HBO took down the full episode of Last Week Tonight that was on Youtube two weeks ago. Instead they put just certain "web exclusive" clips on it. They just had to make everything exclusive to their own channel. Make sense. :-\
It's old news but there was some talk last month about Big Food (the food industry) might be the next tobacco industry and that the litigation will start to require certain labeling on food products. What would it be? Would they stamp a slogan of "Sugar might raise blood pressure, please be advised not to consumer over 10g per day" on the candy wrapper?
The not so new yet on-going food trend is called "REDUCTION" labeling. Companies are using alternative replacements for sugar and salt so they can put less sugar and salt without changing flavor profile. It's not necessary a good thing. Companies want to find ingredients that will keep the same sweetness or saltiness but decrease the actual amount of sugar and salt. :-\ (lots of chemistry)
I honestly think it's a cultural sociological problem that the companies and the people have created together. This black whole has no end unless the change it altogether.
Culturally, the public needs to retrain its palate to pick the health over sugar/salt. The common saying of "heath" food taste "bad" shouldn't stay true if one can do it right. Trying various of healthy products and use more seasoning and spices rather simply salt and pepper!
The companies should realize cutting cost with cheaper ingredients with no taste and simply adding salt and sugar to "spice" up the lost flavors are not the key solutions. Perhaps less processing, less bland raw ingredients, and less care of making profits can improve the quality of products.
Since this will never happen, the world will keep evolve as the better food products cost more than an average person's willingness to pay and United State will keep on blurring out the key problems of today's food industry because who runs the world? Big Food companies.
This last clip was POM Wonderful's letter to John Oliver after that first episode regarding food labeling. It's quite funny. I can see myself watching more of this weird funny "news" channel.
For this particular reason, I couldn't embedded the video into this post sadly, but it is on HBOgo. I loved it because John Oliver covered POM and other big food labels. Mostly on how wrongly and crazy food marketing labels have gone in which I 100% "juice" agree.
It stated that POM has a case against Coca-cola for their pomegranate label juice only contains little to none of pomegranate juice. It was kinda funny because if there are something I'd not want to know in my foods...I choose not to read about juices and the frozen dinners. (you just don't know what's in it).
Most of the juices on the markets that are made by big companies are generally not what the front label stated. Often they will use juice concentrated with water and they also add cheaper juice alternative to bulk up the products and flavors, i.e. apple, pear, grape or pineapple juices are common choices.
It always make me laugh when I saw "GLUTEN FREE" or "FAT FREE" on a candy package, but it's still happening. They really should do a survey on the purchase based on those word labeling and see how effective it is because I also would like to know how ignorant the public is.
John Oliver also mentioned Kellogg's Mini-Wheat commercial that quoted a "clinical" study done and it had proven kids consumed Mini-Wheat cereal had "20% improved attentiveness" but the control group was kids with no breakfast at all. I mean, scientifically and statistically this isn't wrong, but it also doesn't provide much solid evidence when you quote things so out of context. The better way to phrase this would be everyone should eat breakfast because it will improve attentiveness, and in the case of consuming Mini-Wheat, one can have 13% (apparently they round it up to 20% in the ads) better attentiveness. Either way, that was funny. I felt sorry for the team who did the study. I did found the commercial though, just for a laugh.
It's old news but there was some talk last month about Big Food (the food industry) might be the next tobacco industry and that the litigation will start to require certain labeling on food products. What would it be? Would they stamp a slogan of "Sugar might raise blood pressure, please be advised not to consumer over 10g per day" on the candy wrapper?
The not so new yet on-going food trend is called "REDUCTION" labeling. Companies are using alternative replacements for sugar and salt so they can put less sugar and salt without changing flavor profile. It's not necessary a good thing. Companies want to find ingredients that will keep the same sweetness or saltiness but decrease the actual amount of sugar and salt. :-\ (lots of chemistry)
I honestly think it's a cultural sociological problem that the companies and the people have created together. This black whole has no end unless the change it altogether.
Culturally, the public needs to retrain its palate to pick the health over sugar/salt. The common saying of "heath" food taste "bad" shouldn't stay true if one can do it right. Trying various of healthy products and use more seasoning and spices rather simply salt and pepper!
The companies should realize cutting cost with cheaper ingredients with no taste and simply adding salt and sugar to "spice" up the lost flavors are not the key solutions. Perhaps less processing, less bland raw ingredients, and less care of making profits can improve the quality of products.
Since this will never happen, the world will keep evolve as the better food products cost more than an average person's willingness to pay and United State will keep on blurring out the key problems of today's food industry because who runs the world? Big Food companies.
This last clip was POM Wonderful's letter to John Oliver after that first episode regarding food labeling. It's quite funny. I can see myself watching more of this weird funny "news" channel.
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