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If there's one thing in the world the food industry is dead set against, it's allowing you to actually maintain some level of control over what you eat. See, they have this whole warehouse full of whatever they bought last week when they were drunk that they need to get rid of -- and they will do so by feeding it all to you. And it doesn't matter how many pesky "lists of ingredients" and consumer protections stand between you and them.
#6. The Secret Ingredient: Wood
You know what's awesome? Newspaper. Or, to be precise, the lack thereof. The Internet and other electric media have all but eaten up classic print media, with the circulations of almost all papers on the wane. Say, do you ever wonder what they do with all that surplus wood pulp?
"But Cracked," you inquire, "what does this have to do with food ingredients?"
For the purposes of this article, you're kind of an idiot.
And we look at you squarely in the eye, then slowly bring our gaze upon the half-eaten bagel in your hand.
Oh, shit ...
The Horror:
What do they do with all the cellulose wood pulp? They hide it behind a bullshit name and make you eat it, that's what.
The best part of waking up, is wood pulp in your face!
And everybody's doing it. Aunt Jemima's pancake syrup? Cellulose. Pillsbury Pastry Puffs? Cellulose. Kraft Bagel-Fuls? Fast-food cheese? Sara Lee's breakfast bowls? Cellulose, cellulose, goddamn cellulose.
Et tu, Hot Pockets?
It turns out that cellulose can provide texture to processed foods, so food companies have taken to happily using it as a replacement for such unnecessary and inconveniently expensive ingredients as flour and oil. As the 30 percent cheaper cellulose is edible and non-poisonous, the FDA has no interest for restricting its use -- or, for that matter, the maximum amount of it that food companies can use in a product. It is pretty much everywhere, and even organic foods are no salvation -- after all, cellulose used to be wood and can therefore be called organic, at least to an extent.
But the worst thing about cellulose is not that it's everywhere. The worst thing is that it is not food at all. Cellulose is, unlike the actual, normal food items you think you're paying for, completely indigestible by human beings, and it has no nutritional value to speak of. If a product contains enough of it, you can literally get more nutrients from licking the sweet, sweet fingerprints off its wrapper.
That loaf and the chopping block have an equal wood content.
#5. Zombie Orange Juice
Quick, name the most healthy drink your nearest store has to offer. You said orange juice, didn't you? It's what everybody makes you drink when you get sick. Hell, that shit must be like medicine or something. And the labels are always about health benefits -- the cartons scream "100 percent natural!", "Not from concentrate!" and "No added sugar!"
"Less than four thumbs per gallon!"
And why not believe them? When it comes to making the stuff, orange juice isn't sausage. You take oranges, you squeeze oranges, you put the result in a carton, with or without pulp. End of story, beginning of deliciousness.
But what if we told you that "freshly squeezed" juice of yours can very well be a year old, and has been subjected to stuff that would make the Re-Animator puke?
Tropicana's bottling room. Not pictured: Anything orange.
The Horror:
Ever wonder why every carton of natural, healthy, 100 percent, not-from-concentrate orange juice manages to taste exactly the same, yet ever so slightly different depending on the brand, despite containing no additives or preservatives whatsoever?
The process indeed starts with the oranges being squeezed, but that's the first and last normal step in the process. The juice is then immediately sealed in giant holding tanks and all the oxygen is removed. That allows the liquid to keep without spoiling for up to a year. That's why they can distribute it year-round, even when oranges aren't in season.
Thanks to science, we can enjoy screwdrivers from Christmas to the 4th of July.
There is just one downside to the process (from the manufacturers' point of view, that is) -- it removes all the taste from the liquid. So, now they're stuck with vats of extremely vintage watery fruit muck that tastes of paper and little else. What's a poor giant beverage company to do? Why, they re-flavor that shit with a carefully constructed mix of chemicals called a flavor pack, which are manufactured by the same fragrance companies that formulate CK One and other perfumes. Then they bottle the orange scented paper water and sell it to you.
And, thanks to a loophole in regulations, they often don't even bother mentioning the flavor pack chemicals in the list of ingredients. Hear that low moan from the kitchen? That's the Minute Maid you bought yesterday. It knows you know.
