Death By Supermarket (33 page)

This example rocks the organic food movement’s dreams of supporting small, local farmers and of treating animals humanely and the environment responsibly in the process of producing the highest-quality food for human beings. But Dean Foods is taking it a step further. The $12 billion company controls so much of the milk market that in January 2010 a federal antitrust suit was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, in conjunction with Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, that alleges that because of its voracious acquisitions, Dean has too much control over milk pricing and supply, a position that squashes market competition.
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And as they say in commercials, but that’s not all! Because Dean Foods has patiently cultivated its organic consumers, now the company is going to stealthily introduce a new, lower-priced product category called “natural dairy.” This non-organic milk is intended to siphon off distracted consumers who really don’t have the time or energy or money to think past what they already are assured of—that Horizon provides organic milk from happy, healthy, grass-grazing cows.
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Unless monitored by consumers, organic ideals and dreams could be obliterated as the multibillion-dollar, dominating corporations charge in with their wallets open, buying up small organic farms and ranches, and proceed to market established brands with lax standards about animal caretaking and human nutrition. The newly acquired operations, with the brilliant marketing strategies of companies like Dean Foods, will evolve into exactly the kind of monster commercial industries that organically
minded consumers are trying to escape. Meanwhile, these pseudo-organic producers’ innocent-looking packaging denies there might be something else going on.

The government helps commercial industries in their quest to lure us in with false information and glossing over truths. One prime example is the USDA’s dairy “checkoff” program, which requires farmers and ranchers to pay for generic advertising aimed at boosting industry sales. One such program is the “Got Milk?” campaign.

Joseph and Brenda Cochran and their fourteen children own and operate a third-going-on-fourth-generation family farm in Westfield, Pennsylvania. The USDA collects a mandatory fee of 15 cents per hundred pounds of milk from dairy farmers like the Cochrans to pay for checkoff programs such as the popular “Got Milk?” campaign. But the Cochran family didn’t want to continue contributing to a campaign that was not being straight with the public.

“The checkoff system treats all milk the same, and that’s simply not the case,” Joe told me. “People who graze cows have a different type of milk. Some dairies treat their cows with growth hormones. The milk that comes out of those cows is different from our milk. The advertising fund takes money from us and puts it into a generic fund that gives consumers a sense that there’s really no difference. This type of advertising does not give the consumer enough information to make informed choices.”

Although these milk suppliers did not endorse the government “Got Milk?” campaign, they were forced to take legal action to be released from contributing to it. Supported by the Center for Individual Freedom in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 2, 2002, the Cochrans filed suit against the government seeking to end the payments that were costing the family business up to $4,200 per year. The Cochrans’ suit maintained that the First Amendment granted them the right to speak
and
the right to remain silent. After two long years of legal wrangling, on March 5, 2004, the court ruled, by unanimous decision, that the dairy checkoff program was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
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This story illustrates the government’s participation in a program that ignores the fact that there is a difference between milk produced by ill-treated, sick, unhappy cows in factories and pure, healthy, natural, organic milk produced by pasture grazing, happy cows that contain nature’s nutrients.

The science-fiction fat olestra, sold under the brand name Olean, is a rather mind-boggling example of a substance that was allowed into our food supply by the FDA, with no regard to human health and welfare. Olestra is a synthesized from sucrose (sugar) bonded to fatty acids in a way that makes the molecules too large to be absorbed through the intestinal wall. It supposedly has the same taste and mouthfeel as fat, but since it passes through the GI tract undigested, it doesn’t translate to calories. It also prevents the absorption of vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, vitamin A, and carotenoids.

According to Olean’s website, “it’s what helps make great-tasting foods for today’s health conscience lifestyles.”
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Health conscious eaters can find Olean in Lays, Tostitos, Doritos, and Ruffles chips and even buy a “proprietary blend” of Olean and vegetable oils so they can bake their own cookies at home.

Although Procter & Gamble originally admitted that there were some problems with the interference of vitamin absorption and that olestra caused anal leakage, a condition known as “steatorrhea,” on January 24, 1996, the FDA approved olestra for use in chips, crackers, and tortilla chips with one caveat: Products had to carry a label that stated, “This product contains olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, and K have been added.”

Indeed, olestra snack products were off and running (as it were). A year later, more than one thousand reports of adverse reactions to olestra products were submitted to the FDA, and this appeared to represent only a small fraction of the people sickened by olestra-containing products.

When the FDA held advisory committee meetings to review the safety
and labeling of olestra, Procter & Gamble argued that complaining consumers could not prove that it was olestra that was causing fecal incontinence, projectile vomiting, projectile bowel movements and diarrhea, cramping, bleeding, and yellow-orange oil in toilet bowls and in underwear—symptoms so severe in some consumers that they required hospitalization, surgery, and colonoscopies.
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By 2000 the FDA had received 20,000 negative reports about olestra.
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Yet, in August 2003, the FDA ruled to no longer require companies that manufactured products containing olestra to put warning labels on their products as they had “conducted a scientific review of several post-market studies submitted by P&G, as well as adverse event reports submitted by P&G and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The FDA concluded that the label statement was no longer warranted”.
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Olestra is banned in the United Kingdom and Canada.
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On March 15, 2004, Eric Peoples, a thirty-two-year-old former factory worker at the Gilster-Mary Lee Corporate microwave popcorn plant in Jasper, Missouri, was the first of thirty workers with lung disease to be awarded $20 million in compensatory personal injury damages. (As a tort attorney friend of mine once said, “I would never trade places with a million dollar winner.”) The jury ruled against International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc., and its subsidiary Bush Boake Allen, Inc., the manufacturers of the chemical in the butter flavoring diacetyl, which is used in butter-flavored microwave popcorn. Diacetyl, currently being studied by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA—a government agency founded to protect human health and the environment), is believed to cause lung damage when its vapors are inhaled. The jury didn’t need to get the EPA report before they ruled against the chemical manufacturers. When the microwave popcorn verdict broke, media reports claimed that “health officials” insisted that making and eating microwave popcorn at home is perfectly safe.

