Brandwashed (32 page)

This illusion of “healthy” is perpetuated by the fact that many of us don’t know what many of the marketing buzzwords really mean; and of course marketers work hard to keep it that way. A national survey conducted by the Shelton Group found that, when asked whether we’d rather buy a product billed as “natural” or “organic,” we choose “natural,” “thinking organic is more of an unregulated marketing buzzword that means the product is more expensive,” says Suzanne Shelton, who conducted the survey. But she explains, “In reality, the opposite is true: ‘Natural’ is the unregulated word.” And other popular buzzwords—like “organically grown,” “pesticide free,” “all-natural,” and “no artificial ingredients”—actually mean very little.

Given how freely companies throw these terms around, one can
hardly blame us for being confused. For example, in a clever bit of bait-and-switch marketing, when Silk Soymilk recently introduced a line of milk made from nonorganic soybeans, it simply switched its organic soy milk to a green box and began selling the new, nonorganic version in the original red packaging, with only one perceptible change: replacing the word “organic” with the word “natural.”
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Companies have gone to great lengths to convince us that “natural” equals “healthy,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Believe it or not, because the term is unregulated by the
FDA, a company can dub just about any product “natural.” Potato chips made from actual potatoes instead of potato flakes may technically be natural, but they are still processed, high in fat, high in sodium, and lacking in nutritional value.

Or take English muffins. As someone who has been eating this breakfast staple for years, you can imagine how delighted I was to pull a package off the shelf and learn that they are now made with “unbleached enriched white flour” and contain “hearty grains.”
How nutritious
, I thought, feeling more virtuous than ever as I placed one in the toaster. But alas, this actually just means they are made with white flour and contain wheat—a standard ingredient for any bread or starch. As for “multigrain,” well, this more-grains-the-merrier approach sure
sounds
convincing, but all it means is that more than one type of grain is involved (which doesn’t automatically make it healthier). And what about products that boast they contain “isolated fibers”? Sorry, but this, too, is meaningless. To reap any actual health benefits, you have to consume “intact fibers,” such as oats or legumes. As the
Washington Post
points out, “Fiber One Oats & Chocolate bars say they provide 35 percent of daily fiber, but the fiber comes mainly from chicory root extract,”
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which isn’t one of the healthy fibers.

With all this linguistic smoke and mirrors, is it any wonder we have no idea what it is we’re actually eating?

My favorite sleight of hand is the claim that a food or drink can give you “energy.” Well, I have news for you. “Energy” is just another way of saying “calories.” Which makes this a very clever way of putting a positive spin on what would otherwise be the kiss of death for a “health” product—can you imagine a company touting the fact that its product is high in calories?

What about those claims “made with real
fruit” or “contains real fruit juice,” which regularly appear on the packages of fruit snacks, soft drinks, cereals, cookies, and pretty much any food item marketed to children (or, rather, the guilt-laden
parents
of children)? Again, considering that there is no law in place governing how much “real fruit” a food or drink must contain to make this claim, don’t be surprised if those strawberry-flavored fruit rolls contain maybe half a drop of fruit juice and are spiked with eight grams of sugar apiece (a perfect example of how food companies target children and their wallet carriers at the same time). And speaking of juice, what about those foods advertised as being fortified with nutrients, like calcium-fortified orange juice? According to the
Washington Post
, “fortifying a junk food does not offset the food’s negative qualities. Example: Fruit Loops says it ‘now provides fiber.’ But the 9 grams of sugar in each ¾-cup serving of the cereal could have far more negative effects than any benefit from the slim amount of added fiber.”
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Another favorite among marketers is the “low trans fat” claim. Recall that several years ago, the FDA proclaimed that trans fat, the fat created when oils are hydrogenated during food processing, contributed to coronary heart disease, the biggest killer of Americans. Naturally, every food product under the sun was immediately proud to boast “zero trans fat” on its package. Problem is, products with “zero trans fat” (and by the way, thanks to labeling guidelines, these actually include any foods containing 0.5 grams or less per serving) are typically teeming with saturated fat, which can be just as bad for our hearts as trans fat. It’s kind of like saying “I’m not carrying a gun!” while neglecting to mention you
are
packing a hand grenade or a switchblade.

