Deception seems to be the name of the game in the food industry these days.  Their favorite board room question must be “How can we get our food (which by nature decomposes over time) to last longer or at least look like it is lasting longer so we can make more profit?”

I was helping my children find shoes, bookbags, and all the stuff needed to get them out the door and headed towards school, when a Good Morning America segment caught my attention.  It was a hearing on meat and a woman was holding a package of nice red meat in her hand.  The problem?  The meat was actually 2 years old but it still looked like it was fresh.  How was this possible?

It seems as though the food industry once again, has decided it is OK to decieve consumers by treating meat with CO gas in order to preserve its nice fresh color.  They do something similar (called Modified Atmosphere Packaging) with packaged salad, potato chips, and other foods too so they will last longer or look better as the food sits on the shelf.  But, ugh, the food could be rotten and you wouldn’t know until you opened the package. 

Of course, you are supposed to read the tiny little dates on the package that tell you when it expires.  If you’re like me though, I forget my reading glasses and can never see the printing on these packages.  Or maybe your a mom toting around a few kids who are pulling you in ten directions.  Do you remember to check dates every time?

In USA Today we read that Hormel, a big pusher and user of this technique, has had few complaints.  Well guess why?  Consumers probably don’t have time to look up a manufacturer’s address to send a complaint and did you ever try to return something in a grocery store? 

Food packaging provides a necessary service in our big store, big industry world.  However, I would just like the truth written on my packages so I can make my own decisions.  I don’t want to buy gassed meat (and I don’t, I purchase from a local source that doesn’t use this practice).  I also want to know if my packaged product was treated with something. 

For those very reasons I am buying more and more local and organic products.  What do you think, where do we draw the line here with the food industries need for profit and our need for truth?