By Diana Wilkinson
I’m still caught off guard when I’m served mint chocolate chip ice cream and it’s not green. You would think because mint leaves are green it would make green ice cream, isn’t that why it’s green most of the time?
It’s fairly obvious to me now, but that bright green color is just added to look appealing–that’s the only purpose, color! You can also find this fake coloring in pickles, salad dressing, and so many more everyday food products.
In the Nabhan Ted Talk, she mentions a synthetic grain that’s gaining popularity. It looks like the real thing. Tastes like the real thing. But she says no matter how similar it seems we cannot fool our bodies.
Real foods have superior nutrition, taste and are often have less impact on the planet. Instead of trying to replicate sweetness or bright colors, the average consumer should instead look for the simplest ingredients and work to make those accessible to everyone.
Someone, somewhere had the ingenious idea to instead NOT add the food coloring, and I think it’s representative of a greater trend in the food system. People don’t want synthetic dyes and will choose to alternatively eat more natural products.
Kraft even announced it’s famous macaroni and cheese would take out the almost iconic, unnatural orange color!
If a large company like Kraft is making these changes as a result of consumer demand, I have faith consumers will eventually drive the market away from the processed to the whole and real foods.
Very nice post! Every time we talk about creating change through consumer decisions I am reminded of the example in the documentary Food Inc. where they discussed the real power dollars have. They used the example of rBST- an artificial growth hormone given to cows designed to make them produce more milk. When consumers started learning about the practices that were standard in the dairy industry they started demanding different product and sure enough, today it is quite easy to find milk labelled as non-rBST. Same thing goes for organic. If we start asking for products that are better for bodies, soil, ecosystems, and human rights with our dollars and our voices I have confidence that the food industry will respond as we have seen this happen in the past.
You nailed a subtle yet incredibly telling problem right on the head! So many children have these false notions in their head that cheese must always be orange, tomatoes must always be red, and that blue raspberry is a naturally occurring fruit. Such misconceptions represent something greater than food dyes, they portray a consumer’s greater reliance on the industrial food system than the actual food itself. In other words, many people may trust what they see at a grocery store more than a farm. This touches a lot upon the many pearls of wisdom Linda (from Shelburne Farms) offered us yesterday. Kids that have a more informed relationship with food, for example have picked their own RED raspberries, are going to make healthier choices. Healthier choices both for themselves and for the greater food system.
It was fun to chat with you yesterday, Diana. I’m excited to see your piece about raising those chickens with students at the Hannaford Center. It’s truly been a pleasure to have you as a member of this class.
I like your concluding reference to faith–not in a theological sense so much as a hopeful attitude based on encouraging developments with consumer choices and business responses to them. It’s important to hold onto positive possibilities lest we get too discouraged by the problems we see around us. Hope is not oblivion but rather a perpetually recalibrated posture of engagement with good things that seem to be happening.