# Serving suggestion **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 15, 2011, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808 "2011-03-15T17:07:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/21 "2011-03-16T18:36:06Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Yeah, if you were only meant to eat one, they wouldn’t pack them two to a bag that doesn’t reseal. What you’re supposed to do is wrap the other one in foil, label it, and stick it in the freezer. Goes great on leftover night! ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/22 "2011-03-16T18:42:13Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > What you’re supposed to do is wrap the other one in foil, label it, and stick it in the freezer. Goes great on leftover night! No no no, it’s supposed to be shared with a friend. If you don’t have friends, you really shouldn’t be eating Pop-tarts. :eek: Maybe they should put a friend on the label! p.s. I am laughing about the can of chicken thing, because my intitial assumption about the serving suggestions was to make it a little clearer what it was once you got it out of the can. If I were in, say, Sweden, and saw a can with a chicken on the front, then yeah, I’d guess there was chicken inside, too. 😛 ETA I once went into an Asian-foods market and purchased a bag of what looked like frozen scallops. I was psyched about the cheapness of it. I was dumbfounded when I opened it, tried to thaw-saute what was inside, and um…it all kinda ended up like taro-paste hockey pucks made for kittens or something. I still have no frigging clue what that was \. Tasted like glue, kinda. That’s what happens when there’s no serving suggestions on the bag! :smack: 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2011, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/23 "2011-03-16T18:42:42Z")
We have a friend who is a food photographer (among other things) and he says that there are strict rules about what you can and cannot do to food in pictures. For instance, I believe putting marbles in a bowl of soup makes it look thicker. If you are selling soup, you are not allowed to do this, if you are selling crackers you can put marbles in the soup you show with your cracker. (If I remember him correctly.) So, perhaps serving suggestion lets them make the product look more appealing by faking the food that goes around the product, if not the product itself. I suspect it also might be to keep anyone from suing for not getting soup along with the crackers. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/24 "2011-03-17T00:53:50Z")
> [@sich\_hinaufwinden](#): > > I’ll save you some looking time - here’s a good place to start: Hot Pockets > > I’ve wondered about the OP myself for this very reason. The front of some of their packages has literally nothing but the Hot Pocket (pure white background) held in what appears to be a woman’s hand, based on daintiness and fingernails. Oh, and steam coming from the Hot Pocket. > > So the serving suggestion is apparently to heat their product and then eat it out of a woman’s hand. Well, I figured out on my own not to eat it frozen, based on the name if not common sense. However I haven’t had any luck in finding a woman to hand feed it to me. But thanks anyways for the suggestion I guess. Ah. So. I had a look at a few Hot Pockets boxes. I didn’t see any hands, feminine or otherwise, but I did see a few auxiliary foodstuffs. Specifically, on the package of Chicken, Broccoli & Cheddar Criossant crust Hot Pockets, behind the cut-open hot pocket on a plate, there springs a big healthy broccoli floret. The Chicken Parmesan Hot Pocket box has a couple of out-of-focus tomatoes in the background. If you look hard at the Sausage Egg & Cheese Hot Pocket box, there’s what appears to be a basket of eggs lurking in the background. And several of the other Hot Pocket varieties are posing with a chunk of cheese. So apparently the “serving suggestion” is for you to serve Hot Pockets along with a large, raw example of one of the ingredients that went into said Hot Pocket. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/25 "2011-03-17T02:28:13Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > For instance, I believe putting marbles in a bowl of soup makes it look thicker. It makes the noodles, and other “chunky bits” of the soup, rise to the surface (since the bottom of the bowl is full of marbles). ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/26 "2011-03-17T03:44:50Z")
I went and looked in my freezer. I have frozen waffles and a frozen dinner in there, and the rest is frozen raw meat or veggies, or stuff that I have made myself and frozen. Anyway, the frozen waffles show the waffles attractively browned and arranged on a plate with butter melting on top and syrup artfully dripping over the stack of them. The waffles happen to be almost pure white in the box. The frozen dinner is shown on a nice stoneware plate, with a leaf of lettuce tucked under the meat patty, and the potatoes are fluffed up. The plastic heating and serving tray is nowhere in sight. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/27 "2011-03-17T03:54:01Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > It’s not a fried chicken dinner, but it is [a whole cooked chicken in a can.](http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2009/04/a-whole-chicken-in-a-can-yummo/) Bon appetit! I’ve always wondered about that. I never got up the nerve to actually buy one, though. Of course I clicked on the unintentionally pornographic fruits and vegetables link. Nanny Ogg would have grabbed her string bag and filled it up. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Am_The_Lorax)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/28 "2011-03-17T12:15:11Z")
The serving suggestion on a box of generic Nilla wafers cracks me up. I guess I’m supposed to scatter them artfully across the table with a few whole vanilla beans with a ceramic pitcher of milk alongside. Ha! The baby does artfully scatter them across the table, though. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/29 "2011-03-17T14:04:11Z")
My little yellow boxes of frozen sausage links shows the sausages not only on a plate with a parsley sprig but one box shows pancakes alongside, and the other what looks like fried taters on its plate. Meaning, I guess, part of a breakfasty meal and not to be heated up in a microwave at 2 a.m. and gobbled down folded in a slice or two of white bread…My mom used to say, if you expect the food in the box to come out looking exactly like the pretty picture, you probably have troubles finding your mouth with a fork. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/30 "2011-03-17T14:54:16Z")
Regarding nutritional info, my noodle bowl has information relative to one half of the noodle bowl. Who the hell eats half a noodle bowl? Although they may want to disguise the fact that if you ate the whole thing you’d be getting 96% of your daily sodium intake at once. ---
**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/31 "2011-03-17T15:44:52Z")
Looking at some of the provisions I keep at work I found that Progresso soups have a picture of a bowl and spoon full of whatever soup is in the can, and no “serving suggestion.” Chef Boyardee and Chunky soup both picture the contents surrounded by ingredients and say" Serving suggestion". So now I’m confused. Why, Campbells, if I had delicious roast chicken, ears of corn, whole onions and celery would I arrange them around my bowl of canned soup isnstead of making my own soup out of them? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Controvert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@The\_Controvert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Controvert)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/32 "2011-03-17T16:06:36Z")
It’s probably because seeing the ingredients implies the soup was freshly made out of those ingredients in a kitchen instead mass produced in giant vats. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808/33 "2011-03-17T17:47:56Z")
I have a bottle of non-dairy fake creamer on my desk, for when they run out of higher quality non-dairy liquid creamer, and the label has a reasonably brown cup of coffee, viewed from above, with “serving suggestion” written by it. Now we know not to eat the stuff from the jar. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/serving-suggestion/574808.md?page=1)