I recently noticed that the nutrition information for a frozen pizza was for 1/5 of a pizza. :smack: Who eats 1/5 of a pizza, anyway?
One I’m curious about is ‘Get your second [product] free! Just pay an additional fee.’
If you have to pay an additional fee, then it isn’t free, is it?
Or exactly 30%. Don’t be so limiting. :rolleyes:
And how about “No sugar added”? No sugar ADDED? You mean, to the mountain of sugar already in the product?
‘Reduces the appearance of -’
I saw a package of Orville Redenbacher popcorn in the supermarket that proudly announced it was a “whole-grain food”.
This should not be a surprise. You would expect that a food product based on whole kernels of corn that are heated until they puff would be a whole-grain food.
Maybe they started with a mountain of sugar, and added everything else.
And of course, “Gluten Free!!!”… water, corn chips, meat, and candy.
“Save up to …” Geico I’m looking at you.
Automobile dealers don’t have sales, they have “sales events”. A sale means the price is lower than normal. A sales event means nothing.
Real estate has price points rather than prices, though they have the exact same information.
Supports and Promotes:
Health foods and vitamin supplements always proclaim “Supports liver function”, “Supports” heart health, “Promotes bone strength”, “Promotes brain function”. Obviously neither word means anything verifiable at all.
“Low fat” = check the sugar content, because if you don’t use up the added sugar in physical activity, the unused calories will get stored in your body as - guess what?
“No High-Fructose Corn Syrup”: Technically true, but completely uninteresting, because HFCS isn’t the problem. Calories are the problem, and possibly glycemic index, neither of which have very much to do with HFCS in specific. Plus, of course, a lot of foods have plenty of fructose without technically having any HFCS at all. It’s essentially the same dodge as labeling a bag of Skittles “Low Fat” or having “Gluten Free” bacon.
The packaging itself can be weaselly, if it’s bigger than the product by a substantial amount. Potato chips are notorious for being a whiff of salty air with some incidental fried potato bits knocking around.
“Organic” is defined by law, but it’s defined such that large corporations can label their produce “Organic” and still make a profit. I’m sure most of the people who insist upon “Organic” foods don’t really grasp the implications of that.
The nutritional value on a bag of ramen noodles is for half the bag.
I can understand the pizza somewhat because you might slice it up into 5 slices, but who splits ramen noodles?
This actually makes sense, because some of those products are processed in plants that also process gluten-containing grains and foods made from them.
I’ve usually seen this on fruit-based products. It means the fruit naturally contains sugars, and they haven’t added any more to it.
Sadly, three of those are kind of justified. There is both candy and prepared meats that have wheat flour, and some locations process both corn and wheat so there’s a risk of contamination.
Two other items which crop up in quite unexpected places (well, not unexpected any more after you’ve been on the lookout for a while) are lactose and soy.
‘May’ - as in ‘May help to fight heart disease’ or ‘May improve concentration’. It may not, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Also: ‘Serving Suggestion’ - it’s a way of dodging the fact that the product inside the pack looks like shit compared to the image on the packaging - Oh, no - we’re not saying it looks like that - we’re just saying you can put it on a plate like that, with a sprig of parsley.
Or worse yet, it could mean, “You’d be better off using nothing at all than using this product.”