History Main / UnfortunateIngredients

* A thought experiment on the SlipperySlopeFalliacy poses the question of eating a cake made with a lump of excrement equalling 1% of it mixed into the batter. Therefore, you can't accept any compromise, or else you're eating shit.

* In recent years Gluten has been getting much the same treatment as HFCS and Transfats. For 99% of the population, Gluten is a perfectly harmless wheat protein that acts as a structural molecule. It is not an energy storage protein and thus does not contribute positively or negatively to nutrition. For the 1-2% of the population which suffers from disorders that carry gluten sensitivity, it's akin to lactose intolerance - it induces intestinal discomfort, and in many cases is never sever enough to be diagnosed. Other people claim vague symptoms as "gluten sensitivity" the way previous generations did with MSG. Never-the-less, thanks to public misinformation on the "evils of gluten" and "carb-free diets", it's become a fad to a [[AsbestosFreeCereal advertise products as "Gluten Free", even when there's no logical reason a product would have a WHEAT protein to begin with]].

Overlaps often with NewLookSameGreatTaste, NewAndImproved, and AsbestosFreeCereal as a means of making marketing lemonade out of the lemons given to them by the consuming public.

This is an advertising trope, and covers situations when a food or drink is renamed or restyled to try to keep with the changing times, without ''actually'' changing the product in any significant way.

[[folder: Breakfast Cereal ]]

** Mascot Sugar Bear had two name changes; first he went from "Sugar Bear" to "Super Sugar Bear". When they started down-playing the "sugar" aspect, he became "Super Bear", complete with TransformationSequence. At this point he's once again Sugar Bear.

[[folder: Restaurants ]]

** Some conspiracy nuts believed that the change was not to eliminate the word "fried", but to eliminate the word "chicken", because what the restaurants sell was no longer legally classifiable as chicken. Of course, in reality, KFC's chicken is probably more "real" chicken than the stuff that goes by the name at many other fast-food places.
** ''{{WebSite/Snopes}}'', just to cover the all the bases, has a page proposing tongue-in-cheek that the ''real'' reason for the name change was that the commonwealth of Kentucky had started charging a license fee for the use of the word "Kentucky".

** They tried "Kentucky Grilled Chicken" for commercials only to coincide with their new grilled chicken options, it seemed to make them popular for a while. Grilled chicken is healthier than fried chicken in the eyes of public, but in reality, since KFC grilled chicken is made without removing the skin it has nearly as much fat as their fried chicken.

* Monosodium Glutamate or MSG, a flavoring used to enhance savory/''umami'' tasting food, got a reputation for causing various (if never quite scientifically verifiable) health problems, specifically being linked with Chinese Restaurants, even though it could be found in just about every savory packaged food on the market. Nowadays, it's usually listed as yeast extract, hydrolyzed protein, glutamic acid and sodium or calcium caseinate.

[[folder: Other ]]

** Whilst biology students and health obsessed adults might appreciate the whole bacteria thing, most children see yogurt as being a creamy treat with no health benefits (unless it has fruit in it, of course). In fact, the mention of bacteria puts them off, because at the same time they're being told to associate bacteria with germs, which are bad. There was an advert some years ago for Rice Krispies Multi Grain which openly touted their 'Probiotic bacteria' and had young children in the advert who actually wanted to eat it after hearing about this. Needless to say, this was thoroughly unrealistic.

*** Of the common artifical sweeteners, only sucralose contains chlorine; saccharin and acesulfam K contain sulfur. Aspartame is arguably the most "natural" of the artificial sweeteners, since it's a dipeptide (basically, a very short protein) that's handled by your body in exactly the same way all other proteins are. The big drawback is that, at least until you get used to them, they all ''do'' taste like synthetic evil (with the aftertaste of sucralose being probably the least foul/easiest to get used to).

* Averted with the ''previous'' trendy "evil" of the food industry, ''Trans'' fats. Instead of rewording the ingredients labels, food manufacturers actually went out of their way to reformulate their products to be ''Trans''-fat free by the time the FDA's labelling requirements went into effect in 2006-8. The added bonus, of course, being that advertisers could boast about "zero trans fats" and hope gullible consumers would equate that with "fat-free."

** Incidentally, as long as a product has < 0.5g of trans-fats per serving, they can put 0g in the nutritional information. (Partially hydrogenated oils == trans fats). This has the amusing side effect of allowing vegetable shortening--which is high in ''trans'' fat because it ''is'' partially hydrogenated oil--to be labelled as ''trans''-fat free: if the stuff is 33% partially-hydrogenated oil, just call a serving 1.5g, and voila! Less than .5g per serving.

