It took a lawsuit to force Pepsi to stop labeling its
chemical-spiked Naked Juice brand as "all natural."
The delightfully
naughty movie star Mae West liked to joke: “I used to be Snow White, but I
drifted.”
Less delightful are
some of the purity claims of such food manufacturing giants as PepsiCo, which
has long marketed a line of its Frito-Lay snack foods as “Simply Natural.”
Natural? Anyone who’s
even looked at one of the company’s strangely-puffed, caterpillaresque, and
cheese-powdered “Cheetos” would have a hard time believing nature had anything
to do with that junk. Sure enough, PepsiCo has quietly dropped the volatile
“natural” claim from its snack packages, rebranding them with just the word
“Simply.”
The
multibillion-dollar food maker says the shift is merely a routine adjustment of
its marketing scheme — but it comes only after consumer groups have taken
Pepsi, Campbell Soup, and other manufacturers to court in the past couple of
years, successfully challenging their use of the “natural” phrase as deceptive
hype.
The naked truth,
however, was that they were not only juiced up with artificial vitamins and
synthetic fibers, but also included an additive made from
formaldehyde — a cancer-causing compound.
The conglomerates say
that advertising terms like “natural” are widely misunderstood by us stupid
consumers. Well, there they go again, drifting from the truth and perverting
plain English.
“Natural” simply means
what it says: Natural. As in, go squeeze an orange, and don’t dose it with
formaldehyde and lies. To keep up with the industry’s drift from purity, link
up with Organic Consumers Association: OrganicConsumers.org.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the
populist newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. OtherWords.org