#4. Ammonia-Infused Hamburger
Any restaurant that serves hamburger goes out of its way to reassure you how pure and natural it is. Restaurant chains like McDonald's ("All our burgers are made from 100 percent beef, supplied by farms accredited by nationally recognized farm assurance schemes") and Taco Bell ("Like all U.S. beef, our 100 percent premium beef is USDA inspected, then passes our 20 quality checkpoints") happily vouch for the authenticity of their animal bits. Their testaments to the healthiness and fullness of their meat read out like they were talking about freaking filet mignon.
Above: Gourmet as balls.
And aside from the rare E.coli outbreak, the meat is clean. It's how they get it clean that's unsettling.
The Horror:
Ammonia. You know, the harsh chemical they use in fertilizers and oven cleaners? It kills E.coli really well. So, they invented a process where they pass the hamburger through a pipe where it is doused in ammonia gas. And you probably never heard about it, other than those times that batches of meat stink of ammonia so bad that the buyer returns it.
If your Big Mac ever tastes like pee, this is why.
The ammonia process is an invention of a single company called Beef Products Inc., which originally developed it as a way to use the absolute cheapest parts of the animal, instead of that silly "prime cuts" stuff the competitors were offering (and the restaurant chains swear we're still getting). Consequently, Beef Products Inc. has pretty much cornered the burger patty market in the U.S. to the point that 70 percent of all burger patties out there are made by them. Thanks, ammonia!
#3. Fake Berries
Imagine a blueberry muffin.
One muffin, you greedy bastards.
Even with your freshly gained knowledge that there may or may not be some cellulose in the cake mix, it's pretty impossible not to start salivating at the thought. This is largely because of the berries themselves. What's better -- they're so very, very healthy that it's almost wrong for them to taste so good.
We could taste delicious if we wanted to. Stupid show-off berries.
Everything is better with blueberries -- that's why they put them in so many foods. Now that we think of it, there sure seems to be a lot of blueberries in a lot of products. You'd think we'd see more blueberry fields around ...
The Horror:
... not that it would do any good, as the number of blueberries you've eaten within the last year that have actually come from such a field is likely pretty close to zero.
We can almost hear the muffins mocking us.
Studies of products that supposedly contain blueberries indicate that many of them didn't originate in nature. All those dangly and chewy and juicy bits of berry are completely artificial, made with different combinations of corn syrup and a little chemist's set worth of food colorings and other chemicals with a whole bunch of numbers and letters in their names.
They do a damn good job of faking it, too -- you need a chemist's set of your own to be able to call bullshit. You can sort of tell them from the ingredient lists, too, if you know what to look for, although the manufacturers tend to camouflage them under bullshit terms like "blueberry flakes" or "blueberry crunchlets."
Nothing says "nature" like petrochemical-derived food coloring.
There are a number of major differences between the real thing and the Abomination Blueberry: The fake blueberries have the advantages of a longer shelf life and, of course, being cheaper to produce. But they have absolutely none of the health benefits and nutrients of the real thing. This, of course, doesn't stop the manufacturers from riding the Blueberry Health Train all the way to the bank, sticking pictures of fresh berries and other bullshit cues all over the product packaging.
Now, here's some good news: The law does require the manufacturers to put the whole artificial thing out there for the customers. The bad news, however, is that they have gotten around this, too. First up, the Kellogg's Mini-Wheats way:
This is somewhat recognizable. They just stick a picture of the berries there, while not actually bothering to conceal the fact that the actual cereal looks like it's made of cardboard and Smurf paste.
A bunch of Betty Crocker products and Target muffins use the second route, which brings the cheat level even further by actually containing an unspecified amount of real berries. This way they can legally advertise natural flavors while substituting the vast majority of berries with the artificial ones.
All but three of these are made of plastic.
Or, you can just take the "we don't give a fuck anymore" route, as evidenced by General Mills' Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal. The whole selling point of the product is that it contains a bucketload of blueberries and pomegranates, and the package boasts all the buzzwords the marketing department has been able to dream up:
In reality, not only are the blueberries fake, but also they've forged the freaking pomegranates as well.
