[re-post for our good friends at Dr. Bronner's]

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps Files Lawsuit Against Major ‘Organic’ Cheater Brands

The family owned Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court today against numerous personal care brands to force them to stop making misleading organic labeling claims. Dr. Bronner’s and the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) had warned offending brands that they faced litigation unless they committed to either drop their organic claims or reformulate away from main ingredients made from conventional agricultural and/or petrochemical material without any certified organic material. OCA has played the leading role in exposing and educating consumers about deceptive organic branding.

David Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps says, “We have been deeply disappointed and frustrated by companies in the ‘natural’ personal care space who have been screwing over organic consumers, engaging in misleading organic branding and label call-outs, on products that were not natural in the first place, let alone organic.” Dr. Bronner’s has determined, based on extensive surveys, that organic consumers expect that cleansing ingredients in branded and labeled soaps, shampoos and body washes that are labeled “Organic”, “Organics” or “Made with Organic” will be from organic as distinct from conventional agricultural material, produced without synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, and free of petrochemical compounds.

For example: The major cleansing ingredient in Jason “Pure, Natural & Organic” liquid soaps, body washes and shampoos is Sodium Myreth Sulfate, which involves ethoxylating a conventional non-organic fatty chain with the carcinogenic petrochemical Ethylene Oxide, which produces carcinogenic 1,4-Dioxane as a contaminant. The major cleansing ingredient in Avalon “Organics” soaps, bodywashes and shampoos, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, contains conventional non-organic agricultural material combined with the petrochemical Amdiopropyl Betaine. Nature’s Gate “Organics” main cleansers are Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate (ethoxylated) and Cocamidopropyl Betaine. Kiss My Face “Obsessively Organic” cleansers are Olefin Sulfonate (a pure petrochemical) and Cocamidopropyl Betaine. Juice “Organics”, Giovanni “Organic Cosmetics”, Head “Organics”, Desert Essence “Organics”, and Ikove “Organic” all use Cocamdiopropyl Betaine as a main cleansing ingredient and no cleansers made from certified organic material. Due to the petrochemical compounds used to make the ingredient, Cocamidopropyl Betaine is contaminated with traces of Sodium monochloroacetate, Amidoamine (AA), and dimethylaminopropylamine (DMAPA). Amidoamine in particular is suspected of causing skin sensitization and allergic reactions even at very low levels for certain individuals. Organic consumers have a right to expect that the personal care products they purchase with organic branding or label claims, contain cleansing ingredients made from organic agricultural material, not conventional or petrochemical material, and thus have absolutely no petrochemical contaminants that could pose any concern.

Dr. Bronner’s products, in contrast to the brands noted above, contain cleansing and moisturizing ingredients made only from certified organic oils, made without any use of petrochemicals, and contain no petrochemical preservatives. The misleading organic noise created by culprit companies’ branding and labeling practices, interferes with organic consumers ability to distinguish personal care whose main ingredients are in fact made with certified organic, not conventional or petrochemical, material, free of synthetic preservatives. Lawsuit Also Names Estee Lauder, Stella McCartney’s CARE, Ecocert and OASIS

Ecocert is a French-based certifier with a standard that allows not only cleansing ingredients made from conventional versus organic agriculture, but also allows inclusion, in the cleansing ingredients contained in products labeled as “Made with Organic” ingredients, of certain petrochemicals such as Amidopropyl Betaine in Cocamidopropyl Betaine. Even worse, despite Ecocert’s own regulations prohibiting the labeling as “Organic” of a product containing less than 100% organic content, Ecocert in practice engages in “creative misinterpretation” of its own rules in order to accommodate clients engaging in organic mislabeling. For instance, Ecocert certifies the Ikove brand’s cleansing products to contain less than 50% organic content, noted in small text on the back of the product, where all cleansing ingredients are non-organic including Cocamidopropyl Betaine which contains petroleum compounds. Yet the product is labeled “Organic” Amazonian Avocado Bath & Shower Gel. Another instance is Stella McCartney’s “100% Organic” CARE line certified by Ecocert that labels products as “100% Organic” that are not 100% Organic alongside ones that are; the labels of products that are not 100% organic simply insert the word “Active” before “Ingredients.” In allowing such labeling, Ecocert simply ignores the requirements of its own certification standards. Furthermore, the primary organic content in most Ecocert certified products comes from “Flower Waters” in which up to 80% of the “organic” content consists merely of just regular tap water that Ecocert counts as “organic.”

