The words used to describe food are ridiculous and unhelpful

[StLevanBlackcaps]

Just heard an ad where every other thing was described as ‘cheeky’ or ‘a treat’. The current Costa one does my head in with the idiot girl claiming you have to ‘be good’ on Mon/Tues, you can be ‘naughty’ on Wed/Thurs but you have to admit it and on Fri you can stuff your face 🙄

Anything about diets or nutrition is full of cliched crap about ‘grabbing some crunchy veggies’ as a healthy snack or uses stupid ott descriptions for perfectly ordinary things - ‘fresh, creamy milk’ etc.

Restaurant menus are full of similar stuff to make their (often) mass-produced microwaveable junk sound ‘healthy’ - hand picked this and garden fresh that.

I love words and I love food but this stuff drives me bonkers - it’s misleading, insulting and doesn’t help anyone trying to just eat normally.

Deconstructed burger! I don't want my burger deconstructing, I want it in a bun with lettuce, tomato, cheese and mayo!
Dirty chips. I don't want dirty chips, I want them peeled, washed and fried!
Triple cooked chips. I don't want chips that have been in and out of the fryer like a yo-yo. It tells me someone has too much time on their hands.
Hand crafted. See above!
Freshly baked. Taken out of the freezer and shoved in the oven!
Locally sourced. That would be your local supplier then!
Freshly picked. Yes, a couple of days ago by a minimum wage veg picker a hundred miles away!

This.

But also FuckabethFuckor's post is absolutely fascinating! I do love a good deconstruction.

Photos on menus ( especially pub menus) is also annoying too as the actual meal you get isn't anything like the photo in the menu. Or they haven't got it in that day!
If it's described as ' home made ' I often bet it's not. Fresh lettuce etc, we all know it's a few days old at least.
The wording is only there to tempt you in after all , the reality is usually a lot more disappointing

Food that appears on anything other than a plate is also annoying.
The little canister of chips in a cone or whatever is only to disguise the fact we've paid a fiver for about ten of them
If your lucky !

Do people cook the pasta before putting it in a lasagne?

re: the OP, it is annoying and encourages unhelpful feelings of guilt around food. I don’t blame individuals for internalising that messaging.

'Hand cooked crisps' always confuses me. Like who pours boiling oil into their hands to fry crisps??!! 😂😂😂

@FuckabethFuckor thank you for that, it's an eye opener and very interesting!

I can’t stand it when someone calls a plate of food “sexy”!!

You're welcome. It is interesting. Don't get me started on femcare and home fragrance product companies though...!

Agreed

It drives me mad! Grown women talking about “being good”, or saying they “have been bad”, because they had a Twix, or calling certain foods a “sin”, and loads of other stupid terminology. Its silly.

But I guess that’s also a part of the whole, commercialised, sometimes bad, diet culture, an industry that makes billions, teaching women this stupid terminology, as they peddle their highly processed, low nutrition, diet “treats”. It just makes idiots out of people.

Tasty dish is whatever is going off the next day 😂😂

I have a mental image of them being dipped individually by someone wearing gloves.

‘Hand-cooked’ is basically tipped out of the fryer by a person, in batches. As opposed to stuff like Pringles which is machine-formed (that’s why they’re so uniform in size and shape).

I think people do say “oh no, I’m being good” when they actually mean “I don’t want that”. Eg colleague proffers something that looks like a lump of icing with marshmallow squished into it “have a home made blondie!”
Me (inwardly retching) “they look amazing, but I really can’t today”

I think there are two separate issues

People using flowery language to sell food applies to everything in the world that people are trying to sell. Of course they are going to say fresh milk, I dont think someone would be impressed with a truthful description of how it was mechanically extracted and how many tankers and factories it's been through.

But I agree on the labelling food as naughty/ cheeky etc, it goes further than flowery language and makes value judgements about food rather than the fact that actually most foods are fine as part of a balanced diet

Haha yes

I’ve done ‘I’m being good’ as a get-out euphemism for ‘your cake looks shit, Neil’

This.

I don't mind overly descriptive words being used. I bloody hate the moralising of eating certain foods or the amount of food eaten.

Whether you eat a cookie or a tuna sandwich is not a bloody moral issue. Whether you have one cookie or a dozen isn't either.

It's a deeply toxic way to view food and causes so much harm - imo.

The current Costa one does my head in with the idiot girl claiming you have to ‘be good’ on Mon/Tues, you can be ‘naughty’ on Wed/Thurs but you have to admit it and on Fri you can stuff your face

Isn't this normalising bulimia in a way?

I know the link is for multiple recipes but at first glance sausage ragu lasagne chicken salad cinnamon toast crumble sounds terrible 😂

@FuckabethFuckor Some fascinating posts from you, would love to hear your thoughts on the marketing of femfresh and home fragrance.
Has anyone seen “The Menu”, it’s free on Disney+ at the moment. The bread course is memorable.

There's a whole industry that's been built up on cynically manipulating women — and they do specifically target women — by telling them that their homes and bodies smell without the 'help' of the company's products.

And it's all done in this awful, chummy 'us girls know what's up' tone that is highly deceptive and fundamentally unkind. Not to mention full of shit, most of the time.

I find it really unethical. I'm only partially in the industry now, and I specialise in something else. But if pushed I'd have fewer ethical issues doing tobacco than femcare (and, to be clear, I really, really don't want to do ciggies.)

Hups · Today 09:24

Deconstructed burger!

Oh yes! And it's not deconstructed, unless it's been assembled and taken apart.

It's unconstructed, you massive fucking dolts.

I had a naked chicken burger the other day. Aka a chicken salad.

FFS!