consuming vagueness
*consuming vagueness*
Actual foods have flavour. Actual seasonings have flavour.
I am becoming quite opposed to the consumption of artificial things. "Colour x" is added, and might very well communicate information... but I would very much like to see the honest colour of something. "Flavour" [quite literally listed as "flavour" on the label] is added, and now, I cannot experience the honest flavour of natural ingredients.
Do you know how many things have flavour? "Flavour", listed as an ingredient, is vague to the point that I do think it requires proper investigation.
If "flavour" is so good, be proud of it. Put it on the front of the label.
If it were actual turmeric, for example, businesses could easily capitalise on that. If it were actual lemon juice, the same applies.
What is "flavour"? It could literally vary from batch to batch, as it is just a place for something to act as a variable. One week, "flavour" could be cocaine. The next, it could be MDMA.
Do not flavour that which has flavour with "flavour". That is common sense.
The law needs to change. "Flavour" is not truth in packaging, at all. I'm a big boy: I am happy to read, on the label, what "flavour" is.
Let me decide whether I want "flavour". For, dirt has flavour, and I will not eat dirt.
"I ate "flavour" today!"
Cool. What's that?
"I don't know! No-one will tell me, as the law permits the sale of things that hide under vague descriptions!"
The law permits the sale of "flavour". Should it? No.
I want to buy "flavour" on its own if it is so good so that I may make my own foods and beverages.
Imagine walking into a shop and asking for a bottle of Flavour™.
The shopkeeper asks: "What kind?"
You reply: "Flavour. I want to add it to my water, oats, vegetables, and coffee."
"But what flavour?"
"Your labels don't seem to think I need to know."
Every detail of that which is consumed should be perfectly knowable if we care about health. Every detail. No vagueness. None.
Imagine this:
A child creates a beverage
They print a label
They place the label
on the container of the beverage
The label states:
Contains "flavour"
Now
Would any wise adult
consume such a beverage?
I would not
I would question the child:
"What is "flavour""?
"Where did you get "flavour""?
And
if the child would not tell me
I would be very concerned
The absence of sufficient information is itself a reason to decline the beverage.
We would demand an explanation from the child. Why should adulthood lower that expectation? A child who cannot identify an ingredient might reasonably be expected to learn. A business that manufactures food professionally has greater resources, greater technical knowledge, and greater capacity to document its ingredients. Yet consumers can encounter the same vague description on a professionally manufactured product.
The issue is that we would ordinarily consider the identity of an ingredient a reasonable question to ask before consuming something, yet our labelling conventions can leave that question unanswered.
If you give me something to consume, you should be able to tell me what it contains. Not merely what an ingredient does. Not merely what it tastes like. Not merely that somebody has deemed its use permissible. What it is.
