What does that food label even mean?
I'm not sure what Eggland's Best is trying to tell me.
Sadly, it’s not really possible for urban gardeners like myself to grow enough food to feed myself year round, especially when there is another person in the house to split the veggies with. Yes, even I have to supplement with trips to the grocery store because, at some point, all of that eggplant will finally run out!.
Even at the store I try to buy the best stuff I can. Weighing value with actual nutrition (and some consideration towards taste). Shopping at the store I have to assume that everything in the store is coming from a reasonable place, right? I mean, if it weren’t, then why would the be allowed to sell it?
A lot of people have growing concerns about the conditions in which their grocery purchases were produced. All we have to rely on is the labels on the packaging – from the brand to the nutrition information and everything in between. After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, however, I am paranoid about where pretty much everything comes from.
Now that the “organic” market has progressed into an industry, how can I be certain that what I’m eating is devoid of additives and GMOs? The words “green” and “organic” seem to apply to just about everything nowadays – they arent’ so much indicators of the health of the product as they are tools to market them to a more “eco conscious” audience.
Then you learn that there are no laws in the United States which require companies label which foods use genetically modified products. At best, there are suggestions and recommendations on how to label food. Very little of the food labeling process is actually required.
Definitions for a lot of these words are mandated by the FDA and USDA which can mean there are plenty of opportunities for lobbyists and politicians to get vague on what they actually mean. This day in age, the wording on a package can be very powerful when it comes to swaying consumer choice. Everyone wants to eat better, we hear the news and are told organic is good and everything else is bad.
So, yes, everyone wants to say they’re organic. But what if “organic” products still had genetically modified ingridients and were supplemented with harsh fertilizers? Sadly, it sometimes does. Currently, there isn’t really a set and defined list of what food labels actually mean. And if there were, it would only be a matter of time before companies figured out a new set of words to give their product a selling edge.
Currently, definitions stand somewhere in here:
Organic
100% organic products must have a detailed ingridents list as well as a list of all manufacturers and distributors who had anything to do with the item, as well as the label of whoever did the organic certification. For now, it is likely these products have no additives, chemicals, pesticides, or GMOs.
USDA organic means 95% of the product is organically raised. The label must have a list of the organic, as well as the non-organic, ingredients.
“Made with Organic” is kind of the catch-all, “we want to be organic, but can’t afford the bottom line” of organic. Like USDA, it must be labeled properly, but it may only have 70% organic ingredients. That’s quite a bit of room for error.
Local – Everything is local to someone. For some, it means living down the street from a disgusting feed lot. Largely, “local” means it is produced somewhere within 50 or a 100 miles of where it is being sold – meaning less fuel was spent in bringing the product to you (it is estimated that the average American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate). It doesn’t necessarily mean the item was raised or produced organically or humanely.
Grass Fed Beef – Well, technically all beef is grass fed. For the first 8 or so months of a cow’s life it eats in a pasture before being sent to a feed lot where it eats corn to fatten up. USDA Grass Fed means that all cows are kept on a diet of grass – whether it is foraged or shipped in in the form of hay bales. If you are lucky enough to see the American Grassfed label, it means the animal was fed a diet that is 100% from the pasture and foraged naturally.
Pasture, Free-Range, Free-roaming, Cage Free: No actual definition here. For a while the “organic” label meant that chickens and cows just had to have access to pasture. You can pretty much bet that if it is an egg purchased in a store, it probably came from a shed which houses thousands of chickens.
Side note: I think I might have only had eggs from truely free-range chickens once. A gentleman was selling eggs by the dozen at the Handmade Homemade show (or, as I like to call it, “The hippie market”). All of his egg cartons were reclaimed, each of the eggs was a different size (a few still had feathers on them) and when we cracked them open the yolks were a kind of yellow/orange/red I had never see before. Probably from all the fun stuff the chicken found to eat. It is something you don’t notice until you see really bland looking yolks from most commercial eggs.
Natural – doesn’t mean anything. In all likelihood, it probably means something bad is within.
Hormone Free, Antibiotic free – while it may sound like a good idea, but doesn’t necessarily mean much. Which hormones and antibiotics are they free of? Are they also pasture raised? What are they being fed?
Still not sure what a label actually means? It’s tough to find a resource that will tell you what you need to know (because then those who use the labels will actually have to be responsible for them). Consumer Reports has a pretty good guide to what certain labels actually mean.
Or, we could all just grow our own!
It’ s going to be tough to hold companies accountable to telling their consumers about what is actually in their food. Eventually they will have to decide who to appease more: their customers or their stockholders?
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