Marketing American food

There's nothing like a good caustic look at what Americans eat, and this essay is no exception:

Remember how it used to be so difficult to transport yogurt? When yogurt only came in 50-pound reinforced steel containers that had to be moved using federally regulated yogurt transportation vehicles? Well, they've fixed that. Now you can get yogurt in an easy-to-transport package with a dumb pun for a name: Go-Gurt!

The article also delves into the inanity of the "100 Calorie Snack Pack," and other new ways to market old food:

This is because extensive scientific evidence shows that round numbers lead to weight loss. Eating an entire box of Cheese Nips is unquestionably unhealthy, unless it's really easy to do math afterward. This is why people in countries that use the metric system -- which is to say pretty much any country except the United States -- are much slimmer.

I was particularly entertained by this article's cynical assessment of food marketing given these recent findings: food - any food - wrapped in a McDonald's wrapper tastes better to kids.

The study had youngsters [ages 3-5] sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test...

Even [store bought] carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.