Well, this week marks another milestone in government silliness. No not that one, this one.
Some high paid bureaucrats in DC have decided that instead of labelling foods with already fuzzy terms like “genetically engineered” or as containing “genetically modified organisms,” it would be clearer to label foods with new terms such as “bioengineered.” Or if marketers don’t like that, instead they can (get this) just give you a phone number or scannable QR code where inquiring minds can get more information on their own. And if the company does choose to label, they even have a new logo certain to make everyone feel warm inside:
Well, at least I’m sure glad they didn’t put a bird on it! But come on – who do they think they’re kidding?
Now I’ll grant that the whole topic of GMO’s is complicated. Personally, I am just as concerned with their potential impacts on ecosystems as human health – something that was a part of the legislation that appears to have been ignored in the implementation?
Although tempted to scream or wax eloquent for hours on the subject, I think I’ll just shake my head and walk away. You see, in my opinion, the fix is (mostly) simpler – I just eat real food that doesn’t require labels as much as I can.
Real food is the stuff that comes in its own natural packaging that your grandma would recognize. There is much less confusion when there isn’t a label on a box that you need a decoder ring to understand.
Now granted, some of the shenanigans is now in the form of formerly real food products now bioengineered in its still natural-looking packaging. I certainly don’t think I could tell whether a salmon was genetically engineered or not without a label.
But what we sell is just real beef that’s eaten real grass, and real chickens that have eaten organic grains and bugs while scratching the dirt under trees. Our beef and chicken don’t use any hormones, nor any antibiotics. There’s just nothing in there that’s trying to be anything other than completely natural. It sure makes it easier to read a label.
So having said all that, we had quite some consternation about launching our new BoboLinks product knowing that it would for the first time have to have a label. It can be so tempting to just do the easy thing, but we chose to do the right thing by keeping the product itself clean. We waited until we had this natural fermentation solution figured out to give you a product with even more flavor but no junk.
Hopefully you find the BoboLinks label very simple, too – mostly beef, salt and organic spices:
The only thing that sounds too exotic is that “lactic acid starter culture” thing. It’s basically the same kind of thing your grandma had in her pantry for making sourdough bread that I discussed in an earlier email. That culture is just the microbes that digest the dextrose (a specific sugar) and convert it into lactic acid leaving no detectable sugar behind. We’re really proud to have a label simple for a product that’s so tasty.
Now no need to overthink or make a religion out of this in my opinion. Personally, I just do the best I can as often as I can to eat whole, real food, and I think I’m most of the way there without having to worry about silly labeling games. As I write this, we’ve got some homemade stew in the crock pot made with one of our chuck roasts, carrots, potatoes, onions, sea salt, pepper and some spices from our garden. It’s super clean, and I know my body is going to appreciate every bite as much as my tongue does!
Meanwhile, we’ll do our part to make sure that you can have confidence that everything we sell is good for clean eating.
Russ Conser
Blue Nest Beef Co-Founder & CEO