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The Tea Maker
Show me someone who can read labels on packaging and I’ll show you someone with a microscope. No one can read labels on packaging anymore.
Have you ever tried to read what’s on a food label? 20:20 vision is no help at all. The words are so small it’s a miracle they can find a printing machine that can actually churn them out.
I have to put my specs on, plus use a magnifying glass, just to make sure I’m holding a can of soup rather than a can of beans. But when it comes to ingredients, cooking instructions, serving suggestions and storage instructions, reading the information is impossible. Don’t even mention sell-by dates because on nine out ten occasions I can’t even find them.
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
In one hand I have a carton of Knorr Chicken Stock Cubes. On the side of the tiny carton is a list of ingredients, which take up exactly 50mm x 12mm of space. For those who haven’t gone metric yet, that’s a really tiny amount of space, believe me.
But inside this tiny space, Knorr has managed to list their ingredients something like this:
Ingredients: salt, flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium 5’-robo-nucleotides, disodium), potato starch, vegetable oil, chicken fat (4%), hydrogenated vegetable oil, yeast extract, chicken powder (1.4%), onion, flavourings (contains gluton), parsley, colours (ammonia caramel, beta-carotene (contains soya), riboflavin), white pepper, citric acid, ante-oxidents (BHA, propo galate), rosemary extract.
Now just think what would happen if you were allergic to any of these. You wouldn’t know you were about to add them to your food, or your kid’s food, because you wouldn’t be able to read the list on the carton. I can only read them because I got someone else to type them up for me and to create the list that appears above. Without the list, all I would’ve known was that I had a yellow box with stuff in it from Knorr. It’s just not good enough.
The Tea Maker
PS: You can comment on this story by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll respond to your emails in next week’s column. Your email address will never be published.
