# Another bit of bastardly marketing

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bit-of-bastardly-marketing/662390>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [July 1, 2013, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bit-of-bastardly-marketing/662390 "2013-07-01T20:49:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bit-of-bastardly-marketing/662390/101 "2013-07-06T17:16:56Z")

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> [@Phnord\_Prephect](#):
>
> \<snip\>
> 
> The ingredients list includes the following items, which I am not making up:
> 
> Milk  
> Cream  
> Sugar Water (contains Sugar, Water.)  
> Water  
> Sugar  
> Other stuff.\<snip\>

Oy vey.

> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Semantically null. Food labeling bears about as much correspondence to reality as the Congressional Record does to what Congress says and does - that is, not a whole lot and with so many caveats, omissions, special terminology and hidden assumptions that it only exists to fulfill a technical requirement, not a functional one.

Agreed. The whole point seems to be to obfuscate and mislead, FDA regulations aside. If your average business owner spent as much time misleading his customers as marketers and labellers do misleading all of us, they’d be out of business in no time. That’s bullshit, and everyone knows it, but they get away with it because of all the weaselling; “We’re not _technically_ breaking the law; we’re just obfuscating and misleading; it’s your fault if you don’t want your shopping trip to take five times as long to try to figure out what we’re actually saying.”

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**Author:** ![Psychopants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Psychopants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psychopants)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bit-of-bastardly-marketing/662390/102 "2013-07-06T17:17:54Z")

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Not a rant, and I’m not particularly angry with this except for the fact that it no longer appears on the package, but we buy a certain type of dog treat. Big, bold statement on the package joyfully announced, “dogs don’t know it’s not real bacon!”

Dogs. Don’t. Know. It’s. Not. Real. Bacon!

I always suspected my dogs knew.

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