the vinegar shelves bedecked with labels bearing the following message:
“CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65 WARNING
The Red Wine Vinegars and Balsamic Vinegars contain lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.”
Despite the fact that proposition 65 has been around for more than twenty years, this is the first time I have encountered this warning on vinegar. I was rather dismayed, having always been such a big fan of balsamic vinegar for cooking.
Why is there lead in the vinegar?
I have encountered two explanations of this, the first being that lead gets into vinegar during the process of manufacturing, and the other being that wine grapes suck lead up out of the ground. There seems to be some bias behind both of these explanations, leaving us, the consumer, with only the fact that there is enough lead in red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar to merit the proposition 65 warning.
In 2004, a lawsuit was filed under the Environmental Law Foundation of Oakland, demanding that the public be alerted by these signs in the grocery store, and it looks as though they have won. The Environmental Law Foundation spent $50,000 testing vinegars, and discovered that the vinegars exceeded the allowed 0.5 micrograms of lead per day, under proposition 65.
What are your vinegar alternatives?
You will note that it is only red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar that are being labelled as unsafe for human consumption. These products are made of grapes. However, you can still use rice vinegar and apple cider vinegar in your cooking. I do share the disappointment of others over the loss of the red vinegars, which so many of us have kept as a pantry staple for so long. But, be smart about this. Lead is no joke.
What is lead poisoning?
Lead does not have a known biological role in body function. It is purely an external toxicity. Lead is absorbed into the bloodstream when a person handles, breathes, or swallows items containing this element. The symptoms of chronic lead poisoning due to repeat or prolonged exposure include abdominal pain, headache, seizures, coma, vomiting, anemia, and disorders of the brain. Lead poisoning has historically been a cause of insanity and criminal behavior. This is not something you want to play around with, merely because you’ve enjoyed the taste of an optional condiment.
It’s not just vinegar.
Proposition 65 also covers lead-contaminated candy and ceramics, arsenic in bottled water, and mercury levels in fish. There is a reaction every time a food or household item is discovered to contain a harmful chemical, and this outcry can generally be traced back to manufacturers whose income depends on selling the product in question. Pay attention to any argument that attempts to downplay the seriousness of contaminated, toxic food. Discover for yourself where these minimizing arguments are actually coming from. Whose best interest is at heart when it comes to saying that consumers shouldn’t worry about eating lead?
I am sure that the warning labels will put a dent in the earnings of producers of red wine and balsamic vinegars, but no doubt many people will continue to consume them. With so few laws currently protecting Americans from eating harmful substances, it is little wonder that the majority of the public has not yet learned to take this issue seriously. But here in California, we’ve been given a genuine warning. At least we now have the choice to buy or not to buy a product that is being labelled as toxic.
By admin
August 13th, 2007 at 08:00pm
Under Food Alert
As vegans, we turn to the grain, rice, for our milk. Nothing is so delicious as a bowl of homemade granola, topped with fresh blueberries and creamy rice milk. We’ve been buying Imagine’s Vanilla Rice Milk for years. It’s tasty, organic and fairly inexpensive. We’ve always been fans…until last week when we realized something unsettling about this product.
Rice Dream Vanilla Rice Milk Contains An Ingredient Called Natural Flavor
The objective of this article is to warn you not to trust the term natural when you see natural flavor on a food label, and to urge you to tell the Imagine Foods company that we don’t want mystery chemicals in our foods.
Natural Flavors and Artificial Flavors are basically the same, and are chemical additives
Don’t let the word ‘natural’ fool you. It’s a marketing ploy being used to allay the suspicions of conscientious consumers who are trying to choose foods wisely. It’s a term that food producers are permitted to use instead of listing the actual ingredients in a product. It shouldn’t be legal to withhold ingredients from the public, and it shouldn’t be legal to call a product that contains a chemical additive ‘natural’.
The world’s giant producer of both ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ chemical flavors is International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF). Located off the New Jersey Turnpike, their lab workers concoct the chemicals that give smell or taste to floor polish, detergent, deoderant…and food. These chemical potions are then purchased by food producers who add them to their products. When marketing to the uncaring portion of the public that is currently subsisting on Kool-Aid and TV Dinners, food producers use ‘artificial’ flavor. When marketing to health conscious, green living types, food producers like Imagine Foods use ‘natural’ flavor to make us believe this mystery ingredient is perfectly innocuous. Don’t be fooled by this clever marketing trick!
The only difference between an artificial and a natural flavor is that the artificial flavor never came from a food in the first place, but once upon a time, the natural flavor did. For example, the natural flavor for banana was derived by distilling a chemical called amyl acetate from the banana, and then copying its properties. Artificial banana flavor is made out of vingear, amyl alchohol and sulfuric acid. Both routes may produce a banana-like taste and smell, but neither route is derived from putting an actual banana in the end product. It’s all achieved by totally unnatural processes being conducted in giant factories by people in lab coats. It’s not healthy, wholesome or necessary…and it’s sure not natural!
Food tastes good when you use actual, real ingredients. Whole foods don’t need additives to taste perfect, just as they are. When a company is adding chemical flavorings to their products, they are either trying to take financial shortcuts or are covering up a really bad taste. Remember…their goal is to sell, and they are quite willing to make a fool of you and your tastebuds to do so.
Why is Imagine Foods Company Using a Mystery Ingredient in their Rice Milk?
I wish I could give you their official answer on this, but like so many companies, they don’t respond to questions about ‘natural flavors’. They don’t want to try to explain themselves, so it was necessary for us to do some sleuthing by ourselves. If a representative from Imagine Foods reads this and would like to comment here at Tangergreen, we’d all be eager to hear what you’ve got to say, and it would certainly be the smart thing to do in terms of your customer relations.
