What are we buying, what are we selling?

Photo by woodleywonderworks under Creative Commons on Flickr

Catherine Crowley (@TheHerbLady on Twitter), recently wrote a wonderful post about advertising and how it hopes you won't notice that it's actually not giving you any information at all. What a sneaky feint! It's hard to make someone feel informed without actually BEING informed, but advertisers pull it off. Read the article here.

I was thinking about the whole paradox of our reliance on advertising to help us make decisions on purchases, and all the information LEFT OUT, while focusing on only the points the advertiser wants to make to sell the product.  Much (but not all) advertising is an illusion using "sleight of word" to direct the audience from information they might otherwise want to know.

I was curious about what big companies may be selling with the right hand, and also with the left hand.  I decided to go to the site of Cargill one of the biggest world-wide companies with ownership of dozens of companies.  They most recently teamed up with Coke Cola to produce "Tru-via" a supposedly natural sweetener made from Stevia, but the won't tell you what the other 'natural' ingredient is, while touting that it is natural

PS Cargill is responsible for not only a meat production monopoly, but some truly horrendous health practices. And they are one of the Big Three controlling food corporations.