By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

In case you missed the special report on MSNBC courageously admitting that watching TV—including MSNBC—is, well, bad for you, I want to reopen the case, as it touches on many of my prior pieces. As a consumer advocate I have long taken issue with the products pushed on TV, as well as what the so-called Entertainment Industry (“The Industry” to insiders) has always referred to as a “product” as well, namely their programs. We literally “consume” what TV has to offer, and, if the sponsors have their way, which history shows to have been very much the case, we consume all the crap they are selling, both internally and externally, as well.

But now research into this insidious beast has uncovered whole new levels of peril. Starting with the least harmful first, people who watch TV tend not to talk to each other. Families sit in silence munching their Papa John’s and staring blankly at the screen. There is no interchange, no conversation (God forbid you should interrupt that cool Quiznos ad!), no wisdom is being shared, in short, no interaction or communication between the Watchers. And you know what that makes those who do such things on a daily, hourly basis? As my stepdaughter would say, “Borrrriiiinng.”

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

This week I feel the need to pass on a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest about truth in advertising, or lack thereof. I previously wrote about the so-called “Smart Choice” food labels the big corporate processors are putting out, all in the name of further enhancing their bottom line (and probably your waistline). It gets worse.

What CSPI has done is to isolate a list of flat out lies now commonplace in corporate processed food labeling. I guess with so many friends in high places, they do this because they can, and that leaves it up to you and me to sort out the truth from the fiction.

For starters, there is the not-so-small matter of sugar content. We are a nation of sugar addicts, and small wonder, given the power those pushers have, from the lowliest congressman to the highest Supreme Court justice on their side, to help get sugar into everything from ketchup to cheese.

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Let's face it. Nobody wants a body stinkin' up the place. My pre-pubescent daughter still thinks she'll smell like a flower forever just by being cute. No need for, say, showers, or clean socks. This will change, and soon. Meanwhile, we grownups who know better fall all over ourselves stocking up on deodorants, antiperspirants, foot powders, body powders, body washes, scented this, and perfumed that, all in an effort to defeat the forces of nature that my daughter hasn't yet wised up to.

Of course, all we really need is a little soap now and then, with the fewer other ingredients (such as scents and deodorants) the better, both cost-wise and health-wise.

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

As we listen to politicians and pundits knock ideas around (usually with a sledgehammer) about how to save money and cut costs—so long as rich people don't have to pay, earmarks are protected, the military industrial complex continues with profits as usual and nobody is inconvenienced—here are a few suggestions, courtesy of people who are actually working to find solutions to our increasingly daunting problems.

First off, energy consumption. God forbid anyone should have to surrender their Escalade in favor of a disgusting hybrid, let alone give up their giant off roading truck with fat tires, just because somebody thinks they should save energy. Screw that. We may as well try to figure out how many politicians it takes to screw in a light bulb (answers welcome). But speaking of screwing in light bulbs, did you know that up to 5% of energy consumption in many countries, and even more in most American cities is being expended on street lighting? It's those big mercury vapor lights that are sucking up electricity like an SUV sucks up, oh never mind. But the solution couldn't be more simple, and it's what many, if not most of us are already doing at home: using low energy (LED) light bulbs. This would reduce energy costs necessary for lighting by 60% or more, according to the EU. These lights last up to ten years and use a fraction of the energy: usually 50-60 watts for a streetlight. As a case in point, one small city alone, Ann Arbor, Michigan, has saved $100,000 per year just by switching to LED street lamps.

Valentine Daze

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

In case you somehow didn't notice, the next commercial holiday, better yet official Hallmark Holiday (there is actually an official list of Hallmark Holidays), is upon us. This means lots of new business opportunities for your local Rite Aid, Walmart, Albertsons, Dollar Tree, and of course Macy's, Nordstrom's, etc., in case they didn't manage to empty your bank accounts last official holiday, i.e. Christmas/Hanukah, Kwanza, New Year’s (let's see, that would be what, about a month ago?).

