http://www.nuval.com/

We need to talk about modern capitalism in order to understand why Americans are the most obese people not just in the world today but in all of human history. The main thing produced by capitalism at this stage is the desire to consume (Galbraith, 1998). This desire to consume is created and maintained through a system of propaganda that permeates every aspect of modern life. It is called advertising. This propaganda does not exist to keep Americans well-informed or to encourage them to make decisions that are in their own best interest. This propaganda is skillfully designed, at great expense, by professionals as well versed in the arts of persuasion as anyone you would find at the best universities teaching Rhetoric, Mass Communication, Psychology or any other disciple that could contribute to persuading the consumer to consume.  

Go into any supermarket and look around. You will see relatively few raw foods in relation to the number of prepackaged or pre-prepared potential taste-treats.  These taste-threats are designed not to nourish but to satisfy a desire to consume created by advertising.  These taste-treats may be advertised as “healthy” or “nutritious” or otherwise marketed by appeal to their supposed value as food. It is important to keep in mind, however, that they are designed not to provide nourishment but to satisfy a desire to consume created by advertising. A product that provides little or no nutritional value but satisfies this demand will become a supermarket staple. Good food that does not will disappear. What is readily and easily available to consumers at this time is largely determined by this principle of natural selection as applied to supermarket shelf space. Survival of the fittest, in this context, has nothing to do with nutritional value and everything to do with satisfying a desire to consume that is created through propaganda.

The web-site that I would like to talk about is http://www.nuval.com/ . Many consumers who want to lose weight or lower their cholesterol buy products that claim to help them do so which in fact do not. These products continue to sell and to cheat the good intentions of consumers because most of the information about “nutrition” available to consumers is propaganda of the type discussed above. The problem basically is that lies and mis-information will be prominently displayed in “sponsored results” online and in advertising that is embedded in the public’s favorite TV shows like hooks hidden by the bait. Google and CBS are in the same business. They sell the ears and eye-balls of viewers who are also consumers. Their paying customers are corporations who want to convince all those viewers to desire and consume what these corporations produce.

The Nuval web-site is an attempt to counter this. They are a Consumer Reports for food. Capitalists are not evil but only greedy. They will gladly supply good, nutritious food to consumers who know enough to demand it and are willing and able to pay. Nuval exists to cater to such consumers and increase their numbers by making it easier to be such a consumer. This is the best way to increase the demand for good food. Capitalists are equally good at supplying demand whether they create it or consumers create it by doing the necessary work to educate themselves about what they ought to demand given what is really good for them. Nuval makes that necessary work a lot easier.

Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Affluent Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.