The Lies We Tolerate In Advertising And Elsewhere
We have grown too comfortable with the ways in which we are lied to, misled, and manipulated. Of more importance is the fact that those who lie to, mislead, and manipulate us have grown far too comfortable doing so.
Once you make a concerted effort to notice, you realize how much of an unreality we are living in and how unconcerned with facts or presenting an honest argument those who work at spreading information really are. Marketing and advertising are not fields in which people try to best represent the truth but where people try to stretch the truth as far as legally possible to extract maximum profit.
Case in point: Natural JIF Peanut Butter Spread. I have to think anyone seeing the label is assuming, first of all, that they’re buying peanut butter. If you’re buying JIF you just assume you’re buying peanut butter, and if it says Natural JIF, it should even be more peanut buttery than the stuff they sell as peanut butter, right? Wrong.
Natural JIF is not Peanut Butter but Peanut Butter Spread. Whatever that means, it means it cannot legally be called Peanut Butter, even though their normal product can be. However Natural it may claim to be — and there is no explanation for what that means on the label — It’s not natural enough to be considered Peanut Butter.
It does have half the ingredients of normal JIF, so that’s good: down from 8 to 4. And it is non-GMO, which is good, because the warning for that stuff is hard to find on any label. But then again, normal JIF Peanut Butter is also non-GMO, so it’s hard to tell what makes the SPREAD “natural”.
The JIF label apparently has all the information the law requires it to have, but beyond that, the truth is stretched, contracted, or omitted. Every conceivable selling point is inflated while every stumbling block is written in letters so small anyone without perfect eyesight would likely overlook it. And seemingly meaningless words like “Natural” are thrown in just to stupefy the average buyer who doesn’t have time to research every product and just trusts the system to not do anything unethical. The amount of salt, sugar, fats, preservatives, and other unhealthy ingredients inserted into foods marketed to children demonstrates that the system is most definitely unethical and should not be trusted. The tolerance for lying and being lied to in this society is frightening to anyone who has the time and inclination to carefully read labels. And this acceptance of being lied to has spread far beyond food labels. Not only does such mislabeling lead us to consume unhealthy food, it leads us to consume unhealthy thoughts and arguments. Our mental equivalent of taste buds have become conditioned to mental nourishment that is anything but natural, anything but real. As junk food has weakened our bodies, junk marketing has weakened our minds.
I still don’t know what Natural JIF Peanut Butter Spread is intended to mean, but I do know when I type in “Natural Peanut Butter” in Google that the first result I get is an ad (it is easy not to notice it IS an ad) for Natural JIF. Furthermore, the first page of search results provides a link for it to Walmart which omits the word “Spread” and just lists it as Peanut Butter. People, perhaps the great majority of people, searching for natural peanut butter are going to end up purchasing something that is not even peanut butter at all. The degree of work taken to mislead people is impressive. These people are evil.
This little bit of rumination occurred as I sat down at my computer keyboard with a spoon and an almost-empty jar of peanut butter, the ingredients of which were peanuts and salt. I could have chosen the salt-free version but I made a concession to my taste buds which have been trained by decades of eating corporate food. The label, by the way, proudly bears the USDA Organic stamp. As if manufacturers of organic food should have to clear hurdles in order to prove their food has been grown naturally rather than those who do otherwise having to announce it prominently on their labels.
As with food, so with everything. Our desire not to pollute the planet is being exploited by those who slap a green label on non-biodegradable products. Deception has become an accepted practice with corporations, whether it be about corporate food or corporate politicians. Never trust a corporation. Never. Give them your money as little as possible. And never, under any circumstances, give them your trust.