Eating The Message

It seems like as long as processed foods are around, there will always be one food item or food group that will take a hit. In 2004, McDonald’s suffered at the hands of Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me. In 2010, we heard all about the woes of high-fructose corn syrup. 2012’s biggest food culprit seems to be a deceptively simple one to control: sugar.

I’ve been told since birth by my fabulously food-savvy parents to watch my sugar intake: limit candy, cakes, cookies, and ice cream. Easy enough, right?

Wrong. Let me share a real-life example. To meet the demands of my caffeine addiction, I made a hurried trip to McDonald’s yesterday for a large Iced Coffee. I’m a self-admitted coffee snob, so the least I could do to salvage this beverage was to order it black. As I sucked down my first sip of this energy-providing savior, I was met with a mouthful of brown sugar water. I swear it was hummingbird nectar.Turns out, McDonald’s pre-loads their Iced Coffee with liquid sugar, literally. That’s what they call it, 45 grams of it in fact.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t the only one disturbed by this trend. (Who could ignore the debacle that has ensued after his sugary-drink ban proposal?) Blogs have been abuzz with copies of this 5th-grader’s science project since it first appeared on imgur in April.

The photo now has well over 500,000 views on imgur alone. It’s made the rounds on RedditGoogle+, and our very own Facebook page. It’s been reposted hundreds of times from blogs like Canadian award-winner Nag on the Lake and UK blog-o-star Today I Learned. The overwhelming cyber-census seems to be that people are convicted to drop their sugary ways after seeing graphics like this. To me, that speaks to the power of visual information. People are using infographics to tell stories about food like never before.We picked up these statement makers in cyberspace:

Hellmann’s – It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

We’ve all heard the age-old adage “Knowledge is power.” But what is knowledge? I’m convinced the marriage of visual and information shown here is helping us understand food like never before. Gaining this knowledge of food may just be the key we need to gain power over the food we eat.



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