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

Gordon_the_Moron

jimmo wrote: »

If Walkers Crisps are made with real ingredients how come the crispy bacon flavour crisps are suitable for vegetarians?

They do not contain bacon, I don't think standard walkers crisps claim to be made with 100% natural ingredients, only the sensations. Until recently they all (except ready salted) used to contain MSG which is by no means a natural ingredient.

Gordon_the_Moron

Prawn cocktail contain sucralose (it used to be aspartame which is even worse) which is not a natural additive either.

Raggs_2

Gordon_the_Moron wrote: »

They do not contain bacon, I don't think standard walkers crisps claim to be made with 100% natural ingredients, only the sensations. Until recently they all (except ready salted) used to contain MSG which is by no means a natural ingredient.

MSG is a very natural ingredient. However, isolating it to add it on it's own, is a bit more of a grey area. You have taste buds on your tongue solely for tasting glutamic acids (such as msg).

Anyway, msg is naturally occurring.

philosophyalice

The 'natural ingredients' thing is a variant on another one which winds me up: 'no chemicals'. In fact this is a modern version of an old fallacy that what is natural is good or right, which has been used to defend slavery (because certain races/people are 'naturally inferior'), persecute homosexuals (because homosexuality isn't 'natural'), and for all kinds of other unpleasant practices. The distinction between good and bad is just a different distinction to the distinction between what's natural and what's not. Tsunamis and hemlock are natural and bad for you; lots of stuff is non-natural and quite a good thing.
As other posters have pointed out it's very hard and quite complicated to distinguish between what's 'natural' and what's not and the advertisers presumably get away with this just because it's so vague. The reason they use it seems to be that we all feel attracted by the thought that natural = good but a little reflection should reveal how simplistic and indeed wrong that view is.

mikki-b

There's a reason why on the rare occasion I eat crisps I always go for ready salted. And don't think about getting me started on pringles....

QuirkyChemistry

Another common, meaningless phrase is "100% Chemical Free". Typically found on anything from beauty products to health food. This has annoyed the Royal Society of Chemistry so much that they are offering £1,000,000 prize if anyone can actually come up with something chemical free.

http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/ChemicalFree.asp

glider3560

QuirkyChemistry wrote: »

Another common, meaningless phrase is "100% Chemical Free". Typically found on anything from beauty products to health food. This has annoyed the Royal Society of Chemistry so much that they are offering £1,000,000 prize if anyone can actually come up with something chemical free.

http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/ChemicalFree.asp

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!

mikki-b

I'm a chemical engineer and the 'no chemicals' thing gets my goat as well. It's one of the few things that makes me shout at the TV

MSE_Martin

My favourite one was posted on my facebook blog discussion

"Nothing works faster than ariel"

In which case use nothing, don't use ariel!

mikki-b

My washing machine takes the same length of time regardless of which washing detergent I use