False Representations

[unixronin]

cymrullewes picked up a box of Hannaford's house-brand rice-chex clone breakfast cereal yesterday, choosing it over brand-name Chex largely, I understand, because the box showed the cereal containing raspberries.  Needless to say, it doesn't.

(Actually, she's since clarified that the cereal she bought was a different one than the one she exclaimed over just before the cell connection dropped.  But anyway....)

Advertisers do this all the time.  How many times have you bought a package of food with a picture on the front that dramatically fails to match the contents, and a little tiny small-print disclaimer hidden somewhere on the box that says something like "New Wonda Choccy Sowbugs can be a part of this nutritious breakfast"?  Note that nowhere does it actually state that New Wonda Choccy Sowbugs is actually nutritious, or actually contains what the picture on the box shows.  What's worse, if it's not a food product, the odds are not insignificant that there's another piece of small print hidden somewhere that says something like "Manufacturer does not warrant any fitness or suitability for any particular purpose."

The UK has something called the Trades Descriptions Act that is supposed to restrict stuff like this.  You have to be very careful about what you claim in an advertisement in the UK, because any day, a representative from the inspectorate of Weights and Measures can walk into your office carrying a package of your product that he bought at random off a store shelf, and say, "You make this claim about this product.  Show me, with this one, right here, right now."  And you'd better be able to back up the claim.

I think the US needs one too.  It could be quite simple; all it needs to do is say something like this:

"If you, a product manufacturer, make what a reasonable person would take as a representation, via a commercial advertisement, a marketing claim, or a package illustration, that your product contains or does something that in point of actual fact it does not, and any purchaser of the product complains that the product does not in fact live up to this representation, then you are legally obligated to make up the misrepresentation to every purchaser of the product."

Discuss.

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Fresh fruit is normally used in set dressing for cereal. I wouldn't assume there was fruit in it unless the name specifically said there was fruit in it. Just like I wouldn't assume there was milk in the box.

I think what you have is a reasonable idea in print that would quickly become a horribly-convoluted and misused concept once it's applied to the public.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't think any reasonable person would expect there to be milk in the box. But when I buy a product that has a picture of the product on the box, I for one feel that said picture should accurately represent what is contained in the box. It shouldn't show a whole bunch of stuff that isn't actually included, and it shouldn't show the product doing something that it doesn't actually do (and can't in fact be done with it).

To enlarge a little upon that — everyone accepts it as normal that we put milk on cereal. Showing the cereal with milk on it is reasonable. But if I buy, for example, a box that shows a nutted rice pilaf on the front, and turns out to contain plain rice and a suggestion that with a dozen other ingredients as well I could make a nutted rice pilaf, I'm gonna be a little pissed off.

Breakfast cereals, these days, are often relatively complex mixtures of various things to start with. Nutty granola clusters, or what have you. Show me what's in the box. Don't make me look through the list of ingredients to see whether it's plausible that what's on the front of the box actually matches what's in the box. Show me what I'm buying, not how I could potentially tart it up if I felt so inclined.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

To enlarge a little upon that — everyone accepts it as normal that we put milk on cereal. Showing the cereal with milk on it is reasonable. But if I buy, for example, a box that shows a nutted rice pilaf on the front, and turns out to contain plain rice and a suggestion that with a dozen other ingredients as well I could make a nutted rice pilaf, I'm gonna be a little pissed off.

Hunh. I do this sort of thing all the time, actually. I'm thinking specifically of the little 10 x 5 x 1 cm box sitting in my cabinet labeled "Fish Biryani", which lists just about a dozen other ingredients which if added to the contents of the box, will give me fish biryani. Or something vaguely resembling such.

I dunno. I don't buy breakfast cereal, but I look at the picture on the box kinda like car ads. Supermodel not included. Well, maybe if you buy a Ferrari she is...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking specifically of the little 10 x 5 x 1 cm box sitting in my cabinet labeled "Fish Biryani", which lists just about a dozen other ingredients which if added to the contents of the box, will give me fish biryani.

Point. Though I've usually seen those labelled as "fish biryani masala" or something like that. (Which reminds me that I need to make up more Moghlai masala.)

Supermodel not included. Well, maybe if you buy a Ferrari she is...

Heh. :)

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

The phrase you're looking for is "serving suggestion," and I'm sure it appears on the package, somewhere.

And, the other commenter is right: caveat emptor.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The phrase you're looking for is "serving suggestion," and I'm sure it appears on the package, somewhere.

I'm sure it probably does, somewhere in the small print.


