Howto fool ingredient lists?

[davx]

Hello,

I just like to mention this topic here.

Some of you probably are familiar with reading the ingredient lists of hardfood packages. Often it sonuds good.

Here a fictive example of "Dandelion-Pellets".

Figure out, you are the producer of this pellets and you have to fool the people buying your product. How can you do this?
You have an ingredient list sorting the given ingredients according to their quantitative part. At the beginning are the most important ingredients, at the end the least important ones.

For a better understanding I give you a proposal of such a ingredient list with the procentual ratio and in brackets the classification (good or bad). I assume the following composition:

- 30% dandelion (G)
- 25% wheat bran (B)
- 20% soybean meal extract (B)
- 20 % linum meal extract (B)
- 4 % parsley (G)
- 1 % several herbs like plantain, timothy, thym, sage, Calendula, ... (G)

Now we cann add all good and bad ingredients:

Good:
30 % Dandelion
4 % Parsley
1 % diverse herbs
35 % Total

Bad:
25% wheat bran
20% soybean meal extract
20 % linum meal extract
65 % Total

When you compare the bad ingredients are allmost two-thirds.

And here a proposal how the package can be declared:

"Ingredients: dandelion, wheat bran, 20% soybean meal extract, linum meal extract, 4 % parsley, plantain, timothy, thym, sage, Calendula, ...
"

Now, what is the main content? Dandelion? No, it is only about one-third.

[deguconvert]

WOW!! That is a very good example, Davx. Initially I thought you had made a typing error in your title, but I see and understand the intent of it now. I would certainly be fooled by an ingredients list such as this. I can think of many that I have read that resemble this deception quite strongly. Even more reason to try and convert to a natural diet.

[davx]

Yes I know it is a strong word, but I don't know how to describe it in a more subtile way without searching for longer time for a better synonyme. Sometime it is annoying... perhaps you have a better suggestion or is it okay in this way?

[deguconvert]

Intentional Deceptions used in Ingredients lists on pet foods . . . maybe?

[malteser60]

This is such a good example davx, and this should also be remembered not just for degus but also for humans when we're at the supermarket shopping for food. I get so frustrated when something is labelled as 'healthy' when it has so many additives in it.

Another thing to point out is to be wary of anything that is in pellet form. For pellets to be produced they need a binder, i.e. something to bind all the ingredients together and keep the pellet form. That is what the wheat bran and soybean do, as well as act as a bulker. Dandelion on it's own will not be able to be formed into a pellet. So the moral of the story is that it is always best to feed as natural as possible. Why buy dandelion pellets when you can just feed them the dandelion leaf on it's own?

[Karma]

I love explaining this to people in regards to pet food. "my pet food has to have meat as the first ingredient", but they forget to look at the rest of it.

Another tip (more for pet food and human food) - weight can include water as well.

Brand 1: chicken, ground rice, corn gluten - sounds right? chicken is first.

Brand 2: ground rice, chicken meal, corn gluten

You would think the first one has more chicken in it right? Wrong. chicken as an ingredient has water in it where chicken meal is dried so really the first brand would read "ground rice, corn gluten, chicken dry weight only"and thus is worse than brand 2.

There are sooooo much tricks of the trade when it comes to labels.