Health benefits of hot dog water? Profitable prank illustrates problem with food labels

Festival-goers in Canada recently got the opportunity to buy an innovative new health product: hot dog water. Boasting health benefits and claiming to be “keto compatible” and gluten-free, the water sold for $27 a bottle. The hot dog water turned out to be a joke by a performance artist but the artist earned about $1,500 from the stunt.

Hot dog water might seem completely absurd, but consumers encounter ridiculous labels and marketing gimmicks every time they hit the grocery store. Often, they shell out hard-earned dollars on the products bearing those labels believing they are receiving health benefits.

Take Ketel One vodka. Vodka is often made from wheat, which has no GMO version commercially available …. Yet Ketel One ran an entire ad campaign bragging about being 100% GMO free, as if this was something special that set them apart from competitors …. Ketel One’s campaign was the equivalent of saying fresh water is free of sea salt.

Other marketing tricks can be slightly harder to decipher, even when the label is regulated by the federal government.

Federal regulations prohibit adding any hormones to pork or chicken. “Hormone-free” claims on these meats are required to subsequently state the rule. But no meat is hormone-free, because hormones are naturally produced by plants and animals.

Read full, original article: Food labels mislead consumers

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