There is also the improvement that at least you couldn't have a company coming up with a totally non-food product and selling it as a food now without listing the ingredients on the label.

Since food ingredient labeling regulations were adopted in the 70's, if Crisco had been newly invented, the couldn't have gotten away with just putting on the label that "there's nothing in crisco except pure crisco," or just saying that it's all vegetable - you need to list all ingredients in a product.

This is a good thing, because even though we have fake meats and other plant based foods that are invoking animal based food words in their names (beyond meat, Impossible burger, just eggs, daiya non-dairy cheese, etc), at least they need to list every ingredient on the label. If the ingredient labeling was not required now, all those fake foods could get away with just calling themselves meat, cheese, and eggs.

So it could be so much worse.

I recall the "thrifty burger" type blends that were so much cheaper than regular hamburger back in the 70's, but I don't recall any clear labeling when those were first available that explained exactly what the burger was blended with, which of course turned out that it was hamburger blended with soy protein.

At least now anyone who cares about what they're eating has a way to find out what exactly is in their food - including additives (all those "contains 2% or less of the following ingredients" in the list - a list which is often longer than the list of primary ingredients) That list also gives you a pretty clear idea of just how much processing the food has gone through.


(We seem to have gotten of the topic of Ozempic pushers... topic drift is real!)