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97_98_articles/Tribun17.TXT
"Low Fat!" "No Fat!" "No Cholesterol!" "Tripe included!" "Lite!" On a recent trip to the supermarket, I saw all of these sayings on packages of food...Well, except for one of them. You can figure that one out. Anyway, these sayings are all little ways that companies try to attract you over to their product. What do all these really mean? We'll go delve into that right now.
One rule of thumb when buying food is that when you see the word "Fat" on the outside of a package, whether it says "Fat Free" or maybe "Low Fat," you're gonna have a lot of calories in the item. Is that very important, though? Is the internet popular? Of course! If you're eating a bunch of calories without any fat, you're still getting a load of calories, which isn't so great for your body.
Of course, Mr. Webster tries to fool us. In this copy of Webster's New World Dictionary–College Edition–it says that a calorie is "the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree centigrade (Celsius…Yes, that's the metric system.) ." While this may all be well and good, that doesn't mean you can go eating a bunch of calories and all you expect to be is really hot. In fact, you'll be pretty much the opposite of really hot, which would be really fat.
But enough about this fat thing. Let's move on the "No Cholesterol" label. This one can actually be a truthful statement. In fact, half of the time it means "there's no cholesterol in here and we didn't sacrifice calories, fat, or taste to do it." So how'd they do that? Well, let's look again at my trusty-rusty Webster's New World, College Edition, Dictionary of the American Language! It says that cholesterol is "a crystalline fatty alcohol, found especially in animal fats." So that means that cholesterol is only found in animals' fats. So now take a look at all the products
touting they have no cholesterol. Yes, that's right, they all come from plants! So that means that there never was any cholesterol in them (unless the manufacturer was putting lard or that yummy tripe into it) , and there never will be any cholesterol in it! Some peanut butter jars sport this label. Well, get this–peanut butter comes from a plant (hence the word 'peanut') .
"Lite!" is the most evil word on food packages today. Why? Because it's so unspecific. First of all, let's go once again to good ol' Webster's Mr. Boom-bastic, mega-fantastic, New World Dictionary. For the word lite, it has the entry "meaning stone, used in the names of minerals and rocks." Oh boy. Great. We're eating rocks. No, we're not though. The word lite in the dictionary is a suffix that's added on to rock names. They don't even have a definition for the word lite in the dictionary! That shows how stupid the company is who put this on their label. They don't even know what on earth it means!
All right, I'm calming down. So, let's say we do know what it means, as in a bit less of something. But of what? What the heck is it lite compared to? A glob of Crisco? A piece of sterilized plastic? A nicely-looking plate of tripe? A large order of fries served with the vat of grease that it was baked in? We just don't know. So whenever you see something with the label 'lite' on it, be incredibly wary.
And don't you just hate it when they charge more for these food items that actually have less in them? It's like the biggest oxymoron in the world! What would you say if somebody came up to you on the street and said, "Excuse me, sir or madam. If I take out all the fat from this cheeseburger, which would make it taste awful, and
serve it to you in a box, would you pay me five dollars?" I would not. In fact, I'd hit whoever wouldn't even know what gender I am by walking up to me and saying hello sir or madam. I always am baffled that people will go out of their way and pay a lot more money for a lot less of something! How odd!
But then sometimes they take out too much stuff and then you're left with nothing. How about this one–Caffeine-free Diet Coke! Ha! How about you just give us a glass of water! It's almost free and it doesn't have the terrible after-taste! Or maybe just punch me in the face...If I'm dumb enough to buy that, I won't mind being hit a few times. I'll think it's good for my health.
Anyway, I've gotta be going down to the supermarket. Why, you may ask? Well because Pepsi has done some tinkering and has now gotten their pop to be fat free, and they're only going to charge me an extra three dollars for this wonderful invention. Whatta deal! (For those of you who didn't get it, go look on the back of any soft drink. For those of you who don't know what tripe is, go get a copy of Webster's New World, College Edition only, Dictionary. And for those of you who do know what tripe is, I'm sorry I ruined your appetite.)
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Karl
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