to take charge of their own destinies

[custardpringle]

So I was watching Gordon Ramsay's F Word just now and there was a segment with a woman going around in supermarkets complaining about misleading labels on food products and how The Law is letting companies get away with this oh noes. There was a very dramatic demonstration involving a bowl of plain yogurt, and a bowl of low-fat yogurt, and when the

Comments

[shippygem]

Well I can kinda see the point of the woman...if something is being marketed as healthy most people don't go looking to contridict the labels...

my aunt spent weeks trying to loose weight by eating "healthy living" ready meals...took us ages to convince her the only difference between them and normal ready meals was less salt!

And look at that Activia Yogurt, the "Bifidus Digestus" or whatever its called, has a different name in the UK then it does in the US "Bifidus Regularis" or something equally as dumb/fake sounding...how real can it be if it has different names in different countries?

[custardpringle]

See, but it's not being marketed as healthy; it's being marketed as low-fat. Which it is. I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who think low-fat automatically equals healthy, sorry to say.

[dancesontrains]

Inorite? I mean, our bodies need fat.

I've never dieted

Good to hear! :D

[custardpringle]

Well, because I'm a tiny little stick :/ Exercise, on the other hand, I could probably use more of.

In any case, I am of the entirely unexperienced opinion that dieting-- much like exercise-- fucks around with your body something good, and even though it's theoretically a beneficial kind of fucking-around people have no business going into it uninformed. Especially so grossly uninformed as to think you can construct a remotely useful diet without looking at the nutrition labels on cookies.

[tacky_tramp]

I'm guessing the laws there are exactly like the laws here: A tense compromise between marketing departments (who want to convince you to buy their shit any way possible) and consumers (who don't like being lied to). What we get in the end are things that are technically true but easily misunderstood. The marketers know damn well that people don't understand that "low fat" doesn't necessarily mean "will not make me fat." So the lady on the TV has a point in that they certainly do intend to deceive people and/or take advantage of people's ignorance. But good luck passing laws that require food manufacturers to label their food LOL FATTY EAT THIS AND YOU WILL BE A BLIMP FOREVER.

[custardpringle]

Okay, yeah, that I will grant; marketing departments are devious as hell and trying to take care of people's ignorance. But people's ignorance about how nutrition works-- especially people who are dieting and hence supposed to be paying especial attention to what they're shoving in their mouths-- is their own fault, and I don't think there's a whole lot third parties can do about people wanting quick fixes when they ought to know better.

[tacky_tramp]

Except where it's really not their fault. :/ Nutrition education is almost nonexistent (in the U.S. at least and I'd guess in the UK as well). We don't devote sufficient resources to it. I wonder if the food lobby -- and yeah, such a thing exists -- has anything to do with that? Furthermore, some people just aren't very smart, and it's hardly their fault if something's barely been taught to them and they forget or misunderstand

[darth_cabal]

People are stupid, and it would be far more effective to educate them about nutrition than for the government to scrutinize every word in an ad or box to make sure food companies incriminate themselves in simple enough words for the average shopper to understand.

That being said, I think that a company that chooses a market strategy dependent upon the ignorance of its customers is shady as hell. Especially when it comes to food items that are marketed to children.