We went to the local market and checked out 4 types of Rice Dream Rice Milk - Vanilla, Vanilla Enriched, Original and Orignal Enriched. Bingo! It’s the Vanilla-flavored Rice Milk that contains the suspicious ‘natural flavor’.
Our guess is that Imagine Foods doesn’t want to spend the money to put enough real vanilla in their milk to make it taste like vanilla to you. Vanilla is a somewhat expensive extract, so we would guess that Imagine Foods is cutting corners by putting some minute amount of actual vanilla in this product and making up the difference by adding chemicals that fool customers into thinking they are tasting actual vanilla. What an unfortunate choice for a company to make when the business’ reputation hinges on selling to a demographic with above-average concern over what they put in their bodies.
Trying to Pull The Wool Over Green Consumers Eyes Is a Bad Marketing Strategy
Spending just two minutes in the grocery store, this green consumer was able to make an educated guess about the stingy spending habits of Imagine Foods who are more concerned about their profit margin than they are about delivering an honest, truly natural product to their customer. My esteem for this once-trusted company went down many notches realizing this. And now, here I am, blabbing about it to anyone who cares to research this company via the Internet.
Tangergreen’s duty is to do the blabbing, because our goal is to motivate companies trading on the ‘natural’ label to cut out this kind of garbage. When I want an apple, I don’t want a potato with apple flavoring that will sort of fool me into thinking I’m eating an apple. I want an apple, plain and simple. When I see a company proclaiming themselves to be natural, I want whole foods to make up ALL the ingredients in their products. I don’t want mystery additives being sold to me under lying names. I don’t care if the FDA permits them to do this. I want natural foods corporations to agree with me that the FDA’s standards are laughable and that natural foods companies should go miles beyond the bare requirements to provide something nutritious and unadulterated to their customers. If Mama didn’t use it in her kitchen, I don’t want it in my food.
The good Lord only knows what the actual health toll is from consuming flavor and scent chemicals. Living in a world of autoimmune diseases and cancers, I am suspicious of putting anything that came out of a labratory into my body, and I am very suspicious of any company that tries to pull the wool over its consumers’ eyes with underhanded labeling tricks. If Imagine Foods is willing to stoop so low, what else might they be doing?
My Request of Imagine Foods
Spend the money to buy real vanilla and get this mystery junk out of your products. We don’t want it. We really don’t want it.
What You Can Do
To take action on this, phone Imagine Foods, owned by the Hain Celestial Group, at 1-800-434-4246. If enough people call and say they don’t want undisclosed ingredients and chemicals in their food, Hain Celestial Group will be struck with a decent fear of losing market share unless they give us what we’re asking for. Remember, the customer is always right.
To continue enjoying rice milk, you have a few options. Find another brand that doesn’t list ‘natural ingredients’ on their label. If anyone would like to suggest a good alternative, please leave a comment here for us to check out. Or, if Imagine Rice Dream Rice Milk is the only brand available where you live, buy the Original or Original Enriched and a bottle of organic vanilla extract. Just a drop of real, pure vanilla will give genuine vanilla flavor to a whole carton of plain rice milk.
Summing Up
If this was the Pepsi corporation pulling a stunt like this, I really wouldn’t care. Their products are concoctions of nothing but chemicals and God help anyone consuming them. But it really gets my goat when I see the very businesses that claim to provide an alterative being no better than their evil corporate counterparts.
The FDA will not set decent standards to protect us. Companies like Imagine Foods will attempt to squeak by, taking any short cut they can on the road to profit rather than setting admirable, new high standards. So, setting the standards for what is acceptable in the food we eat is left up to us, the consumers. Our voices and our dollars are what determines who gets to stay in business and what goes on our tables. Please, harness this power and call Imagine Foods today.
—————–
Update: August 24, 2007
I finally heard back from the Hain Celestial Group, maker of Rice Dream Products. Their reply, unfortunately, was guarded and non-transparent, as well as not answering my question:
Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding our Vanilla Rice Dream Beverage. We apologize for the delay in our reply and appreciate your patience. We strive to maintain the highest quality products and we appreciate your patronage.
Natural is used as a general term to encompass both natural flavors that are both vegan and non-vegan. It’s used to convey that the flavor or ingredient doesn’t have anything artificial in it. Artificial meaning any chemically synthesized ingredients. The term natural flavor or natual flavoring means any ingredient that is from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, a vegetable, edible yeast, herb, bark, root, leaf, meat or poultry products whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional. The Hain Celestial Group does not add mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) to any of our natural flavors. If you have allergies or sensitivities to certain ingredients, we recommend you avoid all products with added flavorings.
As one of our valued customers, your satisfaction is very important to us and we will share your comments with our Leadership Team. If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-434-4246, Monday through Friday from 7AM - 5PM Mountain Time.
Sincerely,
Lynda
Consumer Relations Representative
From this response, I would imagine the Hain Celestial Group gets a lot of inquiries about MSG, but this was not what my specific question was about. I asked to be told what chemicals are being added to the Vanilla Rice Dream Rice Milk, not whether this product contains MSG. As you can see from the above, it is the Hain Celestial Group’s policy not to be honest about the actual ingredients in their product.
This is unacceptable for a company billing their products as natural. If it’s natural, tell me what it is!
The only advice we are being given is that if you have ‘allergies’, you shouldn’t drink their Vanilla Rice Milk. It also leaves open the question as to whether non-vegan ingredients are being put into Vanilla Rice Milk.
Companies like Hain Celestial are being no better than their corporate counterparts who manufacture TV Dinners and Jell-O and don’t ever disclose to the public what they are really being fed. What is there to hide? Obviously, something.
By admin