Commercials are silly sometimes.

I have to chuckle a little every time I see the Nutella commercial when the lady says it's made with wholesome ingredients like hazelnutes, skim milk and a hint of cocoa. Seriously? A "hint"? The jar is brown...and totally chocolatey. And yummy.

Just a random thought I had to get off my chest.

Aha! I actually just read on Twitter that Nutella has a huge lawsuit against them because they claim it's so healthy blah blah blah, and it's really not.
Here is the link: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...itional-claims

No kidding! So many foods out there claim to be healthy that aren't. Can you imagine the number of lawsuits there would be if we sued for every "healthy" unhealthy food?

It's like General Mills marketing their cereals made with "Whole Grain". Yeah... all the whole grain in the world isn't going to change the fact that your kids' cereals have so much sugar.

I thought Nutella was invented to give a high calorie food option for starving post WWII Germany... I'm too lazy to look it up... It's definitely not a healthy food, but it tastes great!

The sad part is that the "hint of cocoa" isn't inaccurate. Sure it's brown, but more cocoa would actually be healthier. It isn't the cocoa that makes nutella unhealthy, it's all the fat.

The part I find funny is the "made with skim milk" as if that makes it healthy. Any benefit the skim milk would have had is lost with all the extra fat that is added.

Haha. So true about the skim milk. Sure it's made with skim milk and lard...LOL. (I know it's not lard, but you know what I mean)

I also know the cocoa isn't the bad part. I just think it's funny that they say a "hint" and it totally tastes like chocolate.

Yeah, and that's what's scary, because it makes me think if it only has a little cocoa, is it filled with a lot of unnatural things to make it taste so chocolatey?

On one hand, I think it is ridiculous that advertisers can make false claims (or worse misleadingly true ones), but on the other, I think the lawsuit is ridiculous. I mean how long have we known that you can't trust manufacturers and you have to read the labels?

What's next, men suing the Axe fragrance company because it doesn't attract herds of blonde supermodels like in the commercial?

What I find funny about Axe is that it's parent company is Unilever which also owns Dove.

Axe promotes the sexual objectification of women in its ads, while Dove promotes women believe themselves to be beautiful regardless of what they look like.

Just a smidge hypocritical, don'tcha think?

It's definitely a scary precedent. Reminds me of the McDonalds coffee lady back in the 90's (look what that started). Some people don't want to take any personal accountability for things.

Rainbow... it's all about the $$$, isn't it?! So hard to know who to trust.

Actually, I side with the coffee lady, Mrs. Liebeck, on that one. Of course people expect coffee to be hot, but would anyone reasonably expect it to cause third degree burns requiring skin grafts? At the time, McDonald's coffee was a good 20 degrees hotter than that of any other restaurant, and had already settled claims from other scalding injuries for more than $500,000. McDonald's was already aware of the issue but chose not to act upon it; their quality control manager testified that the number of injuries was insufficient to cause the company to evaluate its practices. McDonald's own executive testified that the company knew that the coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but hadn't consulted any experts on the matter. He also admitted that the company chose not to issue warnings that the coffee could cause severe burns, even though most people wouldn't think it was a possible. A Human Factors Engineer, testifying on behalf of McDonald's, basically said that burn injuries like Mrs. Liebeck's didn't matter to the company because they were statistically insignificant compared to the billions of cups of coffee they sold annually.

McDonald's knew their coffee was significantly hotter than other restaurants. They knew it was capable of causing severe burns and had even compensated some of their customers over it. And yet, they chose not to issue warnings because their customers potentially getting severe burn injuries didn't matter to the company as much as sales.

For Mrs. Liebeck, she asked for her actual and anticipated medical bills to be compensated, which included covering skin grafts, spending 8 days in the hospital, and 2 years of medical treatments. McDonald's only offered her $800, and she sought legal action when they denied any liability for her burns. Had the coffee been 20 degrees lower (similar to other restaurants) it would have taken more contact time to cause the severe burns she received.

In court, McDonald's was found to be 80% responsible for serving coffee that was found to be of an unreasonable and unexpectedly high temperature without proper warning, and Mrs. Liebeck was found to be 20% responsible since she was the one that made the spill. Both parties ended up agreeing to a settlement significantly less than the reduced punitive damages issued.

* * *

As for the Nutella claim, I'll agree that's ludicrous. I don't care how healthy any product claims to be, I always read the label to see the ingredients, sugar content, and fat content. I can't tell you how many "health" products have sugar for the first ingredient. But at the same time, companies really should be responsible for being honest with advertising. I doubt a class action lawsuit was really appropriate here, but it's good to know the company is changing their campaign.

And as for Axe? Well . . . here's a fun read.

I was recently in our local health food store and could not BELIEVE the type of stuff they sell with it being supposedly healthy. Some of the packaged foods had more ingredients than their non-organic counterparts and most had ingredients I still couldn't pronounce.

These days, I tend to eat things as absolutely close to their natural state as possible. Or I make treats out of ingredients as close to their natural state as possible. Sure, I'll eat cookies, but I'm making them myself rather than buying them - even from the health food store.

I don't trust anything on labels anymore. If it has more than 5 ingredients that aren't whole foods, I don't eat it.