I am, admittedly, a bit slow on the uptake but it finally dawned on me that it is quite legal to use false advertising and false product labeling. Of course, this stuff is only legal when the powers to be decide that we, the huddling masses, should do something that they think best. You ask why I say this? Let me tell you. (You knew that was coming.)
False Product Labeling
Let’s start with false product labeling. A few years ago, my wife decided to start buying skim milk, a product which I closely associate with dirty dish water. As a positive counterpoint, I, very wisely, started buying “half & half,” which is right tasty. The stuff has a much longer shelf-life and I buy about a quart a month. So, what does this have to do with false product labeling? Be patient. One day, while picking up a quart of “half & half,” I noticed a product called “fat free half & half.” How could that be? Well, I looked it up and discovered that, most times, the product has four ingredients. So shouldn’t the stuff really be called “fat free half & half & half & half?” (“You can fool some of the people all of the time.”) Well, that’s what I think. If you think that I am a bit of a nut, you may be correct, but I am on the button with this one.
False Advertising
Now, let’s take a gander at false advertising. There are some TV ads which tell us to “Eat healthy,” which is absolutely impossible to do. The reason being rather simple; you can only eat nouns. That is to say, adjectives simply do not exist for any reason other than to modify nouns. Now, if the ads said, “Eat healthy food.” that would be something you could do. And, if the guy who wrote the ads wanted to keep it to two words, he could have written, “Eat healthily.” which actually makes sense. That’s because he isn’t asking you to eat an adverb, he is modifying the verb, “eat.” I learned that stuff somewhere around the fourth grade. Now days, it is probably a 300-level “language arts” college course.
I’ve bored you long enough.
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