Update: Actually, I just looked at the specific cereal package that spurred this whole train of thought, and nowhere on the package does any disclaimer such as "serving suggestion", "part of this nutritious breakfast", etc appear.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

I'd personally like to see a law requiring absolute truth in advertising. No exaggerations, no false representation, no bullshit. Period.

As in, if the makers of X say "Everyone loves X", and one person produces a signed affidavit saying they only *like* X... then the company responsible gets fined *hard*. Not a slap on the wrist; something along the lines of "twice the profits you've made from X while advertising it in this way."

And enforced. Hard.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

That would still be hard to enforce. I can use statistics in perfectly acceptable ways to show any result I want. How would you propose to punish faulty judgment in what tests to perform or how to structure an experiment? How can you show that it was deliberate?

Slippery slope is not a valid argument, but I can see many ways that any punitive answer to either question would be misused by the state against individuals. The law is already scary enough.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

After the advertisement abuses of the fifties and early sixties, some pretty stiff laws were passed requiring advertisers to be fairly open and truthful. They are still open to abuse, but I think we have good protection against false claims. I guess that I think we have a good balance between consumer protection and advertiser needs. It is not at the same point that it is in Europe, but it is not really that bad.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

It exists.

Remember the model airplane boxes that were around when you were growing up, with the Wildcats or Hellcats or Mustangs, with an enemy fighter going down smoking? That wonderful artwork?


Welp, they got sued, because the box didn't include "all the fighters in the artwork".

So we got:


A picture of literally, what was inside the box. BLAH. (I'm surprised they weren't sued for saying the "model was piston-engined". Well, wait, maybe they were.)

I'll have to disagree with you - granted, it takes a bit of caveat emptor - but when I bought my generic Cheerios with the dried strawberries and raspberries the other day, I checked to see if, indeed, the box included the fruit implied by the picture. It did, I got it.

The alternative is easily demonstrated (By illustration using England) to be a morass of dumbass bureaucracy, nit-picking lawyers and lottery-seeking plaintiffs. Usually the descriptions are pretty good - I'll stick to what we've got. And I want that artwork back on the model boxes, dammit.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with having that artwork on the front of the box labelled as "Bearcats in action" and a picture of the actual model on the back of the box labelled "Model assembled according to included instructions". :)

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm a compulsive ingredients-reader. I want to know not just what's NOT IN what I'm buying, but what they're NOT TELLING ME. What is actually in "spices"? I don't want high fructose corn syrup in my Juice Clone. Habits you get into when your mother is allergic to lots of common ingredients, like nonfat dried milk and lemons. But it's served me well in knowing what's in the box I'm buying.

However, that brings up another interesting point. The food you see in cookbooks or cooking magazines isn't the food you make from the recipes. Neither is the stuff on the packages. Actually, you probably wouldn't want it, because it contains lots of weird stuff to make it "look" more attractive. I remember running afoul of that when I was doing cooking articles. They would have their own people make the stuff for the photos, nonedible stuff that looked good, photographed well, but it was like the mashed-potatos-impersonating-ice-cream they do for the movies. Not the real thing. For instance, it's a common practice to spray food with glycerine to give it more "sheen." Yum.

A better disclaimer might be "item pictured may contain the following: processed wood pulp, glycerine, modeling clay, wax, artificial color enhancers, starchs impersonating other food products, etc."

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

They get around it in New Zealand by putting "Serving suggestion" in tiny letters in a corner.

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

No offense is intended, but reading this kept ringing reminders of this bit of apocryphalness (http://www.snopes.com/business/market/babyfood.asp).

I'd not go so far as to say there shouldn't have been a disclaimer, but agreeing on how big is big enough for the words "berries not included" or anything else strikes me as equally unlikely and unhelpful in training people to think through what they think about. Of course, I'm in a sour mood about these things of late from the horrendous garbage that serves as product manuals these days.

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

Um... do you remember the luscious-looking whole fried chicken on the front of the can of Crisco? If you were a non-English speaker, or did not know what Crisco is, would you buy it on the basis of that delicious chicken?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's not quite the same situation. The cereal is particularly a gray area because they're putting all kinds of stuff in breakfast cereal these days, and I can think of at least six brands of breakfast cereal that have freeze-dried strawberries in them (for example).

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I've never assumed that my breakfast cereal came with fruit. I was just thrilled that Hannaford had a Crispix-clone. Now they just need to clone Golden Grahams. :-) No store has successfully cloned Quaker 100% Natural though. It's been my fortune that my favourite cereals don't have generics.

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, I'd really like to see a box of Wonda Choccy Sowbugs.

Dunno that I'd want to actually -eat- them though.

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

You might wish to read Marion Nestle, both Politics of Food and What to Eat - the former explains a *lot* about that phrase "may be part of a nutritious..."