Thursday, January 04, 2007
Consumers Confused by Food
Two new food labelling schemes will fight it out on the shelves this year. The 'traffic light' system consists of four symbols: Green for go eat, Amber for prepare to eat, Red for stop eating and a yellow box for only eat if there is room to do so. The other scheme, favoured by unstoppable behemoths Tesco and Morrisons, consists of several colour-coded shapes such as purple for salt, blue for sugar, red for fat, pink for hummus, green for oranges, orange for green beans, beige for blueberry and dark grey for E147. The Food Standards Agency has criticised both schemes for being over complicated and unnecessary. 'Why bother with new labelling when we have our own perfectly good system of food recognition. An orangy-red square for food that tastes a bit like chicken, a purple and pink spotted triangle for anything that has beef in it, two men walking side by side in a car park for dehydrated ready-meals and a child playing swingball for cheese,' said a spokesman.
# posted by mark @ 6:28 pm 
Comments:
<< Home
It's interesting that you should mention this. During the war, when rationing was in place, food used to be wrapped in black cloth, by order of the ministry of public safety and interpolation. This was because the government boffins had decided that reflective food could be picked up by German bombers and used to home in on targets. It made shopping incredibly difficult because everything was covered in black cloth, so you had to go underneath with a torch to see what was available. Sometimes, after the all-clear had sounded, they would have a 'lifter' present, who would raise the cloth for a few moments and you could see the produce before he replaced the cloth again. It was a bit like that game you play with a towel and a tea tray with lots of odds and ends on it. Thinking back, it's just as well that there wasn't any food actually available, or we'd have lost the war due to dithering.
Post a Comment
# posted by 
: 8:56 pm
: 8:56 pm << Home