Explicitly relying on the weak Ecocert standard as precedent, the new Organic and Sustainable Industry Standard (”OASIS”)-a standard indeed developed exclusively by certain members of the industry, primarily Estee Lauder, with no consumer input-will permit certification of products outright as “Organic” (rather than as “Made with Organic” ingredients) even if such products contain hydrogenated and sulfated cleansing ingredients such as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate made from conventional agricultural material grown with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and preserved with synthetic petrochemical preservatives such as Ethylhexylglycerin and Phenoxyethanol. [Reference: OASIS Standard section 6.2 and Anti-Microbial List] The organic content is required to only be 85%, which in water and detergent-based personal care products, means organic water extracts and aloe vera will greenwash conventional synthetic cleansing ingredients and preservatives.

The OASIS standard is not merely useless but deliberately misleading to organic consumers looking for a reliable indicator of true “organic” product integrity in personal care. Organic consumers expect that cleansing ingredients in products labeled “Organic” be made from organic not conventional agriculture, to not be hydrogenated or sulfated, and to be free from synthetic petrochemical preservatives. Surprisingly, companies represented on the OASIS board, such as Hain (Jason “Pure, Natural & Organic”; Avalon “Organics”) and Cosway (Head “Organics”,) produce liquid soap, bodywash and shampoo products with petrochemicals in their cleansers even though use of petrochemicals in this way is not permitted even under the very permissible OASIS standard these companies have themselves developed and endorsed.

Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director of the OCA, said: “The pressure of imminent litigation outlined in cease and desist letters sent by OCA and Dr. Bronner’s in March prompted some serious discussion with some of the offending companies, but ultimately failed to resolve the core issues.”

By Jill Ettinger

Friday: The Raconteurs are great. Jack White is a most creative and generous performer, and though they’re mostly a bluesy rock band, their sound is unclassifiable. They rock like Robin Trower or Ten Years After but with a Smashing Pumpkins covering NWA superfreakiness. All you want to say while watching this band is “Hell yeah!”

The Verve is absolutely awesome. It’s shocking that they were opening for Jack Johnson instead of the other way around. They sound like what the Beatles should have sounded like. Richard Ashcroft is as brilliant a songwriter as Bob Dylan or Ben Harper. “Lucky Man” is better than all of Jack Johnson’s songs put together. But apparently, Johnson is not the musical equivalent of a sleeping pill, as I’ve long suspected. I actually saw people who looked wide awake (though they were probably on ecstasy) dancing to his music. Even though the rush of people heading for the parking lot was forceful enough to knock them over, his cool chillness was potent enough to keep them upright. To each his own I suppose. (I’d post a video but I don’t want you to fall asleep before you read the rest of this blog.)

Saturday: Though not a fan myself, there was a hyped-up crowd of un-hyped, uber-cool European looking people packed together for Kraftwerk. (They’re like Daft Punk’s grandparents or something). Whatever. Electronic robot dudes are always cool by me as long as they don’t pull some HAL shit and start killing people. (Actually after watching this performance, I take it back. They pretty much suck.)

I was there if for no other reason than Portishead. Third is their first studio release in eleven years, and last in their label contract obligations. It’s uncertain whether we’ll ever hear another Portishead album, let alone see another tour. Coachella was their only scheduled US concert date this year, and absolutely stunning.  A guy standing next to me fainted half way through their second song.

Just a week before this performance, I was standing in Bourges, France watching another one of my all-time favorite bands, Fat Freddy’s Drop. As Portishead took the stage, I realized just how immensely important music and art is to having a better relationship to the mysteriously magical world I keep finding myself a part of. So many good songs to choose from Saturday night, but I settled on “The Rip” off of their latest.  It’s gorgeous, even if the sound quality isn’t the best.

