Lying Unilever commercials

Translated from Nieuws.nl in the Netherlands today:

Golden wind-egg for misleading Unilever bread

(Novum) Utrecht – Unilever has won the Golden wind-egg. The food manufacturer received the award for most misleading product of the year, for the Blue Band Goede Start! white bread. About that bread, Unilever claimed for years that it supposedly is as healthy as wholemeal bread. Unilever has already adapted the text on the packaging.

Unilever did that just before getting the “award”

According to the organizer of the prize awards, Unilever violates the trust of its customers with lies about its products. “The biggest food manufacturer in the Netherlands can now set an example for the entire industry by making its advertising and marketing honest.”

The bread was voted by visitors to the site of foodwatch to be the worst misleading product. Second came the “little fruit bottle” of Nestle, a superfluous follow-up milk brand for babies. Third was the drink Crystal Clear Shine Cranberry Elderberry Blossom by Heineken, which contains only one hundredth of a teaspoon of cranberry.

Food Sovereignty Responds to Corporate Takeover of Food Production. Yve le Grand, Truthout: “Although the credit crunch has pushed the issue of the global food crisis to the background, it is still going on today. In fact, the number of chronically hungry people worldwide has risen and is estimated to amount to 967 million people according to the new Declaration of Human Rights, launched by the Cordoba process at the end of 2008, on the occasion of the Declaration’s 60th anniversary. The world famine in the 1970s led the Declaration to introduce the concept of food security: ‘… the availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices.’ This definition of food security, which is basically a technical matter of providing adequate human nutrition, led to the assumption that more food production would solve the problem of mass starvation”: here.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, M.S., R.D., L.D.: “Healthy” Restaurant Foods to Avoid: here.

100 Percent Scared: How the National Security Complex Grows on Terrorism Fears. Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: “Here, then, is one of the strange, if less explored, phenomena of our post-9/11 American age: in only one area of life are Americans officially considered 100% scared, and so 100% in need of protection, and that’s when it comes to terrorism. For an E. coli strain that could pose serious dangers, were it to arrive here, there is no uproar. No screaming headlines highlight special demands that more money be poured into food safety; no instant plans have been rushed into place to review meat and vegetable security procedures; no one has been urging that a Global War on Food-Borne Illnesses be launched. In fact, at this moment, six strains of E. coli that do cause illness in this country remain unregulated. Department of Agriculture proposals to deal with them are ‘stalled’ at the Office of Management and Budget. Meanwhile, the super-toxic E. coli strain that appeared in Europe remains officially unregulated here. On the other hand, send any goofus America-bound on a plane with any kind of idiotic device, and the politicians, the media, and the public promptly act as if – and it’s you I’m addressing, Chicken Little – the sky were falling or civilization itself were at risk”: here.

Hedge funds are behind “land grabs” in Africa to boost their profits in the food and biofuel sectors, a US think-tank says: here.

Kevin Kiley, Inside Higher Ed: “A series of reports by the Oakland Institute charge that several prominent American universities – including Harvard and Vanderbilt Universities and Spelman College – are investing in hedge funds and companies that are driving African farmers off their land. The California-based think tank, which focuses on social, economic and environmental issues, is producing a series of reports on how Western entities are investing in land in Africa and the effects of those investments. In the reports, the institute alleges that these investments are increasing price volatility and supply insecurity in the global food chain, and not returning to African nations the benefits that were promised. The main link the reports establish between Harvard, Vanderbilt and Spelman and land development in Africa is a London-based hedge fund called Emergent Asset Management”: here.

International food crisis due to agribusinesses and speculation: here.

The United Nations warned today that growing swathes of the global population will no longer be able to afford to eat in the next decade: here.

Ban Proposed on Export Restrictions That Undermine Food Security. Isolda Agazzi, Inter Press Service: “Egypt has initiated a proposal in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to ban export restrictions on farm products to poor countries that are net food importers. The Group of 20 has also exhorted the upcoming WTO ministerial conference to adopt a specific resolution on export restrictions… Export restrictions on foodstuffs were one of the key drivers of the food crisis and price spikes during 2007 – 2011”: here.

“Corporate power and profit-driven interests dominate the management of each level of food distribution.” Here.

More than 20 environmental organisations across Europe are calling on the EU to stop the environmental damage caused by EU biofuels targets with the help of Peter and Jane, characters in this specially-created animated short film: here.