Although I am a strong proponent of organic and natural foods, as you can see from my previous post, that doesn't mean anything labeled 'natural' is automatically righteous in my book. Take, for example, the Jones Soda Company, maker of Jones Natural Sodas. Their products tend to be the most ghastly unnatural colors you will ever see, and most are overly sweet for my taste. The only plus I find about them is they come in large, thirst-quenching 20-ounce sizes, if you can bear to drink it all down. (Yes, I know I sound like an idiot: it tastes terrible, but at least the portions are big). They come with cutesy names like Bada Bing! cherry and D'Peach Mode. Their web site strives to create a sense of hip community, but seems to me more of a messy embarrassment.

But I could even forgive all that if it weren't for the outright dishonesty they show on their labels. If you look at the nutrition facts (an example from D'Peach Mode can be seen HERE), you will see that when it comes to the things people generally want to cut down on, like calories and sugar, a bottle is listed as having 2.5 servings. However, when it comes to the vitamin and mineral supplements added to the soda, the things people will want, a bottle suddenly becomes a single serving.

You can't have it both ways, Jones. Either a serving is one bottle, with a whopping 270 calories and 72 grams of sugar, or there are 2.5 servings per bottle, with each serving offering minimal amounts of Vitamins C and B6, Calcium and Manganese. A big raspberry to the Jones Soda Company, and a lesson learned: read the labels and don't be fooled.

Cents Off Equals No Sense

My local newspaper last Sunday trumpeted on its front page that within I would find over $490.00 worth of money-saving coupons. You'd think that would be welcome news to someone with a $22,229.68 credit card debt, but alas, practically none of the coupons are for anything I use. In fact, most of the coupons were for stuff I don't know why anyone would use. Slimfast milkshakes, microwaveable Ragu pasta snacks, pull-top fruit and gelatin cups, Vanilla Indulgence plug-in air fresheners, Froot Loop cereal-and-milk bars, Kelloggs new Fruit Harvest cereal, with dried old bits of chemically preserved fruit. Ugh! Mystery Jello--"Starts yellow, turns red and tastes like a mystery flavor!" Actually, that describes a lot of the products available on the typical supermarket shelf: something that starts out one color, is chemically processed to another hue, and has a mystery taste.

Even with the money-saving coupons, we still pay inflated prices for a lot of these so-called foods. You think you're getting a deal on that Kraft "It's Pasta Anytime" never-frozen, microwaveable-in-three-minutes snack? There's a 55-cents off coupon for it, and even if your supermarket doubles the coupon, you still are paying way more than it's worth. A few cents worth of pasta and over-processed tomato sauce enclosed in packaging bulkier than the food itself. Convenience is the one legitimate selling point: quick, easy, portable. But that so-called convenience seems to come at a terribly high cost: inflated prices, mediocre flavor, mealy texture, excessive amounts of salt and sugar, a long list of artificial flavors and chemical preservatives, and the shame of cluttering the environment with so much trash packaging for so little food? Aren't you tired of paying higher prices for bad, unhealthy food, tired of being hoodwinked by the advertisers and their multi-million dollar budgets?

Funny thing is, despite my large debt, I also choose to pay more than necessary for food. I do not pay extra for this absurd 'convenience' that wreaks havoc on both our health and the environment. I do not pay extra because some multi-national corporation spent millions of dollars to show it on television. I do not pay extra because some paid Tiger Woods a million bucks to say he uses it.

What I do pay extra for is to buy organic, preservative- and additive-free food as often as I can (which is most of the time, thanks to a Whole Foods supermarket that opened eight blocks away last year). I may not always get as much 'convenience' for the extra cost, but I do get the pleasure of knowing I am consuming fewer chemicals, artificial flavors and colors, pesticides, chicken antibiotics, beef growth hormones and hydrogenated oils. I get the pleasure of knowing I am helping to support a type of farming that protects topsoil and thus helps preserve our farmland for future generations. I get the pleasure of knowing that I am helping to limit the amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that seep into the land and run off into our rivers. I get the pleasure of knowing that fewer farm workers are exposed to toxic pesticides in the course of their labor. I get the pleasure of knowing I am supporting diversity of crops rather than giant agrobusiness farming that concentrates on a few crops genetically modified to be able to travel far and sit long on the shelf even if they lose flavor in the process. And yes, I find that I generally have the pleasure of having food that tastes better. Not only that, but a lot of the food is very quick and convenient as well.

It might be a bit too much to ask to go back to buying raw foods and making everything from scratch. But we do have choices. You can pay a little extra for your food and have your money help make a few corporate CEOs and celebrity spokespersons rich while destroying your health and the planet's environment. Or you can pay a little extra and feel like your doing something good for yourself, for society and for the future.

And please don't forget to contact your Congressional representatives in support of preserving federal organic food standards. Read more about it HERE.