Posted on 07/30/2002 5:40:05 PM PDT by Reaganwuzthebest
WASHINGTON, July 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Ben & Jerry's misleads customers by falsely claiming that some of its ice cream and frozen yogurt products are "All Natural," when they contain artificial flavors, hydrogenated oils, or other factory-made substances, according to a complaint filed today by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). The group wants the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take enforcement action against the company, a unit of the multinational food conglomerate Unilever.
"Ben & Jerry's enjoys a carefully-cultivated public image as an eco-friendly, worker-friendly brand -- the kind of company whose label claims should be truthful," CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said. "So it's sad that Ben & Jerry's is trying to pass off products laden with these factory-spun ingredients as 'natural,' when there's little natural about them. These ingredients are man-made and simply don't occur in nature."
The label for Ben & Jerry's "Everything But The ..." ice cream states "all natural." But the small print in the ingredient list lists artificial flavors--an outright violation of the FDA's rules.
Other Ben & Jerry's products, like "Chocolate Fudge Brownie Low Fat Frozen Yogurt," include man-made ingredients like partially hydrogenated soybean oil, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, and alkalized cocoa powder. Use of the term "all natural"--and the implication that the product might be more healthful than another product--is especially misleading in the case of a hydrogenated oil, which likely contains heart-damaging trans fat, according to the complaint.
I don't care...Ben Cohen still trades on the image of the ice cream company. If enough stink is raised, perhaps Unilever will change the name and totally disassociate with this hypocritical lefty freak.
I never understood how men who epitomize what one could accomplish only in a free, capitalist system could work so hard to tear that system down.
Although I do admit to a B&J addiction to "everything but the.."
Guaranteed to not employ any Commies from Vermont or anywhere else.
Whatever. They opened up a Ben & Jerry's at my college last year for the same reason. The Assistant Vice President of Finance and Administration at the college stressed that B&J was chosen not because they were the best deal, but because of their image; "their social mission fits nicely [with the campus]," he said. One of the social issues raised was their "open support of Mumia Abu-Jamal." That may appeal to the cop killer sympathizers on campus, but not me. I avoid their super fatty products at all cost.
When the fat people have their legal revenge on society, I hope Ben & Jerry's gets hit hard.
The next thing you know, we'll find out that the Brazil nuts in some of their flavors were grown on plantations that pay their workers a nickel a week. And that two thousand hectares of natural rainforest had to be cut down to make room for the plantations. And that two natives are killed for every ten hectares of rainforest cut.
Soybean Oil with air added to whip it up and solidify it dosen't constitute a manmade product or artificial ingredients. If so, Ice Cream itself is such a product since it dosen't occur naturally in the universe. When you whip heavy cream to make whip cream do you consider it to be an artificial product?
If you don't eat chemicals, you don't eat. Everything is a chemical.
The opposite of natural is supernatural. If it's in this world, it's natural, no matter who rearranged it. Only God makes things from scratch.
Personally, I won't eat anything that does not have artificial ingredients. Check out the life expectancy of those countries where all they eat is "natural."
Hank
From what I read on the website, it appears that the B&J's Foundation is no longer directly connected to the ice cream company, and definitely isn't connected to Unilever. This page shows that as part of the merger agreement, Unilever agreed to give the foundation two one-time $5 million gifts and an annual $1.1 million per year for the next ten years. After that, they're on their own.
As far as I'm concerned, this was a legitimate business expense on Unilever's part to get control of a company with large and intensely faithful customer base. Yeah, the Foundation appears to be spending a good portion of it on silly lefty crap, but the rest of it seems to be spent on projects that actually have a nugget of merit (donations to help organizations keep low-income people from ending up on the street) or are at worst harmless (training farmers in "sustainable agriculture" techniques). Actually, considering the track records of all these grass-roots "socially conscious" organizations, one could easily argue that they're all harmless, since they're all completely ineffective.
In the end, I think conservatives ought not to feel guilty buying Ben & Jerry's any more, if they're really into B&J ice cream. Unilever is bound by the agreement to make the next 8 years of annual $1.1m payments whether you buy their stuff or not, so you might as well buy. It's the price Unilever had to pay to get their hands on the company, and the handouts do have a definite end date. So why deny yourself one of their heart-attack-in-a-pint goo-fests? Their eco-glory days are already on their way out.
By the way, they're running a sweepstakes right now, giving away a 2002 Toyota Prius to the lucky winner (yeah, that's that silly hybrid car, but hey, you get 48mpg on it and it'll be free). So it's like B&J giving $26,500 to you! That's more than any of the Foundation grant recipients get. Anyway, the contest runs till September 9, so you might as well go for it. But don't bother if you're in Florida, Alaska or Hawaii; those residents aren't eligible. And you Canucks can forget it too.
I have to disagree. Looking at that list, the only handouts they've given since being bought out by Unilever are: Giving a portion of every sale of two new flavors (a very small portion, I'm sure) to a foundation that gives financial assistance to poor students at historically-black colleges (and remember that most of those schools now have some non-blacks matriculating as well); a program that gave college students a coupon for a free pint of ice cream if they donated a pint of blood (yeah, it was the American Red Cross, but this was way before 9/11 and we discovered just how truly evil they are); building public playgrounds for kids (entirely with private money and no government funds involved, as far as I can tell); and the only truly bad one in the bunch, giving money to "fight global warming." And, of course, that's going to be about as effective as flushing cash down their own toilets, so I can't get too worked up about that.
Soybean Oil with air added to whip it up and solidify it dosen't constitute a manmade product or artificial ingredients.
Hydrogenation is the process of heating an oil and passing hyrdrogen bubbles through it. The fatty acids in the oil then acquire some of the hydrogen, which makes it more dense. If you fully hydrogenate, you create a solid (a fat) out of the oil. But if you stop part way, you get a semi-solid partially hydrogenated oil that has a consistency like butter.
The addition of hydrogen isn't necessarily the bad part. The process of hydrogenation is the problem because it causes trans-fatty acids. A trans fat is an otherwise normal fatty acid that has been "transmogrified", by the high-heat processing of a free oil. The fatty acids can be double-linked, cross-linked, bond-shifted, twisted, or messed up in a variety of other ways.
These are man-made fatty acids. The problem with these trans fats is that while the "business end" (the chemically active part) is messed up, the "anchor end" (the part that is attached to the cell wall) is unchanged. So they take up their position in the cell wall, like a guard on the fortress wall. But like a bad guard, they don't do their job! They let foreign invaders pass unchallenged, and they stop supplies at the gates instead of letting them in.
In short, trans fats are poisons, just like arsenic or cyanide. They interfere with the metabolic processes of life. And your body has no defense against them because they never even existed in any of our foods before we altered them.
So, yes, hydrogenated oils (partial or full) are man made products.
If you want to learn about which oils are good for you (including some fats that are necessary for health) and which are bad, I highly recommend reading the book Fats That Heal Fats That Kill by Udo Erasmus. It covers exactly how the many different oils (including both proessed and unprocessed) affect your body.
If nothing else, read this transcript of a lecture he gave: "Fats That Heal Fats That Kill" - The Complete Lecture. It summarizes teh general concepts that he goes into great detail with in his book.
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