#2. "Free Range" Chickens That Are Crammed Into a Giant Room
Buying "free range" eggs is one of the easiest ways to feel good as a consumer -- they are at least as readily available as "normal," mass produced eggs from those horrible giant chicken prisons Big Egg maintains. Hell, they even cost pretty much the same. There's literally no reason not to buy free range even though, now that we think about it, we're not actually sure what that means. But the animals must live in pretty good conditions. In fact, let's buy our meat and poultry free range, too!
Fresh air, green grass, plenty of cocks ... free range chickens have it good.
Well, according to law, the definition of "free range" is that chickens raised for their meat "have access to the outside." OK ... so that's not quite as free as we assumed, and it appears to only apply to chickens raised for their meat. But at least they still have some freedom, what with the outside and all that.
The Horror:
Words have power, and "free range" in its original sense means unfenced and unrestrained. That makes it a powerful phrase that, no matter how smart we are, conjures subconscious images of freedom hens, riding tiny little freedom horses out on the plains, wearing hen-sized cowboy hats and leaving a happy little trail of delicious freedom eggs in their wake. There may be mandolin music.
Although we have it on good authority that chickens prefer Jay-Z.
Although we have it on good authority that chickens prefer Jay-Z.
But the reality is there are absolutely no regulations whatsoever for the use of the term "free range" on anything other than chickens raised for their meat. Your Snickers bar could be free range for all the government cares.
The industry knows this full well and happily makes us lap up the free range myth, even though in reality a free range hen lives in pretty much the same prison as a battery cage hen -- except its whole life takes place in the prison shower, rather than a cell.
Look, they're free!
Awareness of the free range myth is slowly increasing, but although a manufacturer that has been pushing his luck a bit too much does get jailed every once in a while, that doesn't do much to the overall phenomenon. In fact, Europe is set to ban egg production in cage systems come 2012. Guess what the replacement is going to be?
#1. Bullshit Health Claims
Nuts that reduce risk of heart disease. Yogurts that improve digestion and keep you from getting sick. Baby food that saves your kid from atopic dermatitis, whatever the hell that may be. Products like that are everywhere these days, and we do have to admit it's hard to see any drawbacks to them. We eat yogurt anyway, so why not make it good for our tummy while we're at it?
"This brand treats syphilis and diabetes."
It's just that we can't keep wondering where all these magic groceries suddenly appeared from. One day your peanuts were peanuts, and then, all of a sudden, it was all coronary disease this and reduce heart attack risks that. Maybe Food Science just had a really, really productive field day a while back?
Or, of course, it could be that we're being fooled yet again.
We don't know if we could handle Mr. Peanut lying to us.
The Horror:
The vast majority of product health claims use somewhat older technology than most of us realize: the ancient art of bullshitting. The "health effects" of wonder yogurts and most other products with supposed medical-level health benefits can be debunked completely, thoroughly and easily. So why are they able to keep marketing this stuff?
It all started in 2002, when many ordinary foods found themselves suddenly gaining surprising, hitherto unseen superpowers. This is when the FDA introduced us to a new category of pre-approved product claims. It was called "qualified health claims," and it was basically just another list of marketing bullshit the company can use if their product meets certain qualifications. This was nothing new. What was new, however, was that the list said no consensus for the scientific evidence for the product's health claims was needed.
"That pepper will keep you hard for hours, and eggplant works in lieu of chemotherapy."
Since "no consensus needed" is law-talk for "pay a dude in a lab coat enough to say your product is magic and we'll take his word for it no matter what everyone else says," companies immediately went apeshit. Suddenly, everyone had a respected scientist or six in their corner, and the papers they published enabled basically whatever they wanted to use in their marketing and packaging.
We're not saying that none of the products boasting health properties work. There are plenty out there, but they're kind of difficult to find under the constant stream of bullshit supplementary claims. Come on, food industry -- just tell us the truth. Don't you realize that we'll just eat it anyway? Shit, people still buy cigarettes, don't they?
