Packaging

[supergee]

“100% cheese” doesn’t have to be 100% cheese

Thanx to andrewducker

Comments

[johnpalmer]

Keep in mind, I'm *only* defending the label's claim that it's "100% grated cheese" (or whatever marketing phrasing they used) - if they failed to mention cellulose on the ingredients list, *that* should be grounds for legal action.

But if the label says, I dunno, 6 oz of cheese, and they sell you 6 oz of cheese, plus a bit of cellulose because they think you'll like the experience a bit better that way *and* they don't hide that they are doing so, then, they are selling you 6 oz of 100% grated cheese - plus something extra, which you may not want or like, but you can avoid if you check the ingredients.

If they gave you 5.5 oz of cheese and .5 oz of cellulose? That would be fraudulent - they said 100% cheese *and* 6 oz; 1/12th isn't a rounding error. 5.94 oz cheese and .06 cellulose, and they can say "hey, lots of people round up!" and... well, they *do*. Most folks wouldn't call a newspaper story inaccurate for saying that there were five tons of garbage dumped illegally because it was only 4 tons, 1900lbs. That's a bit skeevier, but not quite tortworthy IMHO.

And, as you point out, if they failed to list an ingredient, that should get them in deep trouble with regulators plus maybe also be fraudulent, depending on intent.

(I say "should" in the sense of "in a just world, it would happen", but in GOP-world, you can have reasonable safety, or you can have deregulation which they claim will create jobs, and probably won't... not both! (NB: in GOP world, it's not a choice YOU get to make, of course!))

Anyway: I think we're probably in agreement in most areas. People should know that they can find everything noteworthy in their food in the ingredients list. But marketing should allow for some level of embellishment, so long as the truth is laid out for anyone who wants to know it.

[arlie]

The other problem, of course, is whether the ingredients list is legible - not only for someone with perfect (corrected) vision in perfect lighting, but for a person with some level of vision issues (not total blindness) in normal grocery store conditions. It's commonly written in quite small print - sometimes also low contrast and/or crumpled and/or hidden by other packaging or labelling elements. Can the ingredients be read after cataract surgery? Before cataract surgery? By someone who can't afford new eyeglasses as often as their prescription changes? By someone who's just a bit dyslexic?

My anecdotal experience is that I rarely get through a grocery trip without having difficulty reading something - though that's most often tags on the shelf, particularly the fine print identifying which package the rather larger-written price applies to. (And then there's unit pricing, where a given section generally has at least 3 different units used for differing products, making actual comparison require a calculator and probably a unit conversion table as well. All of those in the same hard to read font, often low enough I need to pretty much lie on the floor to read it.)

[marahmarie]

Same here, I can't read 9 out of 10 food or beverage labels without glasses (astigmatism), and for a fact I can't read the ingredient list on a Parmesan cheese bottle (or the unit pricing, most of the time) without my glasses, so I get what you're saying (not so much lying on the floor as holding the item out at a weird angle and away from me, or with unit pricing, hunching down to get the shelf label more at eye level, then turning my head in all kinds of ways to find the right light and angle).

If something identified as 100% something is not, they should list it on the front of the label in a font/color/with contrast that makes it easy to find and read. But this gets me off onto a whole tangent about accessibility in labeling, which is pretty much MIA.