T
hese are just the shenanigans being pulled with FDA-regulated products; when it comes to nonregulated products, like
cosmetics (which are not considered drugs and thus can sidestep many of the clinical trials required by the FDA), marketers and advertisers can get away with saying just about anything. Makers of face creams, for example, are happily peddling all kinds of clever and often blatantly unproven claims. The La
Prairie brand, for example (which, by the way, is sold in a jar the shape of a genie bottle to imply magical wish-granting powers), actually promises to reduce stress levels—a claim that one doctor I spoke to assured me is a medical impossibility. “Ninety-eight percent of the ‘cosmeceutical’ industry is all about marketing,” Eric Finzi, a dermatologic surgeon in Maryland, was quoted as saying. “If you buy a $1,000 cream, there’s no reason to expect it’s better than the $50 cream. It might be worse.”
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La Prairie’s Cellular Serum Platinum Rare claims to “maintain your skin’s electrical balance while warding off pollutants.” Givenchy’s Le Soin Noir contains black sea algae, which, according to the company’s ad copy, “reconstructs a catalyst in the skin to counteract the signs of aging.” Should you be so bold as to ask exactly how it does this, a Givenchy spokesperson will offer you nothing more than the assurance that the company’s clinical tests “speak for themselves.” And
Lululemon, the maker of popular, overpriced yoga wear, got into hot water in 2007 when the
New York Times
reported that a product called VitaSea, which the company claimed contained a stress-reducing, underwater healing property known as Seacell, in fact contained no seaweed, no marine amino acids, no minerals, and no vitamins whatsoever, as the label claimed.
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Evidently, Lululemon “agreed to withdraw the claims immediately,” at least until it could prove them scientifically. The world is still waiting.
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Finally, there’s La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Crystalline Concentre, which retails for $375 an ounce and contains (I’m not kidding here) “stem cells from the rare Uttweiler Spatlauber Swiss apple, so rare that only three trees remain in existence,”
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implying some magical regenerative or restorative properties. The problem with this deranged claim is that, as Finzi explains, “Number one, no cell would stay alive in a cream. A cell is a very delicate living thing, and unless it’s in the right environment, when you take the apple off the tree, it’s starting to die. Number two, a plant’s stem cell is not going to do anything for human skin.”
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Unfortunately, the fact is that most face creams that promise to prevent aging (many of which are loaded with antioxidants for no good reason other than to give marketers an additional tagline) have next to no effect. According to one prominent British researcher quoted in the UK’s
Daily Mail
, “Rather than spending money on vitamin-loaded potions and pills, people who want to retain a youthful look should
instead concentrate on eating healthy foods in sensible amounts and exercising.”
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And while we’re talking specious marketing claims, what about the multibillion-dollar supplement business, which has migrated well beyond chains like GNC and is now taking over aisles and aisles of most drugstores and health-food stores? Shark cartilage “may be used to help treat arthritis and cancer”; bee pollen is “a storehouse of all naturally occurring multi-vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, hormones, and enzymes”; ginkgo biloba “may support mental sharpness”; and then there’s my personal favorite, horny goat weed, which we’re only told has a “long history of traditional use by men in China and Japan” (for what, you can draw your own conclusions). I could go on and on. And despite the fact that “these statements have not been evaluated by the
FDA” and these products are “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease” (as their labels are required by law to read), we continue to buy into them; according to a 2009 survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition in Washington, DC, some 65 percent of Americans label themselves “supplement users.”