In 2004, the House of Representatives approved legislation called the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, (also known as the

“Cheeseburger Bill”), which bars suing industrialized food restaurants for making people fat. In the same week, the government issued a report that obesity-related illnesses were soon to surpass tobacco-related illnesses as the number one preventable cause of death in the United States. The enduring sentiment was expressed by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., (R-WI), chairman of the Judiciary Committee who charmingly remarked, “This bill says, ‘Don’t run off and file a lawsuit if you are fat.’ It says, ‘Look in the mirror because you’re the one to blame.’”
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The bill passed the House but stalled out in the Senate and has not been debated since.

Meanwhile, the food industry has the money and means to defend itself against any and all attacks. In the late 1980s London Greenpeace passed out leaflets entitled “What’s Wrong with McDonald’s? Everything They Don’t Want You to Know,” accusing McDonald’s of exploiting food producers in developing countries, children and employees, destroying rain forests, producing unhealthy food, and torturing and murdering animals. McDonald’s sued for libel. Two Greenpeacers, Helen Steel and Dave Morris, known as “The McLibel Two,” were compelled by lack of funds to act as their own defense in what was the longest, most complex, most expensive civil trial in Britain’s history. McDonald’s spent $15 million pursuing two people whose combined incomes were $12,000 per year. Although Justice Rodger Bell found evidence to support some but not all of the leaflet’s claims, he ultimately ruled against the defendants. Steel and Morris were ordered to pay £40,000 to McDonald’s in libel damages (about $66,000 at that time). Ultimately, McDonald’s dropped the claim and limped away, humiliated by the press, with the entire world alerted to the toxic nature of their industrialized food.
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This is but one example of how questioning industry standards can land you in an expensive, protracted lawsuit with a huge damages award and even criminal sanctions.

Listen carefully and you will recognize threats in print ads, TV commercials, and newscasts. Back in 1970, Fleicshmann’s threatened American parents with the question, “Should an eight-year-old worry about
cholesterol?”
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Since that time there have been no end to the threats of impending heart disease that coerce Americans into eating an ever-expanding array of deadly factory food with the promise of “lowering your cholesterol.” These threats can take on a saccharine tone, “You already know Honey Nut Cheerios is packed with an irresistible honey sweet taste, but did you also know the soluble fiber from whole grain oats in Honey Nut Cheerios makes it irresistible for your heart? As part of a heart-healthy eating plan, Honey Nut Cheerios can help lower your cholesterol. This is great news for you, your family, and your heart!”
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(This one truly falls under the rubric of gag me with a spoon.)

The makers of Plavix, which is marketed to people who have already had a stroke or heart attack, claim that the drug “helps keep blood platelets from sticking together and forming clots.” They take a boogieman approach in their ad that shows a man standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, with the headline that reads, “You don’t want another heart attack or another stroke to sneak up on you.”
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The barrage of cholesterol-lowering drug ads tell us that the industry is making a killing on these drugs; otherwise, it could not afford the millions of dollars it takes to produce and air TV ads. The makers of Crestor originally used a lighthearted, endearing tone, with annoying narration that was actually delivered in pseudo Dr. Seuss verse; another featured an actor who is not-really-a-doctor-but-played-one-on-TV. “Crestor’s not for everyone,” the actor reassured doctorishly, “including people with liver disease and women who are nursing or may become pregnant. A simple blood test is needed to check for liver problems. Tell your doctor … if you experience muscle pain or weakness because they may be a sign of serious side effects.” It’s a revealing commentary that we are worn down to the point that we’re so inured to the possibility of drug side effects that we’d consider for even a fleeting moment to take something that might cause severe liver damage.

It does really blow my mind that people willingly take drugs with bizarre side effects, like the those for Mirapex: “Patients taking certain
medicines to treat Parkinson’s disease or RLS, including Mirapex … have reported problems with gambling, compulsive eating, and increased sex drive”; and Requip: “Impulse control symptoms, including compulsive behaviors such as pathological gambling and hypersexuality, have been reported in patients treated with dopaminergic agents.”

TV ads for Actonel, a prescription osteoporosis medication, threaten, “One out of every two women over 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture in her remaining lifetime.”
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The Purple Pill features “comical” TV spots with actors portraying acid reflux suffers trying to get to sleep. A man cranks up the head of his bed using a car jack to prevent nocturnal heartburn—and the cat slides off, yowling. “Desperate for nighttime heartburn relief? For many, Nexium helps relieve heartburn day and night.”
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Today thirteen states—Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Colorado—have passed “veggie libel” laws that have made illegal “the false disparagement of perishable food products,” which makes it easier for factory-food producers to sue people for “libel” (remember the famous Oprah Winfrey suit brought by Texas cattlemen).

All of this emotional manipulation from the food, diet, and drug industries creates an effective fog machine to keep you distracted from what you’re consuming. But we have to come to grips with our own culpability if we want things to change.

In the 1980s I was living in Los Angeles and would occasionally swing by Randy’s Donuts on West Manchester Boulevard. Because of the familiar enormous donut on top of the donut shop, Randy’s is often used by filmmakers in montages to establish that the scene is L.A. One morning both of the owners were at the pickup window. “I have a love/hate relationship with you,” I said as I accepted my donut bag. “What do you mean?” asked one owner. “She loves me, and she hates you,” quipped the other. I laughed. Of course, I meant the donuts.