Daily Archives: September 21, 2016

Misleading advertising Kroger ground sirloin burgers: Who else got fooled?

Rants

It is a difficult task, to say the least, to keep big companies like Walmart, Kroger, Macy’s, Ford, all the biggies, none is exempt, in line.  Who can do it.  We can’t, except by one phone call at a time.  Seemingly useless gestures, and they probably really are useless, but I am compelled to speak sometimes. THis is one time.  I look at beef as an “occasional” treat, most of you do not, but the data are clear, eating lots of red meat just does contribute to disease risk.  I did get this package of ground beef patty bag, how I got it is sort of irrelevant, but I read the front,  85% lean, 15% fat.  I have seen that add at their meat counter, it seemed reasonable enough.  BUT, look at the label.  Photos of front, of claim for “lean-ness” and compare that with the nutrition label on the back…. WHAT…. the product is not 15% fat at all, but 62% fat…  do the math. (in all due respect and honesty, kroger did call me back with the information i requested — this doesn’t mean that the labeling is not deceptive, just in accordance with the FDA, and it means at least they responded via customer service — it took about a week however)

kroger_ground_beefI called Kroger,  and of course, got the run-a-round.  What is there about this advertising that is fair…. nothing.  You read the front, it gives you percent lean (at least that is what they want you to think) and in fact there are some odd calculations going on here.  What I gleaned (albeit kind of piecemeal… cause I think he was hedging) from the kroger customer service call…. is that they take a piece of meat that is 85% lean, and then add an additional 15% fat….  what…  that is not what this label says, but it is reflected in the nutrition label.  He claimed the labeling was according to FDA USDA guidelines….   if this is so, and I doubt that they are restricted from explaining the calculation on the package so that people like me are not “hoodwinked”…  then we can only laugh at everyone at the FDA and USDA together.  How sad… and you and I pay, we pay for the fraud, we pay for the pain and suffering of our families, we pay for the added health care, and we also pay Kroger profits, and we pay for the salaries of the FDA and USDA staff.  We pay way way too much.

kroger_ground_beef_1and per their own website…. what the heck is  “USER MODIFIED FOOD”

Wondering how many calories are in Ground Round 100% Pure Beef?

Manufactured by Kroger
User modified food.”

COMMENT: Kroger did call me back with info…. discrepancies lie in the front page units of measure (grams) and the back page calculation units of measure (calories). I should have figured that out myself, nevertheless… the front page is deliberately used to misadvise individuals on the fat content.  fat=9 calories per gram protein=4 calories per gram, which I knew, but didn’t put 2 and 2 together.  DID YOU?

Alveolar macrophage from a mouse that breathed E2 for 3 hours, 5 day recovery

Legacy Perfluorocarbons, Ultimate order, the cell

There is an amazing thing that happens to fluorocarbons, in general, when they are taken in by phagocytic cells in the body. It was my observation in the mid 1970s and it remains today, but not well reported: that is — that many (depending upon what species of perfluorochemical it is) types of perfluorocarbon, whether breathed or injected as emulsions, tend to go through a phase of bubble coalescence and then re-emulsification – by the lysosomal enzymes) before they are finally “exhaled” through the cell membranes. I was pretty sure I could tell which perfluorocarbons would be removed in a timely manner from the body by how they behaved in the re-emulsification processes within lysosomes.

Here is an alveolar macrophage from the lung of a mouse which liquid-breathed E2 for three hours and was allowed to recover for 5 days before lung tissue was taken.  See the two types of droplets of E2…. some tiny and some coalescing into bigger droplets. All the dense material around the droplets i believe to be lysosomal enzymes.   This image below is a crop (unfortunately the original print i marked all over and couldn’t clean, so this is a rescan of the negative… i don’t have a wet darkroom any more) it could be printed  again, and scanned, and pseudocolored (i might do it ?? to make a great poster in addition to being a useful image for studying.  (unretouched except for contrast enhancement of the scanned negative – neg 1340 block 4835 swiss albino mouse 16.15g, 3 hrs liquid breathing five days recovery, right mid lobe tissue block, 1-30-1975, fixed in modified Karnovsky’s and osmium. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of little E2 droplets and a few big ones.

1340_4835_E2_3hr_5d_rec_alveolar_macrophage