There is probably no other circumstance in which Portishead would open up for – or play with – Prince, but I guess that’s part of Coachella’s craftiness. As Beth Gibbon’s voice dripped in my head, I was jolted back to “1999.” In any other situation I’d probably welcome Prince, but it was kind of like eating sardines (or any of these foods) while having a mouth full of chocolate. (I tried to find a video for posting but they’ve all been deleted from YouTube. The Prince is apparently also a money hungry dictator.)

Sunday: I think it’s a done deal that Gogol Bordello has officially signed on to do every music festival on earth in 2008. They were also at Printemps de Bourges in France the week before, and are at a bunch of others, including Bonarroo (the poor man’s Coachella), Popped, Lollapalooza, Vfest and Austin City Limits. They’re like the non-boring-but-still-boring version of Jack Johnson.

My Morning Jacket sounds kind of like The Raconteurs covering Wilco, but weirder and at times softer and/or heavier as heck. Jim James has a voice I like to call “dreamy,” but “awesome” works as well. They haven’t had that perfect album yet, but stay tuned, it’s coming.

This brings us to Roger Waters, aka that dude from Pink Floyd. I lamented most at his headlining, since he hasn’t written any new material since like 1980. But my friend Jody reminded me that maybe “his message is so important it needs to be repeated every generation.” Yah, I guess there’s no harm in flying pigs and laser light shows. My first LSD trip was when I was 15. We went to see the movie The Wall, only the acid didn’t kick in until after we left the theater. But nonetheless, I guess in a lot of ways, if it weren’t for Roger Waters I’d probably not even have gone to Coachella. I’d  probably be too busy working in a cubicle somewhere, or at a mall shopping. I’m kind of sorry I was walking out to the parking lot while he was earning his paycheck. Despite Coachella 2008’s slightly lackluster lineup, here’s to never ever ever finding ourselves Comfortably Numb.

By Jill Ettinger

Sean Penn is a strangely compelling man. As he took the stage in Coachella’s Gobi tent last Sunday afternoon, his voice cracked and cascaded like a nervous teenager, while he perched awkwardly on a stool. His message began to reveal itself through a muddled attempt at a joke about his reason for being there: “A cappella Celine Dion covers,” he insisted. The crowd looked confused and intrigued.

“Revolution is a job for the young,” he announced. “This is the smartest, most technologically proficient generation of all time.” He blasted not only Bush, but also all three (yes, Obamaniacs) presidential candidates for their support of the no-end-in-sight Iraqi invasion. Bob Dylan once penned, “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” Sean Penn is that guy; he exudes a righteousness most like his character Mick O’Brien in the 1983 film Bad Boys, who stood up for justice against the resident prison bullies, earning status and prestige as a trustworthy inmate.

He asked the crowd who had been at Prince’s performance the previous evening. “Awesome, wasn’t it?” He went on, “Now imagine glaciers melting into the ocean, soldiers dying, people starving, forests being destroyed. Because it was all happening while Prince was playing.” His point was sharp, humbling. Yes, it’s true, while thousands gathered in the desert to dance, drink and laugh, the word-at-large is not unanimously joyful. He called to Coachella’s mixed crowd with an earnest invitation: “We have three bio-diesel buses here. They’re leaving the parking lots on Monday, and we want you to come with us.” The buses are part of the Dirty Hands Caravan, a cross-country excursion setting out to lend hands where needed, all the way to New Orleans for Jazzfest, then back to California.

This was Sunday afternoon, the last day of Coachella, and quite a departure from previous years. Overall attendance was down 30% from 2007, due largely in part to the lineup. This year’s headliners were Jack Johnson, Prince and Roger Waters. (Last year was Bjork, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine.) Penn’s buzzkill message seemed to echo the emptiness and despair of the festival. Though there were certainly shining moments (more on those later), the mood was best summed up in his pensive tone. One can only wonder what a post ’08 presidential election will hold in store for Coachella, or any festival next summer.

