What corporations call “food”

The poisoned gluten in pet food that is killing people’s cats and dogs is merely the tip of a very large iceberg named Corporatized Food and we owe it to ourselves and our health to examine what we are choosing to consume in the guise of “food.” Believe it or not, the act of defining a substance as food does not make it so. Globalization and its absence of universal food safety standards only worsens the situation.

The well-named ChemNutra Corporation is the importer of the poisoned gluten which, according to reports is manufactured in less than pristine conditions:

“CNN’s John Vause traced it back [to…] a dusty, rural and rundown warehouse in Xuzhou, China, with no walls, no pavement and sacks and sacks of locally made gluten (9,000 tons a year)…”

Gluten is not only used in pet foods, but is also in many human foods as well, and the poisoned gluten was classed as human food grade, so it may well have entered the food supply somewhere.

This poisoned gluten episode brings to mind the recall of nearly twenty years ago, of L-tryptophan supplements that had resulted in the serious illness eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome when consumed, due to production changes that were made by the manufacturer.

What is unclear is why these various substances that are more chemical- than food-like continue to be consumed by people, and even more puzzling is why the items on the following list of ChemNutra’s products would be defined as “food” in the first place:


People (and their pets) are not simple chemo-mechanical bioreactors. We evolved to consume food, not the adulterated chemicals that go into the processed concoctions sold from supermarket shelves today. It should be obvious that it is not wise to rely on factory manufacture of our food products but apparently, there are few among us anymore who are able to accurately distinguish food from non-food. It really doesn’t get any more basic than that, when considering how best to provide sustenance for our selves.