My Box Lunch Has "Select Organic Ingredients"!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, my company had an even today and I got a free box lunch from a local deli. I’m certainly not complaining about a free lunch. I am, however, going to mock the deli a bit for their packaging.

On the lid of the box lunch are a number of…what’s the opposite of advisories? Pro-visories?

Select Organic Ingredients

I personally don’t care about “organic” ingredients, but if I did, I’d think I’d want them ALL to be organic. What’s the point of having only select ingredients be organic?

Free From Artificial Trans Fats

Again, I’m not particularly concerned about trans fats, but if I were, I’d think I’d want to avoid ALL trans fats, not just the “artificial” ones.

No Processed MSG

Yet again, I have no problem with MSG, but if I did, I’d think whether it was “processed” or not wouldn’t make a difference.

No Dyes Or Artificial Flavors

Well, now we’re getting somewhere. It’s the artificial part that’s bad, apparently. At least this one seems self-consistent to me - if you want to avoid dyes and artificial flavors, this is useful. Certainly more useful than “select” organic ingredients.

No High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Ok, yet another food component I’m not personally that concerned with, but at least this one doesn’t have all the qualifiers.

Really, it’s the “Select Organic Ingredients” tag that gets to me. It really seems intentionally deceptive. Again, I personally don’t care about “organic” food (in fact, I tend to avoid it, since it’s pretty good shorthand for unnecessarily expensive food). But it seems aimed at tricking people who do care about it into thinking the entire product is “organic”.

2

While I agree that “select organic ingredients” sounds very deceptive, “no processed MSG” is in a different category, because MSG occurs naturally in some foods such as tomatoes, sardines and anchovies, shiitake mushrooms, and various kinds of cheeses. The restaurant may not have added any MSG, but they can’t say the food contains none.

3

Right, but…if I’m avoiding MSG, why do I care if the restaurant added it or if the food is naturally high in MSG? And note that they don’t say “No Added MSG”, they say “No Processed MSG”. They could be adding “unprocessed” MSG by the bucketload.

4

For the same reason they put “no added sugar” on products. Natural sugars occur in most foods; people generally try to avoid added sugars which are there to make the product more tempting or hide other issues.

Also, “select” may be used as an adjective to indicate that they are choosing just the best organic ingredients, not that only some of the ingredients are organic.

5

What drives me nuts is when the label says “no added sugar” and I buy it only to taste it and realize it tastes like ass from all the splenda/aspartame/stevia they’ve added.

6

Ok, but, again, they don’t say “No Added MSG”. They say “No Processed MSG.” I dunno, maybe that amounts to the same thing, but it seems like odd phrasing. Again, it seems like they’re not actually commenting on the amount of MSG in their food, but the “type”, as if there’s some essential difference between “processed” and “unprocessed” MSG.

If that’s what they’re trying to convey, I’ll withdraw my complaint that it seems deceptive and complain that it’s terribly worded to convey the intended meaning.

7

There aren’t really all that many inorganic things you can eat and obtain some nutrition from (aside from neutral things that would simply pass through your body undigested, like plastic).

Offhand the only ones I can think of are sodium chloride and potassium chloride – ordinary table salt and salt substitute. Your body needs the sodium and potassium ions. I suppose there are other salts you can eat (other sodium and potassium compounds, some of the components in sea salt, like Magnesium Chloride), but those are probably the biggies. I don’t think I’d trust anything else inorganic.

8

There’s a very long list of food that does contain or could contain varying quantities of naturally-occurring MSG; unless somebody on staff is a food chemist, they probably have only hazy ideas about the exact levels, but if someone is avoiding all MSG, then basically they need to avoid all protein-containing foods, which would be an unusual diet. (Monosodium glutamate is the sodium salt of glutamic acid, an amino acid. Glutamic acid is classified as a non-essential amino acid to humans because if we don’t get enough in our diets, our bodies can synthesize it.)

Where would they be getting it? I’m not aware of any source of loose MSG that doesn’t involve processing. These days it’s usually produced by bacterial fermentation; a century ago, the standard method was treating vegetable proteins with hydrochloric acid.

9

I’d be happy to find out they selected the ingredients instead of choosing them randomly.

10

Iron, calcium, phosphorous, sulfur, zinc, copper, iodine, selenium, chromium, manganese, lithium, molybdenum, and cobalt are known to be essential, but most of them are only required in trace amounts.

Also, off the top of my head, I’m fairly sure but not certain that most of the metals listed above are not consumed in the pure metallic form, but in the form of organometallic complexes instead.

11

Some trans fats are naturally occurring in food and occur at low levels. The artificial trans fats are generally at higher levels and should be avoided, as best one can.

It’s like the difference between naturally occurring sugar (like in fruit) and added sugar (corn syrup). It’s a lot easier to avoid foods that have sugar added and the naturally occurring sugar becomes less to worry about.

12

As noted, those are essentially the same thing.

13

You do realize that’s not what they’re referring to by ‘organic’, right?

14

The labels the OP is complaining about go well beyond typical deception employed in marketing Safe Natural Foods. You have to wonder for example whether in addition to the Select Organic Ingredients they’re tossing in Select Industrial Waste By-Products.

One of my favorites is the “Non-GMO” label on products whose ingredients have no GMO counterparts and no prospect of there being any sold (table salt being the most ludicrous example).

Which is basically no difference.

“The difference in how the body handles the two sugars has led to the belief that HFCS is much worse for you than regular sugar. However, several studies have clearly shown that HFCS and sucrose have indistinguishable metabolic effects and the same health consequences. That is, neither type of sugar is good for you.”

Bottom line: consuming any type of sugar in excess is a bad idea, whether it’s “natural” or not.

15

wOrDs haVe oNLy oNe MeaNInG beep boop

16

Right – which means they’re consumed as part of an organic compound, in virtually all cases.

I’ve heard of some cultures eating some minerals directly in inorganic form, if their diets were low in some essential element, but I think that’s more the exception than the rule.

17

:roll_eyes:

18

Through sound waves you’ve heard of this? If you read it, it’s unlikely there were significant vibrations of your ear drum involved in the process.

19

What’s your problem?

20

We uh may be talking past one another here. Cal’s appears to be operating under the belief that “organic” lacks any meaning outside of chemistry, and is applying the chemistry meaning to a context where it’s wildly inappropriate to do so. I believe that was your original point, and I was agreeing with you, with a side of teasing involved. The teasing was directed at Cal’s inappropriate use of the chemistry definition.