The other day I had a pickel. It listed the ingredients as cucumbers, salt, etc…
Today I put some relish on my veggie burger and The first ingredient was pickles. No mention of cucumbers.
How percise must they be in their labeling?
Interesting question. Usually, they say something like:
Chocolate Chip Cookies Wheat flour, sugar, chocolate chips (contains chocolate, milk, sugar, partially dehyrated soybean oil), milk, butter…
So on and so forth. My only guess is that pickles are a simple enough food that it’s assumed everyone who cares already knows what a pickle is, as opposed to guessing the components of chocolate chips.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
FWIW, here’s the Straight Dope from the FDA. It’s their “Food>>Labeling” page. Enjoy!
http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/label.html
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
As a person that suffers from food allergies, the FDA food labeling sucks. What is “natural flavors”? What is “coloring”? These are commonly found of food ingredient labels.
Sometimes in locally produced products (like stuff off of the deli bar at the grocery store) they will just say “breading”. What the hell is that? That probably means wheat, but it could mean rice or soy flour. There is probably something in the breading to make it stick. Is that milk or eggs? I don’t think these foods are subject to FDA regulation or something because they are even worse than national products.
Good question! We had a similar question come up for health reasons while drinking Lipton tea…ready made in the 2-liter bottle. Anyway, the question concerned caffeine. Caffeine was not mentioned in the ingredients, but neither was tea!
We started questioning if it should at least say “tea leaf extract” to assure us it wasn’t all artificial flavors. Also, some teas are caffeine free…but is this product?
I WAG they only have to mention caffeine if it is added as opposed to occuring naturally.
As for the relish…you raise a good point.
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
I failed to explicitly say in my previous post that, for health purposes, you’d think they should be more precise about the ingredients.
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV