“This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it…you can just keep eating it forever.” –The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, by Michael Moss (NY Times Magazine).
Is it a surprise to hear that food companies painstakingly, scientifically manufacture the taste and textures of our foods and drinks to make them addictive? No. Moss quotes Bob Drane, the brains behind Kraft’s Lunchables, who explains how the food industry got to where it is today: “Our limbic brains love sugar, fat, salt… So formulate products to deliver these. Perhaps add low-cost ingredients to boost profit margins. Then ‘supersize’ to sell more…And advertise/promote to lock in ‘heavy users’.”
“When you sell property to your neighbor, or buy any from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another” – Lev. 25:14.
From the Torah verse above our sages learn the prohibition of Ona’ah, overreaching – “the act of wronging another by selling him an article for more than its real worth.”
Are food companies withholding what they know about our tastes and therefore making a profit from our lack of knowledge about food science? We like to think that America was built on Judeo-Christian morals, but that is not the case. The reason that there are no warning labels on bags of chips or cans of soda is because our moral code, when it comes to business anyway, is the moral code of Rome not of Jerusalem (an analogy often made by one of my mentors, Dr. Bruce Powell):
Rome teaches: Caveat Emptor – “Let the buyer beware.”
From the perspective of the food company it is the business of the consumer to find out about a product and make her own decision.
Is such a business plan criminal? No. Is it moral? Again, no.
Jerusalem teaches: “It is forbidden to cheat people in buying or selling or to deceive them.” – Mishnah Torah, Laws of Sales. Judaism teaches that buyer has the obligation of full disclosure to seller.
“So,the food and drink around me, that is cheaper and tastier than healthy food and water, is killing me?” Buyer beware, indeed!
I will admit that some will say that ona’ah, overreaching, on the part of Big Food is a stretch. Nonetheless, I stand my ground, but that ona’ah is taking place in hospitable bills is paramount to anyone who has bothered to ask for an itemized bill from their last hospital visit.
This week’s Time Magazine cover article by Steven Brill is a
must read
for every American. Hospitals, even non-profit hospitals, have such complex guides for deciding payment, which can seem so arbitrary. How do they decide? Hospitals have different pay rates for cash, insurance, and Medicare. Brill give the example of a chest x-ray. A patient might be charged $333, but if it’s billed through Medicare, that same x-ray would pay the hospital $23.83.
Of course, the hospital should be allowed to make a profit, make up for non-payment, or low payment, but it seems that the mark-up something controlled by the secretive “chargemaster- the mysterious internal price list for products and services that every hospital in the U.S. keeps.”
Why are Americans paying so much more for healthcare than other well-off nations without the results? We value the right of hospitals to make money without us fully knowing what we are being charged for. Alas, such is life in Rome. Healthcare costs would not be so bloated if true Judeo-Christian values ruled. Consider this teaching:
“One who has medications, and another person is sick and needs them, it is forbidden to raise their prices beyond what is appropriate.” – SHULCHAN ARUCH, YOREH DE’AH 336:3.
In choosing Rome as our ethical compass, we have led ourselves to a crisis point. Protecting the right of companies to profit at the knowing expense, in dollars and in health, of our citizens is a sure sign that America no longer lives by Judeo-Christian values.
Torah
Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.