* In recent years Gluten has been getting much the same treatment as HFCS and Transfats. For 99% of the population Gluten is a perfectly harmless wheat protein which acts as a structural molecule. It is not an energy storage protein and thus does not contribute positively or negatively to nutrition. For the 1-2% of the population which suffers from disorders that carry gluten sensitivity it's akin to lactose intolerance - it induces intestinal discomfort, and in many cases is never sever enough to be diagnosed. Other people claim vague symptoms as "gluten sensitivity" the way previous generations did with MSG. Never-the-less, thanks to public misinformation on the "evils of gluten" and "carb-free diets", it's become a fad to a [[AsbestosFreeCereal advertise products as "Gluten Free", even when there's no logical reason a product would have a WHEAT protein to begin with]].

* Pretty much every company with "British" in its name officially switched to a meaningless acronym in TheEighties: British Telecom became BT, British Home Stores became BHS and so on. This was partly due to PatrioticFervour being unpopular and partly because, thanks to privatisation, the companies were not solely British owned anymore. Now that public displays of patriotism are a bit more acceptable in the UK again, some of the companies are reverting to their old names.
** There was widespread anger in the UK when UsefulNotes/BarackObama called BP [[ArtifactTitle "British Petroleum"]] during the 2010 oil spill, as it was interpreted (perhaps incorrectly) as him trying to blame everything on Britain, when BP is 40% British owned and 39% American owned. At least one British tabloid newspaper actually ran an editorial [[UsefulNotes/MisplacedNationalism calling for the British government to intercede on BP's behalf as a result.]]

* Barr's Iron Brew became Irn-Bru many years ago as it contains neither a substantial amount of iron nor is brewed. The word brew is actually northern word for a drink. Similarly the drink is listed on the back as a 'Sparkling Fruit Flavoured Drink'. They don't say what the fruit flavour is but this is because it was originally said to be flavoured by iron girders (in actual fact it contains such a low amount of iron as to not be detectable).
* Mountain Dew was originally advertised using the name's connotations with hillbillies and moonshine, but has since dropped that and instead rebranded itself as a sort of sports drink. The "Throwback" product (which reverted to using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup as the sweetener) uses some of the original marketing illustrations, including one image of a hillbilly with an earthenware jug of something so energetic that not only does it open itself, the cork blows a hole through his hat... which is still more PC than the one where a hillbilly was firing a Kentucky long rifle at a presumed "revenoor".

* In recent years Gluten has been getting much the same treatment as HFCS and Transfats. For 99% of the population Gluten is a perfectly harmless wheat protein which acts as a structural molecule. It is not an energy storage protein and thus does not contribute positively or negatively to nutrition. For the 1-2% of the population which suffers from disorders that carry gluten sensitivity it's akin to lactose intolerance - it induces intestinal discomfort, and in many cases is never sever enough to be diagnosed. Never-the-less, thanks to public misinformation on the "evils of gluten" and "carb-free diets", it's become a fad to a [[AsbestosFreeCereal advertise products as "Gluten Free", even when there's no logical reason a product would have a WHEAT protein to begin with]].

* In recent years Gluten has been getting much the same treatment as HFCS and Transfats. For 99% of the population Gluten is a perfectly harmless wheat protein which acts as a structural molecule. It is not an energy storage protein and thus does not contribute positively or negatively to nutrition. For the 1-2% of the population which suffers from disorders that carry gluten sensitivity it's akin to lactose intolerance - it induces intestinal discomfort, and in many cases is never sever enough to be diagnosed. Never-the-less, thanks to public misinformation on the "evils of gluten" and "carb-free diets", it's become a fad to a advertise products as "Gluten Free", even when there's no logical reason a product would have a WHEAT protein to begin with.

* Kentucky Fried Chicken briefly tried to call itself "Kitchen Fresh Chicken". Then they decided that just plain "KFC" was best. As of 2007, they realized that they weren't fooling anybody and went back to the original name.

* Barr's Iron Brew became Irn Bru many years ago as it contains neither a substantial amount of iron nor is brewed. The word brew is actually northern word for a drink. Similarly the drink is listed on the back as a 'Sparkling Fruit Flavoured Drink'. They don't say what the fruit flavour is but this is because it was originally said to be flavoured by iron girders (in actual fact it contains such a low amount of iron as to not be detectable).

