The Clean Food Movement explained: huge victory for consumers vs. corporate collusion and secrecy

Sunday, May 18, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Clean Food Movement, food transparency, grassroots activism

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(NaturalNews) While Natural News is one of the best-known voices of the Clean Food Movement, there are actually many millions of voices across the movement. But what is the Clean Food Movement exactly? In this article, I explain what it means and where it came from.

The Clean Food Movement is decentralized, grassroots movement that calls for total transparency about:

* What's in the food (including honest labeling)
* How it was grown or raised
* Where it came from (geographically)
* Whether it's genetically engineered
* What chemicals it contains (such as MSG and aspartame)

These days, food consumers are more sophisticated than ever, and they want to know what they're eating. They want to know what farming methods were used to produce the food, too, and in the case of meat production, they even want to know how those meat animals were raised and treated.

Advocates of the Clean Food Movement believe in honest labeling of GMOs in foods, and they believe in "food democracy" in the sense that consumers should have full access to accurate information about foods on the shelf so they can make informed decisions about what to buy or what to avoid.

Show us the heavy metals!

Clean Food Movement advocates also seek to avoid toxic heavy metals in their foods, superfoods and dietary supplements. They want to know what levels are found in their foods, and they seek out foods with the lowest concentrations possible.

At the same time, they also want to know where their food is grown and whether any of it comes from China, a highly-polluted agricultural producer where 20 percent of the nation's farms are heavily contaminated with toxic heavy metals.

Who opposes the Clean Food Movement? Dirty food producers!

Opposition to the Clean Food Movement comes from producers of dirty, contaminated, genetically modified foods.

The larger the food corporation, it seems, the less they want you to know about what's in their food products. That's why most of the largest food corporations conspired with the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) to violate campaign laws in Washington state with a secret money laundering scheme to defeat GMO labeling laws there.

It's also why the GMA is reportedly planning to sue Vermont, the first U.S. state to pass mandatory GMO labeling laws. Evil industry front groups like the GMA believe you shouldn't know what you're buying and eating, so they want to keep consumers completely in the dark about what's in their food.

But the GMA is fighting against the most sweeping trend in the history of food: the Clean Food Movement. Everybody wants to know what they're eating, and as the scrutiny of foods increases across the board, consumers are going to demand more and more details such as country of origin, heavy metals concentrations, and manufacturing techniques.

Even inside the organic product industry, companies that Natural News revealed as selling contaminated rice protein products are rapidly reformulating and scrambling to introduce newer, cleaner products. I just received word from Healthforce, for example, that all the rice protein they are manufacturing right now is substantially lower in heavy metals than the products they previously sold. (I'm not sure how long it will take for this new batch to replace the old batches on store shelves, but it's on the way!)

Clean Food Movement is about food transparency

Generations ago, most people used to grow a significant portion of their own diets. People maintained backyard gardens, and a much larger percentage of the population was involved in agricultural production than are today.

Today, as the number of farmers is less than 2% of the total population, food production has become centralized and shrouded in secrecy. From the horrendous truths about CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) to the dirty little secrets of contaminated "organic" food imported from China, food production today is conducted behind closed doors, using techniques that food producers would often be horrified to see made public.

Even when it comes to food labels, food corporations hide the truths about their food using deceptive labeling code words. For example, MSG is hidden on labels using the ingredient "yeast extract." A food coloring pigment made from crushed female beetles is listed as "carmine," and toxic chemical preservatives are described on food labels as "added to retain freshness."

There are a lot of manufactured foods people wouldn't buy, you see, if the truth was shown on labels, so the food corporations engage in routine deception and obfuscation to keep consumers in the dark.

Huge victories already achieved for food transparency

The Clean Food Movement is winning in all fronts in this war for honest food, by the way. In addition to the Vermont GMO labeling law, Coke and Pepsi recently removed the flame retardant chemical "BVO" from their products due to a popular petition launched by a teenager!

Subway restaurants announced they would remove a "yoga mat chemical" from their breads after a sustained petition drive by the Food Babe.

And companies everywhere are now reformulating superfoods and supplements thanks to the heavy metals research I've conducted at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab.

Likewise, Ronnie Cummins at the Organic Consumers Association is fighting hard to preserve the very definition of "organic" in the face of extreme pressure by corporations to water down the standard. At the same time, the OCA has announced a massive boycott of all food corporations that belong to the GMA.

This includes a full-on boycott against all products made by Nestle, PepsiCo, Kraft, General Mills, Kellogg, Campbells, Smuckers and more. It even includes many natural-sounding brands owned by these corporate giants: Sweet Leaf Tea, Boca Burgers, Larabar, Alexia, Cascadian Farm, Bear Naked, Kashi, Morningstar Farms, Wolfgang Puck and many more.

There's even a "buycott" app for your mobile phone that will allow you to scan products at the grocery store before you buy them, then it tells you whether the product is part of the boycott.

Through grassroots efforts like these, consumers are increasingly empowered to vote with their dollars and stop financially supporting companies that sell dirty, contaminated, genetically modified foods.

The rules have changed: Grassroots power to defeat corporate collusion

The bottom line in all this is that the rules have changed: grassroots power now trumps corporate collusion.

The power of tens of millions of motivated members of the Clean Food Movement to force changes upon billion-dollar corporations is undeniable. Through the freedom of the internet and sites like Natural News which reaches millions of readers each month, corporations no longer control the narrative. The truth about their foods can no longer be suppressed or hidden, and the real power now belongs to consumers and activists.

That's why I'm excited to be one of the many voices of the Clean Food Movement -- a movement made up of scientists, hippies, journalists and even concerned parents of autistic children.

Each of us is different in our own way -- we each have eccentricities, personalities and some differences in opinion -- but together we are a powerful force for positive global change. Together, we are literally changing the landscape of the food industry and forcing billion-dollar corporations to remove toxic chemicals from their products.

And together, we have much more to achieve in terms of heavy metals limits, country of origin labeling, improved conditions for animals and the nationwide mandatory labeling of GMOs.

Keep up the fight! This is a fight against secrecy and collusion. It is a fight for the "Right to Know." It is a fight for the fundamental human right to make an informed decision of what we choose to buy and consume.

The age of food secrecy is fast drawing to a close. With your help, we can vastly expand the reach of the Clean Food Movement and achieve many more important victories for us all!