The worth of words
I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse.
George Carlin
This applies to us.
Balanced, functional, wholesome, clean, no added sugar, protein rich.
Empty nonsensical words. They can mean anything or nothing.
Food companies, new-age and old, small and large, will find the copy writers, graphic designers and marketing heads to come up with euphemisms to grab your attention.
They use colours, words and massage numbers to their convenience.
Words are just tools to mask a truth. Honesty is selective and convenient.
Why so many words ?
It’s two metrics:
You’re probably going to eat a cup of this. A cup, bar, plate, piece or spoon of this has xxx grams of this food. You get this many grams of protein, fiber and energy from that serving.
A cup is 240 milliliters (ml). A spoon is 15 ml.
Second metric:
100 grams of this food provides xx-xxx calories of energy. Xx percent of that is protein. Xx percentage is from carbohydrates. Xx percentage is from fat.
The only perspective that requires literal words and context is ingredients. When companies need to use words, they shut up and make it fine print.
We used ins955. Instead just say we used sucralose to sweeten this. Sucralose comes from a lab. And you probably shouldn’t have it more than twice a week.
Our product uses dates. Dates become glucose in your body. Just like sugar does. So if you prefer this taste, indulge in moderation.
Takeaway
We need to stop celebrating wit and words when it comes food marketing. Wit and words make sense only when there is some effort to inculcate wisdom in the consumer. For now math lessons, not clever wordplay, is the need of hour.