According to Dr.
W. Steven Pray, Bernhardt Professor at the College of Pharmacy at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, “All this crazy junk became available thanks to the 1994 supplement health act. It’s a completely unregulated industry. . . . It just means that you or I could find a weed in our backyard and start marketing it as a dietary supplement. There have been reports of kidney stones and liver damage—no one knows what’s in this stuff.”

It’s true—the 1994 regulations (or lack of them) allow just about anyone to start up a company and roll out a supplement in record time, no medical license or credentials necessary. In general, supplement makers aren’t even under any responsibility to register their products with the FDA. As another source puts it, “The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 opened a floodgate of questionable health claims and advertising for herbal and dietary
supplements. Although lawmakers didn’t intend that the supplement industry be unregulated, this has been the practical result.”
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Given how easy it is for anyone to get in on this very profitable game, it’s no surprise that the so-called
nutraceuticals industry—worth
$25 billion in the United States alone—continues to expand. At time of writing, though, several senators, including
John McCain, are behind a new Dietary Supplement Safety Act, which would require dietary supplement manufacturers to register with the FDA and fully disclose their ingredients. Fingers crossed that it becomes law.

E
ver since the 2008 economic downturn, the cult of consumption in our culture has lost a lot of followers. Over the past couple of years, many of us have traded our worship of money and things for an almost fervent devotion to a “new frugality.” Forced to adjust to the new economic climate in which we suddenly found ourselves, our lives became smaller and simpler in a hurry. We stayed home, hunkered down. We quit eating out at restaurants. We sold off some of the junk collecting dust in our basements and storage lockers. We clipped coupons, shopped for bargains, made do, and wondered, sensibly, too, how on earth we’d gotten so caught up in this spending spiral in the first place. So if we’ve stopped praying at the church of the material gods, what’s standing in the wings? Answer: something no company can put a price, or even a discount sticker, on: Serenity. Simplicity. Equilibrium. Happiness. Balance. Virtue. In short, spiritual enlightenment, in its many purchasable forms.

It seems that in a world that’s increasingly hyperconnected and always “on,” today more than ever we’re searching for a simplicity in life that few of us have ever known. This “back to basics” sentiment has become so pervasive, in fact, that it has spawned a number of popular trends, from urban farming (think chicken coop on a fire escape) to “freeganism” (consuming only discarded food and goods) to “clean eating” (a strict regimen of natural eating popularized in part by best-selling author
Michael Pollan).

Marketers and companies have jumped right on these trends. Which is why today so many products are marketed in a way that emphasizes Mother Earth. Their packages are plastered with words like “wellness” and “natural” and “environmentally friendly” (buzzwords that have
particular meaning and significance for women, who influence roughly 80 percent of all consumer purchases).
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The irony of all this is that “green” and “ethical” and “organic” products often cost more. Hey, virtue, charity, health, benevolence, and social responsibility are expensive! According to a poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, nearly half of all people, women in particular, say they are willing to pay more for “environmentally responsible” products,
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and according to that same survey, the majority of women polled believe not only that “consumers have a personal responsibility to take care of the earth” but also that “being green is good for your health and well-being.”
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Companies know this and are exploiting it in all kinds of ways. Take how
Procter & Gamble’s best-selling Tide laundry detergent has begun using social responsibility as a marketing tool with its hugely successful “Loads of Hope” campaign. Evidently, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, P&G decided it would form a “Tide Loads of Hope” team to travel to Louisiana and other afflicted areas to supply clean (washed with Tide, of course) clothes to displaced residents. According to the online magazine
Slate
, “the team . . . arrives in a rolling Laundromat, a gigantic orange truck (the color of the original Tide box) carrying thirty-two washers and dryers.” Then, “for two or three weeks, the team, wearing bright-orange Tide T-shirts, will wash, dry, and fold the sheets, towels, and clothes of families and aid workers for free. It’s got to be a huge relief for displaced people. It’s also likely to produce a very pleasant association the next time anyone who’s been helped sees a bottle of Tide on the grocery shelf,” the article notes.
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