Have you been grocery shopping lately? If so, it probably won’t come as much of a surprise that so-called “free-from” labels are one of the fastest-growing food marketing trends. These food labels focus on what’s not in our food, rather than what is in it.
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Why are we more concerned about what’s not in our food than what is in our food?
Unless an eater legitimately has a medical condition prohibiting her from consuming one of these items (Celiac’s disease being the most obvious), we should be more concerned about the nutritional content of food. We should worry about whether we’re eating a balanced diet, not successfully avoiding specific foods, ingredients, or production methods.
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As these trends grow, they ultimately start to impact how we farm. If consumers demand GMO-free foods in the marketplace, processors and manufacturers start to make the same demands on farmers.
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Unfortunately, our fixation with the free-from labels doesn’t mean we’re making healthier choices …. It’s like buying cigarettes labeled non-GMO because they’re supposedly healthier.
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The problem stems from a society always looking for the next best way to solve our dietary and health problems. We want to lose weight, but we don’t want to cut calories …. We want the easy way out. We want the simple solution.
Read full, original article: Farmer’s Daughter: The surge of ‘free-from’ labels in grocery stores