Nicely timed at approximately four months from that October sugar fest, Halloween, you can now go all out once more to shower your loved one with future cavities, obesity, diabetes, and yet more $3 meaningless cards. And for your convenience, those once-coveted Cadbury chocolates will now be brought to you by the people who make fake cheese.

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

We've all read and I have previously written some of the horror stories about what's happening to the rain forests being converted to beef ranches in our zeal to get yet more and bigger Big Macs packed onto our ever expanding waistlines and corporate bottom lines.

I've also written about a dozen good reasons not to drink soda, not that switching to bottled water is any any better (I've written about that as well). But here are about a billion more reasons not to drink soda—at least not at your favorite fast food emporium, especially if you can't resist all those unlimited refills and supersized cups they give you.

A recent study by scientists at Hollins University and published by the International Journal of Food Microbiology now reveals that 48% of the beverages dispensed contained fecal bacteria, including Coliform and E. coli (11%).

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

I recently met a woman who was working on preparing a food show for so-called vegans. I used to think vegans were sci-fi characters—aliens from Planet Vega. Maybe I wasn't that far off, not to offend anyone. But like perhaps PETA people, vegans do tend, it seems, towards being ideologues. And to me, ideology and food are not a good mix. I hate being preached to when I'm trying to enjoy a good meal. Especially about the rights and wrongs as to whether or not hogs have feelings, or corn has a soul (I have checked, and it does not!). It gives me indigestion. No doubt hogs do have feelings (and I do not take a position on this issue, by the way), but so do starving children in Haiti, and you have to eat something, and God did make us omnivores, whatever you may think or believe. Or if God didn't do it, Mother Nature did, because biologically speaking, omnivores we are.

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

This being Martin Luther King Day, might be a good day to take a look back at history. From a consumer perspective, we have never been worse off than we are now, due to inequality and inequity in the marketplace, starting of course on Wall Street, following the course set by Madison Avenue, and ending uptown with the Big Banks. I'm not sure if Dr. King ever went to New York, but maybe he should have.

What he would have seen then, as now, was a mantra of greed overwhelming all other issues and attributes, human and otherwise. It was greed, of course, that led to slavery, and maintained it for four centuries. Who needs to work for a living if they can live the high life on somebody else's back? And religion should have put a stop to it, but that too fell to greed long before there were any colonies, including poor Haiti.

It is greed that dominates Congress today, and has handcuffed virtually every effort to bring justice, equity, and equality to the marketplace. It is greed that has prevented healthcare from becoming a service instead of an industry, ever since Teddy Roosevelt tried to clean it up. And of course, nobody has demonstrated more greed (arguably apart from the Big Banks) than Big Pharma.

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Here's a cuddly story for you recent and future child-bearers: your kid may be a crawling chemo lab. The Environmental Working Group, with whom I've worked in the past (on my 2003 story for Worldwatch about perchlorates in most of our salads), has now come up with a new study about where all these chemical products and byproducts have ended up over the past few decades:

Us.

And now, our kids. Starting as fetuses, as I alluded to last week.

Nine out of ten randomly selected infants in a California hospital tested for chemical pathogens were found to have BPA in their systems, courtesy of their plastic baby bottles and food containers. BPA is an endocrine disruptor that imitates or duplicates the body‘s natural hormones with sometimes very damaging results.

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Last year I posted a dispatch that included a note that warming up your car in winter is not a good idea. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but it really makes a lot of sense. And since this misunderstood and overused practice has not abated in the interim (in fact it should not be done at all), the onset of winter once more warrants a reprisal.

The other day I was out with my wife enjoying our mild Seattle winter weather (the sun was actually shining and it was in the high 40s) when I noticed a neighbor—a young woman, as it happened—come out of her unit, walk to her car in the parking lot, start it up, and go back inside. I suppose her thinking was that she'd have a nice warm and cozy car to blow hot air up her skirt when she was good and ready to drive off to work or go shopping, or whatever. This is just the sort of thoughtlessness that has gotten the whole world in a heap of trouble the last century or so, especially the last decade or so of our “me first” and the heck with the rest of the world mindset.

