I thought I would make a non-makeup post for a change, because something has enraged me: fraud in the food industry and the delusion that cheap products save you money and offer the same quality for the same amount thanks to food guidlines (especially in the EU). I thought of making this post analogue about cosmetics as well, but I came to the conclusion that the sitation is so severe that it needed it's own post, so I can underline the importance of buying quality produce.
When I read that Vivienne Westwood had said that fresh produce should be more expensive, I first thought that she was out of her mind, just like many others. I thought fresh produce needed to be cheaper so many more people would buy it. Then all my economics lessons hit me for a moment: first of all, it's impossible to feed to entire world quality fresh produce at a cheap price, secondly, the cheap produce would mean cruel techniques - Vivienne mentioned chicken and I imagined that at the current prices, feeding more people, the chickens would have to be produced in even narrower spaces, since you would need more of them at the same production price. The reality is that all fresh ingredients are scarse. That is another reason why the food should be more expensive: to show what the real price is of the production: pollution, factories, waste, traffic, factories, animal cruelty. But we are merely paying for the meat itself, just the way we like it, and the real cost of the production is laid elsewhere (externalised costs) by producing so much that the final profit covers most of the damage the companies make. This is where Vivienne Westwood says that people who can't afford fresh, organic foods should eat less. I don't fully agree with that statement, no matter how deep the message is behind it. Deep, because of course Vivienne is not saying that poor people should starve (not that that wouldn't be a powerful message that alternatives to fresh food cause starvation and illness), but I don't agree because it doesn't offer a solution to make the least earning families pay more to offer a sollution bottom-up. The solution should be created top-down: instead of trying to change people's choices, which is hard during financially difficult time, the initiative should be taken by the government: cancel factories that produce crap, and make sure that we ALL eat less.
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/vivienne-westwood-says-people-who-can8217t-afford-organic-food-should-eat-less-20141113-11mhzd.html
Different topic: some think that a brand name doesn't make a product better. This is true for some pantry foods, like salt and rice. Basically one ingredient foods that last forever. But a lot of information is incorrect. I just found a website that claimed that it doesn't matter whether you buy an apple from a brand name or generic, because a fresh apple is always the same, right? Well it isn't, because you never know what happened to the apple, how long it was stored and how many nutrients it contains (something I think should be listed in the store). What's worse is that they claimed that this also counts for canned fruits and vegetables. I count soup as canned vegetables, and I will make it clear to you in a minute that generic canned soup has a much different constitution than the brand name.
The problem with cheap food is that:
it contains less of the main ingredient; meaning it contains less of the natural flavor and ingredients; meaning you need to buy more of it to get the desired amount of nutrients and flavor; meaning you are either starving or spending more than you should to satisfy your hunger, let alone the cost of being unhealthy (medication and care for all the illnesses from infection, flue, weakness, tiredness and oxidative stress; meaning you are being deceived. Why do people keep eating more? Why are they so hungry and greedy? Does food contain nutrients still if they are hungry all the time?
I will now give you a few examples to make my point:
Spices
Generic plastic containers contain nutmeg. Or does it? It actually contains around 70% bran! The main ingredient is bran, while the amount of nutmeg is much smaller. It may taste the same...IF you add more. Meaning you aren't saving. Then whe it comes to the nutmeg itself: cheap nutmeg comes from Papoea, while "more expensive" nutmeg comes from Granada.
The most important thing is that it's 100% nutmeg. Ducros also claims that it treats the essential nutmeg oils at -70 C° which saves its sweeter Granada nutmeg taste. Also the glass is said to be better for the essential oil that creates the flavor and aroma.
Cereal
This isn't a comparison in nutritional value, but an example of pure deception through marketing, and almost an act of unfair competition:
Delhaize sells these boxes of muesli showing a picture of a bowl of the muesli. Inside the bowl of muesli you can see pieces of chocolate. Wait, they are just flakes of chocolate. But what's around the bowl? Right, pieces of chocolate. Thick pieces of chocolate create a different experience in taste, because you get more of it and because it has a different texture. You think you're buying the same as the cereal below, but you are being deceived. This is the same as any muesli with poor chocolate flakes.
And here we have the brand name, which actually contains what it shows on the box. It's much tastier, I know from experience.
Fresh produce
I have tons of examples of why cheaper produce is worse than the more expensive. Cheap apples taste very dry, cheap ccumber contains half the amount of nutrients as a biological one, cheap bananas rot after a day, etc. ... Cheap produce can contain over 30 pesticides, but I will write about that in a different post. Let me make it clear with something you wouldn't expect: ginger root.
Plain ginger root looks dry, and is more dry on the inside as well.
Above is a dry looking ginger root. Biological ginger however looks more healthy, shines, and contains more nutrients. It doesn't contain one pesticide.
Canned soup
Although I advise anyone to stay away from canned goods, sometimes it's just easy. This is a can of generic house brand soup. If you look at the ingredient list, you will see that it contains 20% tomato's. The rest is mostly water.
Then we have a Knorr soup, one of the most famous brands. It contains 80% vegetables. It won't be much more expensive either. Even if it's twice as expensive (200%), but going from 20% vegetables to 80% vegetables means an increase of 4 times or 400% more vegetables.
I'm not an expert, all I'm saying is that you need to make choices and think about what you're buying, what you're putting inside your body. You may be putting more salty water inside it than actual foods, and you will need to eat more of it to feel fed. People who tend to gain weight easily should stay away from cheap foods for this reason. People who tends to lose weight and get illnesses easily also. But what matters most to me is to break down the deception, the cheating, the useluss production, the polution, the pesticides, and even the screaming marketing, oh man even the ugly labels and depressing genericness (after all, this is a beauty blog!).
Please tell me what you think in the comment section!
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Helene
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