Art is that je ne sais quoi of the human psyche. We are curious creatures, after all, and best express ourselves as abstractly as we feel compelled. That means something different to everyone. Just in the way that our expressions are unique, so are our interpretations and responses to other’s offerings. One person’s poison is another’s panacea. As true as that is, there is still a collective acceptance of what is mind-blowing, versus a so-so lineup of musicians and talent. Compared to 2007, 2008’s edition was just a notch more exciting than any city Memorial Day picnic festival. Last year was so good it was painful. One simply could not see all the amazing artists at any given time. Abundance overwhelmed. Did you go see Amy Winehouse or Stephen Marley? Red Hot Chili Peppers or Gotan Project? Bjork or DJ Shadow? In comparison, 2008’s nail-biting choices included: Tegan and Sara or Vampire Weekend, Flogging Molly or Sasha and John Digweed, Sons & Daughters or Modeselektor, Serj Tankian or Pendulum? Ugh. How about a quiet nap tent?

Coachella’s Do-lab side show and leftover Burning Man installations were not enough to rally attendees in lieu of ass-kicking lineups. Though there were about 100 performances, the top three nightly headliners are what drive sales. Some of the more impressive day time performances included Les Savy Fav, The Breeders, Yoav, Man Man, Cinematic Orchestra, Rogue Wave and Little Brother. As for the main stage nightly headline acts, they went something like this… (continued tmw)

By Derek Beres

The history of music journalism, as is the case with much of the modern music industry, is male-dominated. Flip through the pages of most any music magazine, or scroll through blog contributors, and nearly all of the names will be masculine. The dominant amount of artists covered in those pages is also male, though the playing field does even out there—a little. It seems odd, and unfortunate, that this is the case, considering the vast amount of female artists who struggle to find their place in this tumultuous and uncertain business, performing and creating with the utmost passion every day.

There exist numerous reasons for this, albeit few of them are openly and publicly discussed. The biggest business on the Internet is the male-governed pornography industry, and daily you will read stories of political, familial, and social oppression on the feminine—if not on actual females, then on the mere idea of being “soft”. Ironically, it was the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, when penning the verses that would be called the Tao Te Ching, who reminded us that true mastery comes by yielding to the feminine—knowing the strong, but residing in softness and compassion.

Unfortunately a good amount of men—especially those with political power—have not heeded this advice. The trickle-down effect of politicians and priests (where the feminine is, in Western faiths, often seen as a lesser form) has created a psychology that is embedded so deeply in our unconscious that while we applaud gender equality, our habits point in the other direction. What’s truly tragic about the whole situation is that there is little in this world as beautiful as the female voice. Sometimes it’s necessary to stop and remind ourselves of this.

To read the full article on PopMatters click here

By Derek Beres

By the time the Fourteenth Dalai Lama fled Tibet in March, 1959, he had gone through a steady period of disillusion with Chinese officials, who had been offering much lip service to communism — a philosophy he thought was, in theory, practical and promising. The reality of those officials, spearheaded by one of the twentieth century’s most villainous characters, Chairman Mao, was anything but what he initially expected.

One of their unusual practices was a constant concern for his “safety,” as if leaving the Potala Palace at all was a constant threat on his life. At first the man formerly known as Lhamo Thondup was surprised at their generosity concerning his welfare. When they began suggesting that native Tibetans posed a threat, he knew something was suspicious. This was proven when these officials invited him to a dance performance at their post in Lhasa, telling him to arrive in secrecy (an impossibility for a man in his position). The citizenry found out, and united–tens of thousands of them — they blocked the entrance to the Palace so he could not leave. In the ensuing chaos sponsored by the Chinese army, he fled, eventually setting up camp at Dharamsala, where he resides today.

