First, on the CSPI litigation: Using the word "natural," even in artificial products, is one way to unfairly sell more "fruit" "drinks." From CSPI litigation director Steve Gardner's blog entry CSPI's Litigation Project Forces Change By Two Major Food Companies:

On Monday, January 8, CSPI sued Kraft Foods for claiming that Capri Sun drinks were "natural," when in fact HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup] was the second ingredient after water. The company immediately announced that it was completely getting rid of the "natural" claim. The same day, Kraft announced that it was getting rid of the "natural" claim. Then, on Friday, January 12, Cadbury Schweppes announced that it, too, would stop calling HFCS-filled 7UP "all natural." This announcement culminated several months of negotiations between Cadbury and CSPI.

Excellent work by Steve and his team. Back when he was assistant attorney general in Texas, Steve led some major multi-state cases against the deceptive practices of cereal companies and fast food companies (here's a transcript of an interesting old interview on those cases here).

It's important to keep a close eye on the advertisers. You can learn about their goals (basically personalized, not mass, targeting) and the tactics they use to achieve them in the PIRG/CDD complaint or the CSPI litigation or the Gardner interview or the New York Times piece.

Or you can check out the 1950s science fiction classics The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth and The Minority Report by Phillip K. Dick. Remember in the recent Spielberg adaptation Minority Report, when the Tom Cruise character John Anderton is walking through the mall and the interactive ads are tracking him and talking directly to him? They identify him by reading his retinal implants: "John Anderton, you look like you could use a Guinness right now." Here's a blog by an ad expert -- Does "Minority Report" Portray A Scary Future -- with some more details.

In the real world, over at Spychips.com, you can find out about how tiny RFID tracking chips with unique individual codes are being inserted into consumer products (and in pets, and even some employees) to achieve some of the same advertising goals as in Minority Report (advertising is only a side-plot in this novel and book, by the way.)

For my money, the scariest dystopian future is the one in the brilliant satire The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth. The advertisers "literally run the world" (review with background) and market products infected with an addictive alkaloid. Consumers are then addicted to products from one or the other of two oligopolistic global corporations. Using one product triggers a cycle-response: for example, hunger for the next product in a tobacco-soda-food cycle. From an excerpt I found on line:

The Crunchies kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could be quelled only by another two squirts of Popsie from the fountain. And Popsie kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could only be quelled by smoking Starr Cigarettes, which made you hungry for Crunchies. Had Fowler Schocken thought of it in these terms when he organized Starrzelius Verily, the first spherical trust? Popsie to Crunchies to Starrs to Popsie?...The minute dosages of alkaloid were sapping my will..He extended a pack of cigarettes...They were Greentips. I said automatically: "No thanks. I smoke Starrs; they're tastier." And automatically I lit one, of course. I was becoming the kind of consumer we used to love. Think about smoking, think about Starrs, light a Starr. Light a Starr, think about Popsie, get a squirt. Get a squirt, think about Crunchies, buy a box. Buy a box, think about smoking, light a Starr. And at every step roll out the words of praise that had been dinned into you through your eyes and ears and pores. "I smoke Starrs; they're tastier. I drink Popsie; it's zippy. I eat Crunchies; they tang your tongue. I smoke --- "