Intense competition encourages the marketing industry to fashion itself after a junior high dance — lovely young girls in their very best jeans and carefully coiffed hair, silently willing some boy across the room, “Oh, pick me, pick me. Don’t even look at those other girls.”
In the same way that pet food manufacturers squeeze their grainy mush into tiny bone-shaped pieces and slather each piece of kibble with an artificial color to indicate variety where none exists, marketers lay on the oily charm wherever they can.
To avoid unscrupulous fleecing, the USDA does not allow manufacturers to outright lie on their labels. However, the incidence of “creativity” is higher than we might expect. Selected words appeal to consumers, conjuring mental pictures of distinctive, tasty superiority. Their hope is that our vivid imaginations will take over.
Words that the USDA does not define, like “all-natural” or “pure,” have no legal meaning and therefore could be written on a package of screws from the hardware store if that were somehow desirable.
The “something-free” promise warps our understood meaning of “free.” For example, a gluten-free hamburger bun contains less than 20 milligrams of gluten. Wait. What?
Last year, 1,939 U.S. citizens reported illness from eating “quality eggs.” Commercial eggs gathered from huge poultry houses are high-pressure washed, then dipped in bleach. The eggs are refrigerated in cases for up to six months. Perfectly legally, they are sold in stores sporting a “farm-fresh” label.
When you read that chickens are “free-range,” do you picture some sort of avian equivalent to “Born Free” with young Elsa-Chicken hunting her own bugs and worms on the Serengeti? Or did you know that “cage-free” production means only that the birds are wedged together wing to wing on the floor instead of racked up in wire? Free-range can be a one foot square doorway into an outdoor pen measuring 12 x 12’for 30,000 birds.
Does “clover honey” contain clover? Recent pollen analyses by a Midwestern university determined that 76 percent of the honey found on the shelves of chain grocery stores did not actually contain pollen from the flowers espoused on the label. Many of the tested samples were blends of cheaper foreign honey or adulterated with corn syrup. Perhaps we could just spread Karo Syrup on our toast; at least we know that we are eating a corn-based product.
On the other hand, consumers could commit to purchasing locally sourced products from Maine farmers and growers. Local producers proudly display their business names and addresses on their fruits, vegetables, and meat — look for it and ask for it in the stores.
Alternatively, or additionally, stop by the Presque Isle Farmers Market in the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot on Saturday mornings between 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. A local farmer or grower will hand his or her product to you directly and describe in detail what methods were used in its production.
It feels safer to know where your food comes from; superior taste is just gravy.
The Presque Isle Farmer’s market’s chair/president for the remainder of the season is Deena Albert-Parks of Chops Ahoy farm in Woodland. For information about participating or visiting the market, contact her at deena.albertparks73@gmail.com.