While in Paris this weekend, both of my cards — a bank-issued Visa ATM and a Mastercard–were denied after having used them once each. This put me in a tough situation, whereby I had to borrow money. Upon returning, I called Bank of America to find out what was going on. Turns out that they have implemented a new security measure to battle fraudulent claims. This is understandable — last year they successfully blocked a $930 charge to a Wal-Mart in Texas, after two smaller charges went through. (The timing was horrific, though — I had just landed in Alabama to lecture at the state university, and found myself having to borrow from my hosts.)

Fraud is a serious crime that is truly bothersome. That someone would steal the numbers of my account and go on a Wal-Mart shopping spree, after spending $35 at two different “wings” restaurants (on a vegetarian’s card, no less), is sad and depressing. Yet equally bothersome was the Bank of America representative’s assurance that all this was for my “personal safety” (a point she reiterated numerous times). She did not mention the article in today’s NY Times that stated the bank “raised its credit loss provisions to $6.01 billion from $1.24 billion,” and had a 77% decrease in its quarterly profit.

Click here to read the full blog on the Huffington Post

By Derek Beres

In the 1970s, Professor J. Scott Armstrong put forth a conundrum to close to 2,000 business school students and executive trainees. Intrigued by the corporatizing of the pharmaceutical industry, he created a scenario (based on an actual 1969 incident) in which a company has a new drug with a projected $20 million profit. The catch: For each million the company nets, there is one death from side effects. The first twenty million meant twenty deaths, and so on thereafter.

Students and trainees were given five options, ranging from immediately pulling the drug from shelves–regulators stated cheaper, more effective pills without such grave side effects exist–to downplaying risks and promoting the drug heavily, creating a media-driven whitewash in which consumers could not discern problems, and therefore readily open their pockets.

The results? Zero took the first option; 79% chose the latter. As former NY Times journalist Melody Petersen writes in her new book, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Sarah Chrichton Books), “For these students and trainees, who were playing the roles of the executives they would soon become, profits took precedence over patients.”

As one can imagine by the book’s subtitle, the above is not an isolated case study. In fact, it shows how the drive to maximize profits at any expense is built into the educational system by which students become executives. Petersen spends the majority of her book citing such examples, moving from hard facts and statistical data to personal interviews with people who have fallen victim to the marketing of pharmaceutical companies or, worse, have lost loved ones during the same process.

Click here to read the full blog on the Huffington Post

By Jill Ettinger

“Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” - Thomas Jefferson

While on a trip to France last week, both of us at InnerContinental found our Bank of America Visa/debit cards unusable due to their new “fraud protection” program. This had me quite curious as my spending amounted to a total cash withdrawal of about $350 (200 euros), and a one-night hotel stay in Bourges, roughly $150. This does not strike me as an outrageous or suspicious spending spree, especially when you consider the strength of the Euro right now.

Even more interesting is that the “fraud block” came after our very first use, which was at an ATM machine in the airport when we arrived on Wednesday morning. It seems a smart thief would have 1) taken out more than a few hundred euros, and 2) tried their luck several more times. And an even (theoretically) smarter bank would have only had to look at recent purchases on the same account of France rail tickets, hotel reservations, plane tickets, etc.

When I called my bank this morning, I was notified that this consumer fraud protection is a new system that rolled out earlier this year designed to protect me. (Aw shucks Bank of America, thanks so much, but are you sure that it’s just about protecting me and not the insurance rate increases you have to pay when fraud actually happens?) I was advised to “alert the bank of my travel plans ahead of time” so as to avoid any suspicion about where I use my card causing them to turn it off, “It’s much better than being embarrassed when you try to make a purchase and your card won’t work,” the girl politely reassured me.

All of a sudden, I felt like I swallowed a bulky bank fee. Advise my bank of my travel plans? I told the script reader on the other end of the phone that my travel plans were frequent, sometimes last minute and often open to change. It’s hard enough for me to alert family and friends of my location, but now I have to add my bank to the list?

