No more cordon blur: France prepares to ban vegetarian products from using meaty language

  • jcarax@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I really don’t see the problem with honesty in product marketing, aside from the fact that it should be 100% and not limited to artificial meat products. That said, a ban doesn’t seem like the best idea, because it limits your ability to describe the product. How do you describe artificial spare ribs concisely, without being able to say the words “spare” and “ribs” together?

    And just because artificial meat isn’t indistinguishable from the real thing at the moment doesn’t mean:

    1. Manufacturers aren’t dressing up the packaging in a way that makes it difficult to tell the difference. And not even necessarily in order to be deceitful, but rather to make it look appealing, and get more people to try it.
    2. When you’re tired, and hungry, and just want to get back home from a shopping trip, you accidentally choose the wrong package because the identifiers don’t stand out sufficiently. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally bought something with artificial sweetener, after staring right at the two options, and registering that I don’t want the one.

    I wish we could just get past the loud, over the top design language of literally everything. Every time I leave the house, it’s an assault on my senses, everywhere I turn.