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On a perhaps unrelated note, I've been paying closer attention to ingredients as inflation continues rampaging. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more or not

On a perhaps unrelated note, I've been paying closer attention to ingredients as inflation continues rampaging. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more or not, but there seems to be an increases prevalence of clever package design that tries to obscure the fact that there is no chocolate in "Chocolatey Chip Cookies" or any Dark Chocolate in Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Protein Granola bars or w/e. But they're on sale for the sweet price of whatever the normal price was before! $5 for 4 bars totalling 148g! https://www.naturevalley.ca/products/peanut-butter-dark-chocolate-protein-bars/ https://www.naturevalley.ca/products/peanut-butter-dark-choc... They get around the latter example by putting "Flavour" in a tiny font size and color that blends in with the background, on a new line; you have to be looking for it. For something called "Nature Valley", they sure as hell don't give off that vibe

Rebelgecko 4y ago
This predates inflation, but i think it's fascinating to look at the "ice cream" aisle at my grocery store. Most of the items can't legally call themselves ice cream (not enough milk content or too much of ingredients like corn syrup) so the packaging often has some small text with a low contrast against the background color that uses some weird terminology like "frozen dairy dessert".
- brailsafe 4y ago
  Ya that one for sure predates inflation. I've been seeing it for at least 8 years I feel like. But in that case there are at least options most of the time. Like I can just get haagen-daas or something and not feel screwed. It's also a dessert, so I can just not get it at all or seldomly if the higher cost option is the only one using actual cream. With more basic things from the shelf, I look at the ingredients and think "Nope, nope, nope, wow even that?, nope, oh this one... has no sugar but 1200mg of sodium wtf!?" Like if I want sugar, I want to know the thing is a thing I shouldn't be just carelessly eating. I'll get cookies, or a slice of cake, or ya some ice cream. I don't want it in my fucking tomato sauce, and I don't want the tomatoes to actually be tomato-flavoured chunks
fallowkevin 4y ago
Well to be fair how often is chocolate actually chocolate flavor? One of the cafés I jokingly call it the "luxury space communist café" (since it recently unionized and is next to an electronics store and a buncha designer shops, which has an... interesting effect... on the customer base.) Anyways, when you set aside the decor and are willing to tolerate a dull roar of vocal fry until you can get your headphones in, it ends up being pretty damn conducive to getting some deep work done. (Water dispenser, power plugs, espresso as bitter as my soul ... I guess designing for the user is feminine? Insert roll eyes emoji here.) Anyways, they were selling these little squares of 100% dark cocoa and I got one with a crossoint since I was trying to cut back on the sweets and... yeah, they weren't kidding -- it's cocoa... not exactly sweet. Not all all in fact. Reading your post reminded me of how that felt like a rip off, when really they gave me exactly what was promised -- it's just that Americans think "milk chocolate" when others would expect... something else. So maybe sometimes they're not deceiving people, they're just trying to give them what they've conditioned them to want. (God forbid someone have a cortado, everyone has to have a donut the size of a newborn's head with more sugar than a can of coke and a coffee the size of a loaf of bread.)
- brailsafe 4y ago
  The high cocoa bars from Lindt or other brands are definitely a different vibe. I personally think they're pretty well differentiated here though, with a gigantic 70% or 95% on the front. But if you're unfamiliar with that type of flavour it would be a shock to the system and isn't really my vibe. I guess they're hoping you attribute more quality to them, but the flavor is so different that I'd have a hard time imagining someone wouldn't think of it as a completely different type of chocolate. I guess what you're saying holds true for a lot of things, like people thinking that bitter dark roasted coffee being associated with quality, when it's often the opposite. I guess that would fall into somewhat misleading marketing influences though, whereas I'm thinking more along the lines of showing chocolate and calling it chocolate when in reality there isn't even cocoa in it at all, just palm oil. I agree about the cortado, it bothers me how much sugar people get in their system without realizing quite how much or how bad it could be. If all the sugar you got was from an obvious dessert, you probably would have a hard time over-injesting it.

Rebelgecko 4y ago

This predates inflation, but i think it's fascinating to look at the "ice cream" aisle at my grocery store. Most of the items can't legally call themselves ice cream (not enough milk content or too much of ingredients like corn syrup) so the packaging often has some small text with a low contrast against the background color that uses some weird terminology like "frozen dairy dessert".

brailsafe 4y ago
Ya that one for sure predates inflation. I've been seeing it for at least 8 years I feel like. But in that case there are at least options most of the time. Like I can just get haagen-daas or something and not feel screwed. It's also a dessert, so I can just not get it at all or seldomly if the higher cost option is the only one using actual cream. With more basic things from the shelf, I look at the ingredients and think "Nope, nope, nope, wow even that?, nope, oh this one... has no sugar but 1200mg of sodium wtf!?" Like if I want sugar, I want to know the thing is a thing I shouldn't be just carelessly eating. I'll get cookies, or a slice of cake, or ya some ice cream. I don't want it in my fucking tomato sauce, and I don't want the tomatoes to actually be tomato-flavoured chunks

fallowkevin 4y ago

Well to be fair how often is chocolate actually chocolate flavor? One of the cafés I jokingly call it the "luxury space communist café" (since it recently unionized and is next to an electronics store and a buncha designer shops, which has an... interesting effect... on the customer base.) Anyways, when you set aside the decor and are willing to tolerate a dull roar of vocal fry until you can get your headphones in, it ends up being pretty damn conducive to getting some deep work done. (Water dispenser, power plugs, espresso as bitter as my soul ... I guess designing for the user is feminine? Insert roll eyes emoji here.) Anyways, they were selling these little squares of 100% dark cocoa and I got one with a crossoint since I was trying to cut back on the sweets and... yeah, they weren't kidding -- it's cocoa... not exactly sweet. Not all all in fact. Reading your post reminded me of how that felt like a rip off, when really they gave me exactly what was promised -- it's just that Americans think "milk chocolate" when others would expect... something else. So maybe sometimes they're not deceiving people, they're just trying to give them what they've conditioned them to want. (God forbid someone have a cortado, everyone has to have a donut the size of a newborn's head with more sugar than a can of coke and a coffee the size of a loaf of bread.)

brailsafe 4y ago
The high cocoa bars from Lindt or other brands are definitely a different vibe. I personally think they're pretty well differentiated here though, with a gigantic 70% or 95% on the front. But if you're unfamiliar with that type of flavour it would be a shock to the system and isn't really my vibe. I guess they're hoping you attribute more quality to them, but the flavor is so different that I'd have a hard time imagining someone wouldn't think of it as a completely different type of chocolate. I guess what you're saying holds true for a lot of things, like people thinking that bitter dark roasted coffee being associated with quality, when it's often the opposite. I guess that would fall into somewhat misleading marketing influences though, whereas I'm thinking more along the lines of showing chocolate and calling it chocolate when in reality there isn't even cocoa in it at all, just palm oil. I agree about the cortado, it bothers me how much sugar people get in their system without realizing quite how much or how bad it could be. If all the sugar you got was from an obvious dessert, you probably would have a hard time over-injesting it.