A few years ago, I got rid of all my credit cards. The system struck me as a complete scam: interest rates change without notice, and often paying monthly minimums only guarantees prolonged interest payment to these corporate bullies. The few extra frequent flyer miles seemed hardly worth the frustration. So I rely only on cash, even though it may be virtual – tucked in a bank account I’ve had for close to a decade – I spend only what I know I can afford. So having my access to money halted because the bank thinks it’s suspicious for me to leave my house is incredibly disturbing. I probed the operator about this program, and she let me know that “most banks” have implemented this security measure. Which basically means that even if I did have a credit card in addition to my bank card, I would run into the same problem if I don’t alert them to my travel plans. [ed note: I've asked a few of my friends about this "security measure" since we returned, and nobody has heard of such a thing. Also, my credit card DID get turned off, in addition to my debit card. DB]

I told the operator that I had a number of travel plans coming up and could she please put some sort of “frequent traveler” label on my account. (Which in theory should have happened automatically with this system installation, if they looked at my previous transactions coming from all over the country quite regularly.) She assured me there is no such designation for bank customers and the most she could do was to enter in some upcoming travel dates for me, which the system will only allow for a month at a time. I struggled to grasp this as I complied and hurried to end the call.

Seeking distraction, I surfed over to the NY Times only to find this article on the front page outlining Bank of America’s drastic drop in profits: “Bank of America’s global consumer and small business unit, its core source of revenue, reported net income of $1.09 billion, a 59 percent drop from last year. The firm said that the unit’s credit loss provisions had swollen to $6.45 billion for the first quarter, up significantly from $2.4 billion last year, tied directly to weakness in the housing markets and the general economic slump.”

So let me see if I understand this correctly. Bank of America is losing money. Lots of it. And largely in part to the state of our sluggish economy and their answer is to make it more difficult for their consumers to spend money? Clearly I am not an accountant, but something seems overwhelmingly strange about this.

It’s of no concern to me if my bank likes to know where I am. It’s obviously easy for them to track my location from day to day. But being denied access to my funds for not telling them of my travel plans ahead of time has taken our relationship to an uncomfortable new level. This is a homeland security tactic that is only going to increase interest rates, bank fees, frustrations and our country’s favorite modus operandi: Fear.

Suddenly, Europe just got a lot more appealing than as an occasional vacation destination.

By Derek Beres

Whenever possible, I buy organic. This is not just confined to food, but extends to any materials, clothing and household products I can purchase. Yet like many consumers, I am often confused by the available choices, as it has become harder and harder not to buy organic. Like many important terms, once the economics of the idea prospered, it became a vague and often meaningless adjective.

This is not to say that there isn’t integrity in adopting a lifestyle by which you know that the least possible environmental damage is being done in the manufacturing and growing of your purchase. I’ve worked and been around enough people and companies in the natural foods and sustainable living world to know that good intentions abound, and ecological promises are oftentimes followed through. There are a lot of people fusing philosophy and economics in creating a sustainable environment. The hard part is deciding which companies are doing so when two dozen choices stare at you from supermarket shelves.

In general, I adhere to one of Michael Pollan’s golden rules: buy locally. Just this morning I walked through the Union Square Farmer’s Market, which not only informs me of what marketers are gearing up for Spring, but also of what crops are actually available at the moment–not imported internationally or trucked from California. Granted, I too enjoy eating strawberries in March, but knowing the real cost of those berries (including transportation fees, read: gasoline), I often seek out another sweet. When I see “locally produced” signs in Whole Foods, I tend to pick up that product over another, if the product seems of worth.

To read the full article on Reality Sandwich click here

By Jill Ettinger

The 1980s were a strange time in America. I turned nine just a month after Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his first term. I remember my parents explaining we had a new president who used to be an actor. How would he do his acting now, I wondered. My mom had just started working full-time, after my parents’ separation, and although we had a live-in nanny, my siblings and I spent a lot of our time unsupervised.  We were spastically enthusiastic about all things pop culture, discerning our likes and dislikes as they were delivered to us through radio, Solid Gold and peeling through copious stacks of Teen Beat with Cheetos residue on our fingers.