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

We all do it: overdo it. And if you haven't yet overdone it this year, you're overdue to do it. And if you haven't overdone it for Thanksgiving and Christmas, now's your last chance, what with New Years looming and all. Not that you need any prodding. The only notion more compelling than bidding a fond farewell a la “don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out” to the current year, is the eternal hope that maybe, just maybe, given yet another chance to get it right, we might finally do so. Hence all that optimism and all those silly pledges that so many of us make, those so-called “New Year's Vows” that are about as legitimate and valid as most people's, well, marriage vows.

Too late for World Peace this time around. Or even the end to the war(s), or the Great Recession. Peace on Earth? Dream on. Peace on Mars, maybe. And yet we still hope. And strive. And meanwhile, to get through the night, or at least New Year’s Eve, we overdo it. Too much of a good thing, we tell ourselves. So what? Moderation in all things should include moderation, right? Hell, that's my own credo. So we can and will look forward to one more year-end bender; one more extra slab of ham, or pie, or both; one more bottle of Merlot; one more argument with our conservative (or liberal) brethren; one more double dip of guacamole followed by chocolate chip; one more toast with somebody else's liqueur to celebrate whatever straw we're grasping for.

By Gene Ayres

One of my longtime favorite movies is practically a cliche to even mention these days, but I still love it, if only because it's so quaint: It's a Wonderful Life. I don't know if any George Baileys actually exist anymore, if they ever did, but I am definitely familiar with the Mr. Potter archetype, because he seems to be manifested in our national psyche now as a role model. Case in point, the national Chambers of Commerce, most of the seats in the United States Congress (or at least in their handlers and bosses), and what passes these days for representative government.

Welcome to Pottersville. It's where we live now. (Oh, and Merry Holiday of Your Choice, secular or otherwise, according to your beliefs and local regulations). And when you do go out on the town, just leave your name at the door please, for future harassment, spam, mailbox flyers, telemarketers, warrants, and solicitations on your way out.

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

I've mentioned before in previous dispatches that a lot of disturbing research is surfacing around the globe, indicating that cell phones may not be all that good for you. Or me. I know, I know, this comes under the category, particularly in this gift-seeking season, of sounding like, well, a curmudgeon. After all, cell phones are the greatest invention since, well, white bread. Or at least, since the PC, and we all love them to pieces.

For what that's worth, when Sir Walter Raleigh first showed up in the Queen's court from a sojourn to the Colonies with a boatload of New World produce, people at the time felt the same way about tobacco. Sometimes, the more we learn about something, the less appealing it might be. We're going through this painful transition as we speak with carbon-based energy and transportation vehicles. It's proving really hard (against huge deliberately placed obstacles legal and political worldwide) to make this change away from oil dependency to something that won't fry the planet, and we are resisting it with what might very well turn out to be every fiber of all our beings.

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

The Holiday Season is upon us. And a lot of us use this as yet another good excuse to indulge, or perhaps overindulge, or, to apply my favorite maxim: moderation in all things. Including moderation.

For health reasons alone (and I feel so very righteous writing this!) I have one glass of wine every evening for dinner (OK, OK, sometimes two on weekends and, well, Holidays). The French have been doing this since they were, well, French, and they are way healthier than we are, even with all that horrible national health insurance they're stuck with.

By Colleen Rothe

One of my kids’ favorite breakfasts is frozen toaster waffles. They are particularly fond of the Kellogg’s brand. I make them eat the healthier variety of the product, although I still balk at its ingredients, but our little town’s grocery store hasn’t had the healthier choice. The teenager at the checkout just shrugged and said they didn’t get any in. I wasn’t too concerned about it; I found another brand, which was less expensive and I thought had a better taste. But my Eggo-eating brood was too curious to let the questions remain unanswered. Today, we found out why the store was lacking.