My favourite is when they label something that's already high in protein, by default, as "HIGH PROTEIN!"
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
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And then charge you extra
Protein²
It's like when oatmeal or potato chips are labeled as gluten free. Of course they are, there's no gluten in oats or potatoes, but gluten free is good marketing.
Well, I heard very sensitive people saying that these are actually great, because without these labels, cross-contamination from the factory happens and they get reactions for food that naturally shouln't contain any gluten. I'm not sure how common it is, but I heard it happens.
It always seemed like silly marketing until your kid gets Alfa-gal or you start cooking for people with allergies. The amount of stuff that has additives made from mammals, wheat, shellfish, egg, etc is really surprising. Processed in a factory/machine that also produces nuts, etc can be enough to kill some people. If they can and will say X free instead of saying everything “may contain X” that is a wonderful thing.
Yes of course, all of these responses are great points and I fully agree. I was being cynical and making commentary about how those labels started showing up when gluten free started being a trend, when people were treating it more like a fad diet with "cheat days" rather than a serious medical situation. But it is wild how uninformative food labels are. I've been vegetarian for 23 years and I'm well aware of how often animal products turn up somewhere unexpected.
Flavored chips can often have gluten in them in the form of "Natural Flavorings" or "Carmel Coloring" which can contain gluten unless the product is labeled gluten-free. It's rather astonishing how many foods can end up with gluten in them because of those two ingredient items.
There was a lawsuit in the Netherlands when a lollypop maker marketed their candy as "energy for your brain". Thankfully, while it's technically correct, that was deemed not actually legal.
You can, however, still brand your salt as vegan and your banana as gluten free.
Enjoy your short protein-free life while you can, I guess.
The fiber wave has already started swelling.
To be fair, that has been a recommendation from experts for decades.
But yeah, now you got oat milk advertising itself as being a source of fiber, just because it's slightly less terrible than cow milk. My oat milk pack has 9g of fiber in a whole liter. Eat a fraction of a salad and you've easily got more than that...
Uh oh, I need to poop.
In the time of a water crisis, really?
I'm just waiting for Apple to sue Kraft for its protein Mac and Cheese, which they're calling "Power Mac."
For those too young to remember, the Power Mac was Apple's desktop workstation. Its modern equivalent would be the Mac Pro, or the Mac Studio. Some Power Macs featured a full PC daughterboard and a keyboard shortcut to literally turn it into a PC. So you're in System 7 or Mac OS 8 or whatever it ran, then you do Shift+⌘+X and a PC is booting up, running MS-DOS or Windows 95. The Mac part just went away. Do the key shortcut again and you go right back where you were. It was literally two machines in one. Thing was wild.
I still have a PowerMac G5 cheese grater in my closet. Need to boot that baby up.
Funny story, "protein" in Dutch is just "Eggwhite".
So, I was looking for egg whites, for baking. The brand switched from a bottle to a carton, so I couldn't find it. I asked for it, and after the someone pointed it out to me, another shopper goes "You can just buy egg whites? Then why are we buying extra protein bread?" to their friend/partner/whatever.
And indeed. Why are you, random stranger?
True stories hit the hardest
Number 11 is my fave. But, still, number 8 was perfect.