By early 1982, our dad had cable television in his apartment, where we’d spend weekends packing in as many hours watching MTV as he would allow (which was many; Pops is in the TV business, and was just as curious as we were). I soon developed an unrelenting ritual of begging the folks to take me to the mall every weekend so I could do my best to convince them that looking just like Madonna was tantamount to me not falling off the face of the earth. (If only we had Tevo back then, I could have paused the “Borderline” video and counted exactly how many black rubber bracelets one must wear.)

As the “brought to you by the 80’s” culture penetrated our country (like a thick splinter stuck in the foot), a line began to fade where artistic expression became muddled up with corporate agendas. Coca Cola launched a clothing line. I (gasp) owned crest toothpaste earrings. I remember clearly the moment of glory (?) when I purchased them, deciding that they would absolutely define me as some sort of rebel. (Against what I still don’t know.) But it was during Benetton’s bourgeois branding experiment that I was shaken into another reality. When they launched their shamelessly self-promoting line of rugby jerseys - which bore their name boldly across the chest - my father refused to buy one for me. “You’ll look like a walking billboard. They should pay you to wear something like that.” His point was shattering, too true to ignore.  My reliance on corporate agendas began to turn into suspicion.

If identity was defined by what we do or do not wear, then I saw too that important designation relating to what we eat, as it literally is what we become. My body was made of Starburst, Cap’n Crunch, Lemonheads, Twix Bars, Doritos and of course, Pepsi. Sometimes a 7-Up or Sprite would do, but nothing was ever as delicious as Cherry Coke. Maybe Dr. Pepper. Our mom tried to get us to drink juice and other beverages, but they too were just as sugar-laden as the sodas, only less obvious about it.

By 1984, Coca Cola’s famed “secret formula,” which had been virtually unchanged for one hundred years, replaced its number two ingredient with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The shift, like many as they occur, was regarded as just another advent of technology - modern science making lives better and easier. Microwavable brownies and high fructose corn syrup, that’s good modern day Jetson’s living. Syrup made from corn even sounded better for you than just plain old sugar. That stuff makes you fat and your teeth rot. Our family like most hardly gave it a consideration. Though my parents both were “diet” soda drinkers, the taste was too bitter for us kids, and we’d complain until we got to drink the sweet stuff. Obviously  we weren’t the only children who felt that way.

Fast-forward a quarter of a century where HFCS is considered to be the main source of calories in America, and one in three children are likely to develop Type II diabetes. Those same corporations that made us sick by hiding this stuff in virtually every packaged/processed food are now the same ones trying to normalize the disease in hopes that we don’t stop getting it, but rather just learn to live with it.

HFCS has long been touted as a “natural” sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association, but a look at the ballooning waistlines of our six year olds (and its other unhealthy effects) are clearly unnatural. The FDA, who has deflected regulating the term “natural” in the wake of strict organic regulations, are now raising a red flag in the food business, saying that HFCS is not natural and should not be allowed as an ingredient in products that make natural claims.

We’ve recently seen trans fats begin to exit our diets, with some cities banning it altogether. But Coca Cola? It’s an American institution for heaven’s sake. It’s not as simple as just reformulating back to sugar. There’s a huge, thriving corn syrup industry that needs to make record profits every year. So what will happen now that the FDA is suggesting more discrimination be used in marketing HFCS?  How crafty will marketing get to continue to invite people into serious health problems?

One thing I remember most fondly about the ’80s brands (before my disdain for corporations set in) was how needed and loved they made me feel. They were really open about their dependency on my measly allowance. Yes, lonely bag of Skittles, I will buy you and make you part of me. Don’t look so sad. Just keep tasting good for cheap and making cool commercials that look like my favorite videos. As I read this article on Jay Z and Live Nation “reinventing” the music industry yet again, I couldn’t help but think that maybe they should all quit beating around the bush and put the cards on the table with Coke, Pepsi or Taco Bell. (Roca Wear could be Coca wear … ya dig) Heck, those brands are already paying for placement in music videos and sponsoring tours anyway. All they need to do now is get MTV to start showing videos again and it’ll be just like the ’80s never left.