New! Improved! 50% less costs 20% more!

It's not a new trend, but I remain amazed that people fall for the repackaging of things as Whipped and Moussed and "Ready To Use" and stuffed with fillers and stretchers and glop that hides the lack of what ought to be present. In far too many cases, with way too many products, what the consumer is really getting is less of the product for a higher price per real unit.

Take Dannon's La Creme Yogurt Mousse. It's been around since 2003, and apparently remains popular; since I don't eat yogurt anyway, I don't know if it's something that just any yogurt consumer would like on its apparent-to-the-palate merits. (I can't stand yogurt myself; it tastes like spoiled milk to me, which is the same objection I have to the majority of cheeses.) What's the difference between the mousse version and the regular one in terms of ingredients? Well, one thing's definitely present in the moussed version which isn't on its list: AIR. That's how you make something into a mousse; whip it mechanically (usually after adding something to make it a bit stiffer so that it will hold the tiny bubbles created) until the volume doubles or triples (or more), making it "lighter" and "creamier"... and making the same actual amount of product stretch across two or three of the previous size of container instead.

Whipping something is far from the only way that products get stretched and made cheap-and-more-profitable. Take waffle syrup. Look at a few labels, and you'll see "cellulose gum" listed over and over again. What the heck is that, you ask? Basically, processed tree. While it's been pretty well established to have no negative effects, the undeniable fact that it very cheaply thickens stuff a lot while adding no nutritional value at all is a clear indicator that the point of employing it is to make the product seem richer, fuller, better, without actually improving it at all. In the case of waffle syrup, of course, there's no positive nutritional value to laud in the first place; the stuff's supposed to be thick sugary syrup. What the inclusion of cellulose gum allows the manufacturers to do is use less sugar - a lot less in some cases - and still have the stuff pour at the expected slow rate. Is that bad, given that sugar's something that you'd probably be better off reducing anyway? Well, maybe...but I doubt that anything other than simple profit margin boosting has driven the inclusion of this item.

Food's far from the only place where such commercial shenanigans are possible. Consider the "Ready To Use" dodge. The single most common example that I run across daily is antifreeze. In its pure form, the stuff is a terrible coolant; filling your car's cooling system with pure antifreeze (and no water) will induce overheating in traffic in a big hurry. And lots of people seem to be pretty bad at following the package directions about this...so the manufacturers started packaging half a gallon of antifreeze and half a gallon of water in a one gallon jug...at 75% to 80% of the price of a gallon of the pure stuff. Once again, it's not necessarily a bad thing, until you go to the store to buy a gallon of the pure stuff, and end up paying far more because all they had was the premix, in which you paid for extra packaging and very overpriced water.

There are lots of other examples out there; a little research will amaze or appall the interested investigator, and for the rest...well, did you really care anyway?