Processed food advertising can destroy your family’s health

Could it be because high fructose corn syrup and aspartame (two ingredients in their most popular offerings) is something that your conscious mind might reject unless your emotions were manipulated into feeling good about identifying with the Coca-Cola brands? (They offer more than 3,500 products, by the way.)

Coca-Cola is one of the most identifiable brand names on the planet, yet they still spend millions each year promoting it (along with their 3,500 other products). Maybe they have to spend such massive amounts of money because they don’t want to give you a chance to think about what you’re doing to yourself, they just want you to “feel good” about your decision to drink their lifespan-reducing products.

The middle section of your grocery store or supermarket is packed with similar foods loaded with sugar, salt or rancid vegetable oils and fats that the manufacturers would like you to keep purchasing without really giving their ingredients much thought.

Here are the advertising/marketing budgets of some of the top processed food manufacturers:
• MacDonald’s – + $1billion
• Kraft – $1.1 billion and increasing in 2011
• Kellogg – beyond the billion dollar mark
• PepsiCo – was $1.3 billion in 1999
• Nestle – nearly $4 billion in 2001

So the big processed food manufacturers are clearly spending quite a bit of money to get you to emotionally respond to a “Big Mac” or a box of “Oreos,” or “Tony the Tiger” or virtually every box of snack crackers – but you’re not really expected to respond emotionally to a fresh, ripe tomato or an organically grown carrot.

Because fresh organically grown vegetables have no marketing budget to speak of (compared to processed food manufacturers), you have to rely on your intelligence, not your emotions, to purchase these kinds of fresh foods.
Organically grown carrots and fresh ripe tomatoes are found on the outer edges of your supermarket or grocery store, the preferred place to shop if you are trying to buy foods that are nutritionally good for you.

Grocery Shopping Smarts

• Shopping with a list: Preparing a list keeps you focused on the healthiest food purchases and saves time.
• Shop the store’s perimeter: Remember that the outermost edge of the supermarket contains the healthier, non-processed foods.
• Don’t skimp on vegetables: Be aware that the deeper and more vibrantly colored produce is packed with the most nutrients.
• Read the nutrition label: The label helps you to identify ingredients, maximize nutrients and compare products.

Joseph Mercola is an osteopathic physician who writes a natural health blog. For more tips on healthy eating go to www.drmercola.info/

Submitted by Cindy Novak, Wellness coordinator