Interesting Read

I'm a huge skeptic when it comes to things I read on the Internet so I wanted to post this here and get some of your thoughts on it.  

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.a spx?cp-documentid=100238557&Gt1=31036

Secret No. 3:The maggot allowance - is that true?  Off to google it..

ok should have googled first, because apparantly this is common knowledge...oops.

another question though...would it be the same in other countries, England in particular?

Well I definitely fall into #7!! 

And as for #10... I never buy red meat at large grocery chains! I will only buy grass-fed meat from Whole Foods or on the internet from a farm. 

#13 - well I sort of figured calorie counts would ROUND DOWN... after all foods are not EXACTLY X amount of calories... for instance something says it's 120 calories... well it could sometimes be 122 calories or 100 calories depending on how much is packed into the package - machines are not ALWAYS 100% 

#12 is just plain funny - who wouldn't compare prices first~!

#3 is just plain gross... considering I already had some cinnamon today and probably will have frozen broccoli & canned tomatoes later! 

I really enjoyed that article thanks for posting it!

I work in the food industry and, whilst there are some different rules in the UK, (many British supermarkets have  removed sweets from the checkout area, for example, and water-pumped chicken has to be labelled) the list isn't all that surprising. I suppose all of this is why I tend to avoid packaged foods most of the time.  I prefer things that haven't had a 'manufacturer' do too much to them and are as close to their natural state as possible.   I accept that there is a time-saving/cost-saving trade-off for not using fresh tomatoes instead of canned in a dish....  I don't have the facilities to mill my own flour or make my own cheese!   But I do make my own bread and cook almost all meals from scratch.

I do like Michael Pollan's suggestion that we should be suspicious of any food making a health claim, for example. (Genuinely healthy food can't make comparative health claims because it can't be reformulated.... the '33% lower fat banana' will never exist)  Common sense says that a bottle of sugary, nasty-tasting, violently coloured Sunny Delight might be 'enriched with vitamin D' or whatever but that doesn't make it healthy.  

The other one I think should be exposed is the phenomena of 'everlasting food'...  Make a sponge cake at home, keep it in an airtight tin and it'll need eating up before the week's out or it'll start to get dry and mouldy.  So what on earth do manufacturers put in or leave out of a sponge cake in a box that means it has a six month (or longer) shelf-life?  If even mould doesn't find a foodstuff appetising, should we follow its lead?  LOL!