Natural selection is a science term closely associated with another, survival of the fittest. Both explain the hows and whys some species evolve while others die out. And in a sense, natural selection is also a suitable explanation for why some food-processing companies thrive while others go bankrupt.

But there's an immoral irony in that second survival of the fittest that's important to discuss. For food-processing companies to evolve financially, usually consumers must devolve nutritionally. They must purchase highly refined and sugar-infused foods that create superior profit margin but inferior human energy, an increase in disease, and excess weight.The so-called consolation in all this? The inferior fuel that can make you sick and fat tastes better at least to the corrupted taste buds of mainstream America.Last week's column explained this "opposite of evolution" of processed food by specifically citing that General Mills has made two not-as-healthy variations of a well-known and really healthy cereal, Original Fiber One, ostensibly to grab a bigger share of the market.I wrote that I have no problem with General Mills or any other company producing nutritionally inferior food especially since so many people clamor for it but that I see it as my job to make you aware of such practices. Replace one cup of Original Fiber One in your diet with one cup of Fiber One 80 Calories Chocolate every day for a week, for example, and you not only consume 121 fewer grams of fiber that week but also 186 calories more of sugar.Make that swap and that swap only for a year, and you'll consume nearly 10,000 additional calories of sugar.And there's yet another food-producing practice that's a type of devolution of which you need to be aware. It has its roots in research done years ago by cigarettes companies and is why so many of them also marketed candy cigarettes.The research found that cigarette smokers often smoked the brand of cigarette they chewed in candy form as a child. Seems the subjects associated the positive memories of childhood along with eating that candy.Some call this brand impacting, and it occurs when past positive product experiences color future purchases.That occurs today in a slightly different form in food production and primarily with adults. Food producers know that certain brand names bring to mind nutritional wholesomeness and healthiness. So they use that to their advantage when they create a new product.In essence, they borrow the name along with all the healthy connotations associated with it to steal your business.Case in point: General Mills now produces Chewy Bars, Brownie Bars, Streusel Bars, and cookies and adds a bit of fiber to each as well as the Fiber One trademarked name. We associate the name Fiber One with that oh-so-good-for-you cereal, so any other products in that line have to be just as healthy, right?Wrong. While the Fiber One versions are arguably far healthier than other companies' versions of chewy bars, brownies, streusels, and cookies, they're no nutritional match for Fiber One Original cereal. But General Mills hopes you associate the new foods with the well-established one, and eat these snacks liberally.For you, there's a danger in that.Though the Fiber One versions of these snack foods usually contain fewer calories than their competitors, the cals still add up.Consider the Fiber One Chocolate Chunk Soft-Baked Cookie, the new General Mills offering that's really the reason for the last two columns. A sample cookie was inserted into a Sunday newspaper that I purchased late last summer.I got interested and agitated when I read the nutritional information panel.While this cookie does contain 5 grams of fiber, which is 20 percent of the clearly-too-low established daily requirement, you need to also ingest 120 calories and 10 grams of sugar to get the aforementioned fiber.And the size of the cookie leaves something to be desired. If you're healthy and active (and probably a male), you could easily down two or three of them at the end of meals and not think twice about it.Until you step on a scale a few weeks later.General Mills is not the only big company that plays this goodness-by-association game. Even the Kashi Company, long known for offering healthier alternatives of all sorts of convenience foods even frozen pizzas does so.Their first-ever product, Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs, is just about the perfect complex-carbohydrate source. I eat it as a snack just about every weeknight, but I have to get it shipped in from the company's plant in California.Seems consumers in the Mid-Atlantic region didn't buy enough of it for the company to continue to ship it to that area. Typical consumers probably don't like the dry taste accentuated by a total lack of sugar.But guess what you can find in the Mid-Atlantic region instead? Kashi 7 Whole Grains Honey Puffs Cereal.What's the difference between the two? Fifty calories and 6 grams of sugar per serving.I eat on average 20 servings of the original a week. If I wouldn't get it shipped to me and would eat the same amount of what's offered in local stores, I'd consume 1000 additional calories and 120 grams of sugar albeit some of if naturally occurring per week.And unless I'd cut back on other foods or increase my exercise time, I'd be at least 10 pounds heavier in a year.