"Made with real ingredients" and other virtually meaningless marketing statements?

Former_MSE_Penelope

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's "Made with real ingredients" and other virtually meaningless marketing statements? Blog.

Please click reply to discuss below.

Update Note:

I’ve had a great response to this, my favourite being “nothing cleans faster than ariel” in which case why not buy nothing rather than ariel! And someone’s follow up... my washing machine takes the same length of time regardless of which washing detergent I use.

· I love the statement 'new and improved'. A product can be one or the other but not both

· I've had an interesting email discussion with Nestle about their new Aero advert which states "33% more bubbles". So asked their customer service people if this meant that because there's more air in the bar, that must mean there's less chocolate!

· Or Daz "whiter than White ". What's that all about? White is White !

· Or "Kills 99.9% of all germs/bacteria"... so if you catch anything afterwards, it can always be blamed on the 0.1% that survived!

· The marketing line that has always got to me is 'hand cooked crisps or chips'. Do they really expect us to believe that somebody is throwing batches into the fryer manually? I hope their hands are scrupulously clean if that's the case.

· Dolmio ...the authentic taste of Italy made in the UK, have a slogan of proper food for proper kids ...just microwave in the packet for 60 seconds. That always drives me nuts

· "We guarantee that you won't find our properties for a lower rate anywhere on the internet. If you do we'll match that rate and give you a 10% discount". But.. you said..

· I find the cheese straws ones funny that say "Made with real cheese". Surely that's what you'd expect?!

· As someone who has studied Chemistry to a high level, "chemical free" is something that really does make me cringe, as does "natural". People seem to be fixated that chemical = bad, when as the RSC quite rightly point out, everything is made of chemicals!

juno

My sister said this ages ago

I told her about the paper you can write on both sides

Old_Wrinkly

From the blog :

... it is jammed with flavourings, species, firming agents and more.

I wonder which species they were?
Hopefully not endangered ones.

Jinxed

Old_Wrinkly wrote: »

From the blog :


I wonder which species they were?
Hopefully not endangered ones.

ROFL

I always giggle at the peanuts packs that say 'may contain nuts'...Really?

MSE_Martin

Old_Wrinkly wrote: »

From the blog :


I wonder which species they were?
Hopefully not endangered ones.

I'll change that - oops

nzseries1

Haha, this reminds me of a bit on the Simpsons.

Marge goes into the shopping mall, and a woman convinces her to try some beauty thing. She says "try this rejuvenating lotion. It contains over fifty... ingredients!"

Gordon_the_Moron

I'm a strict vegetarian and food geek so I like to know what I'm eating and where it comes from.

Answers to a couple of things here:

The peanut comment, peanuts are legumes like beans and not actually nuts, just because the name contains the word nut doesn't mean they are. A peanut is actually no more a nut than a donut is, however they are usually processed in factories handling other nuts. Packets of actual nuts often say may contain traces of other nuts which people think nothing of.

The blog article says at best the marketing statement means the crips contain no E numbers, this is not true. An E number is a food additive which is not a food product in its own right, many are harmless (beetroot red is a food colouring from betroot for example) but some are more controversial such as aspartame and monosodium glutamate (MSG) and give E numbers a bad reputation, therefore manufacturers often listen the product by name rather than E number as they are not required to list the E number on the packaging.

Calcium chloride is E509 and citric acid is E330 so the crisps are actually not free from E numbers.

Gordon_the_Moron

Citric Acid
Calcium Chloride

nzseries1

Gordon_the_Moron wrote: »

The peanut comment, peanuts are legumes like beans and not actually nuts,

You learn something new every day!

metalgal

Gordon_the_Moron wrote: »

. Packets of actual nuts often say may contain traces of other nuts which people think nothing of.
.

I was got a packet of mixed nuts and raisins. It said on it

"Warning may contain nuts"

Why the may? If it hadn't contained nuts then I would have wanted my money back.

lynneinjapan

Got the Tory manifesto in the post the other day. They've included a nice little graph showing that last year the Conservative vote for our constituency went up by 7.5% and the Labour one went down by 1.7%, which of course means that Labour "can't win"... or so they claim.

However, they say nothing about actual numbers of votes, so in extreme terms, it could be that the Tories got 40 votes in 2008 and 43 in 2009, while Labour got 100,000 in 2008 and 98,300 in 2009.

I'm not particularly in favour of either party, btw, just highlighting the meaninglessness of the claim.