5 supermarket products with bizarre product descriptions
Sometimes you laugh your head off in the supermarket. For example, when you come across unintelligible products at Albert Heijn. But the product descriptions themselves are often hilarious too. Read and shudder: these are my favorite product descriptions.
The artisanal salad
There are a few artisanal salads. One sounds even more disgusting than the next: artisanal beef salad, salmon salad and Russian egg salad. I already find the word salad wrong on so many levels, but the Russian egg salad takes the cake. Every time I study the yellow-and-white stuff through the packaging, I imagine that the salad is full of preservatives. It always looks exactly the same and never seems to wilt. And then there’s that half-boiled egg that always hangs somewhere between yellow and gray yolk, ugh! The product description from Dirk doesn’t help either and even confirms all my reservations in a single sentence: “Russian egg salad with sugar and sweetener”, I’ll pass.
ASC/MSC salmon salad
Are you suddenly craving a sandwich with ASC/MSC salmon salad? No, that’s not a radio frequency or a new type of MRI scan. Turns out; it’s simply better to eat ASC/MSC salmon salad instead of regular salmon salad. It means you’re eating sustainably caught salmon! To receive the MSC certification, a fishery must meet the MSC standard for sustainably caught fish. ASC is an independent international non-profit organization that manages and further develops a certification program for responsible farmed fish. So, good for you! But on the packaging, it doesn’t look particularly cheerful.
“Contains no gluten”
Gluten. I find it a strange thing. There really are people with a gluten allergy or intolerance, I know that. And I understand that we can never be too careful for that group of people, but is it just me, or are we consumers being made a little stupid? Suddenly every product has to state whether it contains gluten. Whereas 10 years ago, you simply knew that a head of lettuce didn’t contain gluten. I mean; gluten is a protein that naturally occurs in wheat (including spelt and khorasan wheat), rye and barley (groats). I find this development in information provision striking:
Head of lettuce: gluten-free. Well, unlike all those types of lettuce packed with gluten.
Milk: gluten-free. That never happened in primary school: “Which children asked for the gluten-free milk?”
Going for the healthy option but have a gluten allergy? Good news! There are now gluten-free cucumbers and even gluten-free mangoes! Thank goodness! Now people with a gluten allergy can also get their daily vegetables and fruit.
Made with mechanically separated meat
I was a little shocked when I saw “mechanically separated meat” on the ingredients list of my favorite snack—the frikandel what else?—. I know perfectly well that they don’t make a frikandel from the finest cuts of chicken and pork, but mechanically separated meat does sound rather confronting. The last bits of meat are scraped from the bone, stuffed into a sausage, and then I put it in my mouth with some sauce and onion. Doesn’t sound very appetizing, but… Here comes the silver lining: if you think about it carefully, it’s actually completely sustainable! At least everything from the already deceased animal is used. Love!
Fruit drink with flavoring
Children’s drinks have had to comply with many rules in recent years. I understand it, because I also used to think that Taxi and Wicky were healthy, so I drank liters of the ‘fruit’ juice every week until we learned that it was 10% water and 90% added sugars. Since then, product descriptions for children’s drinks have become incredibly honest, and therefore genuinely hilarious. Take the Disney Surprise Drinks Multifruit. Not only do children get an ‘enclosed surprise with new toys regularly’ (I don’t even want to think about the plastic soup and the poor children’s hands that put this together..), the product description is also full of surprises: “Multifruit drink with vitamin, sweetener and flavoring.” I love flavoring in my fruit drink. What kind of flavoring doesn’t matter. Just flavoring. It continues: “with 30% fruit juice and without preservative. Always a fun surprise.” And the makers of this drink are 100% right about that!
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