原文閱讀：The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You
參考譯文（僅供參考）：
如果在這世界上，食品產業會拼死反對什么的話，那就是允許你對你吃的東西實際保有某種程度的掌控。看，他們有這一整倉庫上周喝醉時買來的玩意兒要處理掉——他們的解決之道就是把這些東西全都喂給你。在你和他們之間有多少討厭的“配料表”和消費者保護條款擋駕并不重要。
#6.秘密配料：木頭
你知道可怕的是什么嗎？報紙。或者，準確點說，缺少報紙。互聯網和其他電子媒體已經吃到了全部傳統印刷媒體，這使幾乎所有報紙的流通都在衰落。比如說，你就從來沒奇怪過他們拿那些多余的木漿干嘛了嗎？
“但這真瘋狂，”你會問，“這東西和食品配料有什么關系？”
恐怖：
他們拿所有那些纖維素木漿都干什么了？他們把它藏在一個瞎編的名字后面，讓你吃下去了，就這樣。
覺醒的最佳素材，就是直接伸到你鼻子前的木漿。
人人都在這么做。杰米瑪大嬸的煎餅糖漿？纖維素。品食樂公司的奶酥？纖維素。卡夫百吉福？快餐奶酪？莎莉集團的早餐碗？纖維素。纖維素。上帝詛咒的纖維素。
原來，纖維素能為加工過的食品提供質感，所以食品公司已經愉快的采用它作為不必要和不方便的昂貴原料的替代品，如面粉和食用油。因為便宜30%的纖維素可食用而且無毒，（美國）食品藥品監管局沒興趣限制它的使用——或者，就這一點而言，沒限制食品公司可在一種產品中使用它的最大劑量。它確實到處都是。就連有機食品也不是拯救之道——因為纖維素曾經是木頭，所以可以稱為“有機的”，至少在一定程度上是這么回事。但是關于纖維素最糟糕的事還不在于它到處都有。最糟糕的是，它根本不是食品。
纖維素，與你以為你付錢購買的名副其實的、普通的食品不同，完全不能被人類消化，也沒有任何值得一提的營養價值。如果一種產品中的它的含量太多，單只舔舔包裝紙上甜甜的手印你都可以得到更多營養。
面包條和那塊砧板含有相同的木頭成分。
#5，僵尸橙汁
快，提幾樣離你家最近的商店里賣的最健康的飲料。你說橙汁,說了嗎？這是你生病時人人讓你喝的東西。該死，那東西一定像藥或是什么的。而且標簽總是提到健康益處——紙盒上嚷嚷著“百分百純天然！”，“非濃縮物提取！”和“無糖添加！”
為什么不信這些話？說到制做這東西，橙汁可不是香腸。你拿到橙子，把汁擠出來，裝進紙盒，或帶或不帶果肉。事情搞定，開始品嘗美味。但是如果我們告訴你，你的“鮮榨”果汁可能有整整一年之“鮮”了，而且里面用的東西能讓“活跳尸”噴出來，你會。。。？
恐怖：
為什么紙盒裝的天然、健康、百分百、非濃縮物提取的橙汁做得味道全一樣，根據牌子不同只有極小的差別，盡管不含有添加劑或防腐劑之類的東西，曾經疑惑過嗎？
制作過程確實是從壓榨橙汁開始的，但這也是整個過程中第一和最后正常的一步。之后果汁馬上封裝進巨型儲罐，抽除所有氧氣。這允許這些液體保存一年以上不變質。這就是為什么他們能夠全年供應，即便在橙子已經不當季的時候。
這個過程只有一個缺點（從生產商的觀點看，那是）——飲料里所有的味道全沒了。所以，現在他們被一桶桶水汪汪的、味道跟紙差不多的葡萄困住了。可憐的大型飲料公司會做點什么呢？這有啥可奇怪，他們會用一種稱作“味料”的經仔細勾兌的化學混合品給這玩意兒重新調味，那是由配制CK One和其他香水的同樣幾家香水公司生產的。之后他們再把這些調成橙子味的紙水裝瓶買給你。而且，感謝管理法規中的一個漏洞，他們常常懶得在配料表中提到味料里的化學品。聽到廚房傳來低聲嗚咽了嗎？那是你昨天買的美汁源。它知道你知道了。
