Ethical wording

I have previously discussed here the problems I see with companies who love to tell you how many servings of a certain vitamin they have in their cereal, or how their bottled drink provides multiple services of fruits and vegetables (V8 is probably the worst at this). (And while not a matter of wording so to speak, a related issue is serving size -- which I always find fascinating going from a traditional grocery store, where I seem to eat 4 servings of everything possible, to a Whole Foods or similar, where I seem to actually eat 1 serving of most things. So serving size is also purposely misleading. You want to see how much that fat is in that individual size frozen pizza to find that it has 117 calories per serving but then see that there are 3.5 servings per container. You're standing in the grocery store holding the freezer door open -- are you about to do the math or just decide based on something else? And I know I already ranted about that here.)

In any event, not everyone is in the wrong here. I picked up an Izzie the other day and noticed that it said it provided nearly 3 servings of fruit -- but suggested right there that the USDA suggests eating whole fruits, so be sure to eat your fruits too. V8 practically comes right out and tells Americans who don't know any better that they can just drink a couple V8s a day and they don't have to worry one lick about eating fruits and vegetables. But Izzie take a more responsible approach. I was just buying rolling papers (long story, and entirely unrelated to my last post) from an online discount store and right on the front page in bold all caps it says:

SMOKING WILL KILL YOU. IF YOU HAVE NOT STARTED, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. IF YOU CAN, QUIT. YOUR HEALTH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR BUSINESS.

Not many businesses in this country would agree with that statement. (My much repeated outrageous and liberal theory that government should be watching our health -- and environment and safety and on and on -- to counteract business' single-minded motive: profit at all costs, would apply nicely here.) This has become a bit of a rant, but I wanted to do a shout out to Izzy, and rollingpaperwarehouse.com and all the businesses that realistically show serving sizes so we aren't misled by how many calories or how much fat is actually in something, and to all the other businesses that do one thing they don't actually have to do by regulation or law, and don't actually choose to do based on a desire for more sales, more profits. If anyone has more I'd love to continue the shout out. Feel free to comment.