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

[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."