Food is big business. And the companies producing them are producing ENGINEERED PRODUCTS not food.

Consequently, like any good marketer, they know how to TRICK you in believing that their products are healthy and wholesome.

They are masters at packaging and promoting that MAKES YOU buy.

If you aren’t careful of how and what you eat, you are treated like a cattle led to be slaughtered.

Why do I use such strong words?

For starters, read the recent AP story on how companies are fighting to make their foods appear more natural. (Read http://bigstory.ap.org/article/food-companies-work-make-it-look-natural)

Food companies are responding to the adage that people eat with their eyes. So instead of making the food truly natural, they have taken to packaging and marketing that tricks us to believe that they are natural. Realizing that Americans are turning their noses up at foods that look overly processed they are intentionally designing food products to look uneven and made by hand or by nature.

See examples below:

· Domino’s asks workers not to make the rectangles on its "artisan" pizzas too perfect.

· McDonald’s makes the Egg White Delight sandwich’s egg look jagged and irregular. McDonald’s has four distinct shapes for its Chicken McNuggets. The bone, ball, bell, and boot shapes make consumers feel like they’re not eating homogeneous product.

· Kraft Foods worked hard to make the turkey from its "carving board" line look uneven. And Kraft Foods took more than two years to develop a process to make the thick, uneven slabs of turkey in its Carving Board line look like leftovers from a homemade meal rather than the cookie-cutter ovals typical of most lunchmeat.

· Wendy’s softened the edges of its hamburger patties to make them seem less processed.

· Hillshire Farm added caramel coloring to the edges of its turkey lunchmeat. The coloring was supposed to "give the impression that it was just sliced from a Thanksgiving roast.

· Many burger patties arrive at fast food restaurants with the grill marks already charred on.

Second, if you are interested, read the book from Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and author of "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back."

Third: Your money is pouring into these players. Over the past five years, the overall packaged food industry in North America grew 14 percent to $392.5 billion and the fast-food industry meanwhile rose 13 percent to $225.6 billion. (Euromonitor International)

WHAT DO YOU DO?

Do Something about it. Don’t sit still.

Avoid processed food as much as possible.

Eat more food from plants rather than food made in a plant.