* Sugar Crisp → Super Sugar Crisp → Super Golden Crisp → Golden Crisp

** There was widespread anger in the UK when UsefulNotes/BarackObama called BP [[ArtifactTitle "British Petroleum"]] during the 2010 oil spill, as it was interpreted (perhaps incorrectly) as him trying to blame everything on Britain, when BP is 40% British owned and 39% American owned. At least one British tabloid newspaper actually ran an editorial [[MisplacedNationalism calling for the British government to intercede on BP's behalf as a result.]]

** It's entirely possible that this trend will come full-circle in a generation. An entire generation of youth is growing up today drinking soda pop sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. To them, HFCS will be the taste they grew up with and grew attached to, and table sugar will taste a little "off." Two decades from now, we may start seeing retro versions of the retro drinks that advertise "Made with real high-fructose corn syrup!"
*** This is already happening. Even if you grew up with "real sugar" Pepsi products, by now you've been probably been drinking the HFCS stuff so long that the Throwback version may taste a little "off" the first time you try it... not ''quite'' like an artificial sweetener, but not "right" either.

** Mountain Dew was originally advertised using the name's connotations with hillbillies and moonshine, but has since dropped that and instead rebranded itself as a sort of sports drink. The "Throwback" product (which reverted to using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup as the sweetener) uses some of the original marketing illustrations, including one image of a hillbilly with an earthenware jug of something so energetic that not only does it open itself, the cork blows a hole through his hat... which is still more PC than the one where a hillbilly was firing a Kentucky long rifle at a presumed "revenoor".

[[AC:Breakfast Cereal]]

[[AC:Restaurants]]

[[AC:Other]]

* Averted with the ''previous'' trendy "evil" of the food industry, ''Trans'' fats. Instead of rewording the ingredients labels, food manufacturers actually went out of their way to reformulate their products to be ''Trans''-fat free by the time the FDA's labelling requirements went into effect in 2006-8. The added bonus, of course, being that advertisers could boast about "zero trans fats" and hope [[ViewersAreMorons gullible consumers]] would equate that with "fat-free."

Overlaps often with NewLookSameGreatTaste, NewAndImproved, and AsbestosFreeCereal as a means of making marketing lemonade out of the lemons given to them by the consuming public. AsbestosFreeCereal.

Compare AsbestosFreeCereal.

** They tried "Kentucky Grilled Chicken" for commercials only to coincide with their new grilled chicken options, it seemed to make them popular for a while. Grilled chicken is healthier than fried chicken in the eyes of public, but in reality, since KFC's grilled chicken is made without removing the skin it has nearly as much fat as their fried chicken.

** Incidentally, as long as a product has < 0.5g of trans-fats per serving, they can put 0g in the nutritional information. (Partially hydrogenated oils == trans fats). This has the amusing side effect of allowing vegetable shortening--which is high in ''trans'' fat because it ''is'' partially hydrogenated oil--can be labelled as ''trans''-fat free: if the stuff is 33% partially-hydrogenated oil, just call a serving 1.5g, and voila! Less than .5g per serving.

** {{Snopes}}, just to cover the all the bases, has a page proposing tongue-in-cheek that the ''real'' reason for the name change was that the commonwealth of Kentucky had started charging a license fee for the use of the word "Kentucky".

** There was widespread anger in the UK when BarackObama called BP [[ArtifactTitle "British Petroleum"]] during the 2010 oil spill, as it was interpreted (perhaps incorrectly) as him trying to blame everything on Britain, when BP is 40% British owned and 39% American owned. At least one British tabloid newspaper actually ran an editorial [[MisplacedNationalism calling for the British government to intercede on BP's behalf as a result.]]

* Omega-3[[labelnote:*]]the - character isn't a hyphen, it's a minus sign, designating the distance from the omega end of the fatty acid chain where the double-bond occurs. If you are a stuffy organic chemist, you want to pronounce it "omega minus three"[[/labelnote]] fatty acids. Shortly after they became popular, advertisers started referring to them as 'omega-3 oils', and more recently just 'omega-3s' with even scientists using that last one. This was all to avoid people getting the idea that the fatty acids [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin might contain fat]].

* Sugar substitutes like aspartame. It's either a wonderful alternative to tooth-rotting, weight-gaining sweetners, or cancer in a paper packet that affects your insides like nicotine and tastes like synthetic evil.