#4．氨水浸潤的漢堡
任何一家賣漢堡的餐館都會不怕麻煩的向你保證這漢堡有多么純凈天然。像麥當勞（“我們所有的漢堡百分百以牛排制成，提供方農場經由國家承認的農場驗證體系認證”）和塔可鐘（“如同所有美國牛排一樣，我們百分之百的優質牛肉受美國農業部檢驗，之后又經過我們20道質檢點”）這樣的連鎖餐飲店，會開心的向你保證他們肉類食品的純正。他們牛肉的健康營養驗證讀起來就像他們談論的是奇異的菲列牛排。
除了偶爾大腸桿菌爆發，這些牛肉確實干凈。但正是他們怎么讓牛肉干凈的才讓人不放心。
恐怖：
氨水。你知道，就是那種他們在化肥和爐灶清潔劑里使用的強烈化學品。它消滅大腸桿菌真的是很有效果。所以，他們發明了一種流程，中間讓漢堡包經過一條彌漫氨氣的管道。你可能從來沒聽說過這個，除了有些時候，成批成批的牛肉散發出如此濃烈的氨水味，以至于顧客要求退貨。
如果你的巨無霸漢堡啥時候有小便味，那就是因為這個。
這個氨氣消毒流程是由一家名為“牛肉產品有限公司”的企業單獨發明的，該公司起初發展這個流程是為了利用牛身上最便宜的部分，而不像競爭對手那樣出售傻乎乎的上等牛肉（那些餐飲連鎖發誓，我們吃的仍是這個）。結果，牛肉產品有限公司在相當大的程度上占領了美國的漢堡肉餅市場，達到全部漢堡餡的70%都是由他們制做的。感謝你，氨水！
#3．假藍莓
即便你有剛剛獲得的知識，知道在蛋糕粉里可能有也可能沒有纖維素，一想到松餅還是很難讓人不流口水。這主要是因為那些漿果。還有更妙的——它們都這么這么的健康，吃起來味道這么好幾乎是不可能的。
什么都東西加了藍莓都會更好吃——這也是為什么他們在這么多食品里都放藍莓。于是我們想，確實看見好多產品里有好多藍莓。你會認為我們應該在周圍看到更多的藍莓田
恐怖：
即便有更多藍莓田也沒用，因為你去年全年吃的藍莓實際都來自一塊田地，而這塊田地可能就要化作烏有了。
研究被認為含有藍莓的產品的顯示，許多藍莓都不是自然的產物。所有那些顆顆鑲嵌、有彈性又多汁的果粒，徹底是人造的，它們包括不同的組合，玉米糖漿，一點化學師調配的食品色素，還有名字里有一大堆數字和字母的其他化學品。
這些東西仿造得也該死像極了——你需要自己了解化學師的術語才能管這叫牛糞。如果你知道該找什么的話，也勉強能從配料表上看出它們，盡管生產商喜歡用一些胡編的名頭給它們加上偽裝，比如“藍莓薄片”，“藍莓屑”。
在真藍莓和可惡的假藍莓之間，有好幾項重要區別：假藍莓有保存期限更長的優勢，當然，生產也更便宜。但他們完全沒有真東西的健康利益和營養物質。當然，這沒有阻止生產商把“藍莓健康列車”一路開到站，用鮮莓圖片和其他瞎編的提示貼滿了產品包裝。
現在，這里有一些好消息：法律要求生產商把整個這個人造品為消費者標明出來。然而，壞消息是，他們也已經找到了逃避的捷徑。第一個想出主意的，凱洛格的迷你麥：
這多少是可以辨認出來的。他們只是貼了一張藍莓的圖片在那兒，同時根本沒有揭示這一事實，這種谷物食品看著就像是用硬紙板和藍色面糊做的。
一大堆“貝蒂妙廚”的產品和Target松餅采用的是第二種路線，通過實際含有一定不定量的真藍莓把欺騙水平向縱深做了推進。用這招，他們就能合法的在廣告里宣傳自然口味，同時把絕大多數莓子用人造品替代掉。
或者，你可以采取“老子TM什么也不給”的路線，就像通用磨坊公司的“藍莓石榴谷物早餐”身體力行的那樣。這一產品的全部賣點就是它含有整吊斗的藍莓和石榴粒，包裝上吹噓的全是市場部能夢得出來的時髦詞兒：
