A subtle and probably pernicious trend in the U.S. food supply seems to be occurring virtually unnoticed. If one reads the information on a food package, as it seems few do, one finds that many food in the U.S. today are composed almost entirely of ingredients. The use of ingredients in foods has become so widespread and flagrant that one can hardly guess what will appear next on the growing list of polysyllabic horrors printed on packages. Through insouciance or ineptitude, we have let the situation get quite out of hand.
Labels seem to be intended rather to obfuscate than to inform. Aside from water, which evidently abounds in these products (though who knows where it has been before it goes into the food?), hardly any of the names that appear on these lists are...