#2，擠著住的散養雞
買散養雞蛋是作為消費者感覺良好的最簡單方式之一——它們至少像“普通雞蛋”那樣隨時能買到，和那種由Big Egg經營的可怕的大型雞監獄批量生產的雞蛋一樣。該死的是，它們甚至要價也幾乎一樣。即便我們現在想想其實不確定那是個什么東西，但還是沒理由不買散養蛋。至少雞一定生活在相當好的條件下。干脆，讓我們買肉買雞也要散養的吧！
額，根據法律，“散養”的定義是，肉用雞“可以在外面活動”。OK。。。所以并不像我們想的那么自由，而且看起來只適用在肉用雞身上。但至少，“外面”等等的讓他們還有一些自由。
恐怖：
詞語是有力量的，“散養”的原意是無籬笆、無限制。這使它成為一個有力的詞，不管我們有多聰明，都會在潛意識里構想出自由母雞的形象，它騎著小小的自由之馬在草原上奔馳，戴著母雞型號的牛仔帽，快樂的在身后留下一小行美味的自由雞蛋。也許還配有曼陀林音樂。
但事實上，對肉用雞之外使用“散放”這個詞，絕對沒有任何相關規定。你的士力架也可以是“散養”的，政府管不著。這一行的人完全了解這個，于是愉快的讓我們欣然接受散養的神話，即便事實上散養母雞生活在差不多像格子籠母雞一樣的監獄里——除了它的一生是在監獄澡堂里度過的，而不是小牢房。
人們對自由散養神話的覺醒在慢慢增加，但是盡管曾有一個生產商因為運氣用得有點過而被關過幾天，這對整個現象都沒什么影響。事實上，歐洲將在2012年開始禁止網箱式的雞蛋生產。但，。。猜猜替代方式會是什么？
#1 騙人的健康宣示
堅果減少得心臟病的危險。酸奶改善消化，預防疾病。嬰兒食品能拯救你孩子的過敏性皮炎，甭管它可能是什么東西。這樣的產品現在到處都是，而且我們必須承認很難看出它們有什么不對。我們反正要吃酸奶，為啥不順便讓它有利于我們的胃呢？
只是我們忍不住想問，這些魔力食品是從哪里突然出現的。昨天你的花生還是花生，突然，它又能治療冠狀動脈疾病，又能降低心臟病發的危險。也許食品科學昨個兒剛發現了一塊賊寶賊寶的寶地？
恐怖：
絕大多數產品健康宣示采用的技術比我們多數人知道的都要老：瞎編濫造的古老藝術。其實，奇妙酸奶的“健康效果”和大部分其他產品聲稱達到藥物水平的健康利益，都可以被完全、徹底和輕易的揭露出來。那么，為啥他們還能持續推銷這號東西？
這一切是從2002年開始的，當時許多普通食品突然發現自己獲得了令人驚訝的、迄今為止沒人見過的超級功效。這時(美國)食品藥品監管局為我們引入了一個新類別的審批前產品聲明。它叫作“資格健康聲明”，只要一家公司的產品達到某種資格要求，這份聲明基本上就成為它可以使用的另一份營銷吹噓宣傳單罷了。這并不新鮮。但新鮮的是，這張單子上對產品健康宣示所需的科學證據共識卻只字不提。
自從“不需要共識”成為“付錢買通試驗人員提你的產品說好話，我們會聽了就當真不管別人再說啥”的法律術語之后，各公司便馬上發了瘋。
“不需要共識”作為法律術語，代表的是你可以付錢買通一個穿試驗白大褂的家伙，讓他說你的產品具有神奇功效，然后大家會把這話當真，別人再說什么都沒用了。從那以后，各家公司便發了瘋。突然，人人都有一位可敬的科學家，或者角落里還有六個。而他們發表的說明書基本上讓他們可以在宣傳中或是包裝上想怎么說就怎么說。我們不是說這些產品吹噓的健康性質沒有半點作用。有很多效果，但是很難說不停大吹大擂的補充說明跟它們有什么對應。行了，食品產業——就告訴我們真心話吧。你不就是發現我們吃什么都行嗎？狗屎，人們還買煙卷呢，不是嗎。
