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Friday, April 07, 2017

When Does The Extra Space In Your Potato Chip Bag Go From Annoying To Deceptive?

The question is whether or not Wise is truly misleading people. So-called “slack-fill” is the difference between the size of the packaging and the food it contains. It’s perfectly legal — otherwise everything would be vacuum-packed, but there are federal regulations that bar the use of “nonfunctional slack-fill” in food packaging.

However, those regulations have a number of sufficiently vague conditions that food producers can use to justify slack-fill, such as needing that space to protect the contents, requirements of the machines used to fill the packaging, and “unavoidable product settling during shipping.”

In the settled (but not quite settled) class-action lawsuit over Starkist tuna, the plaintiffs had claimed that cans of tuna labeled “5 oz.” actually contained only about 3.2 ounces of actual fish (an allegation that Starkist denies).

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12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go vac pack a bag of chips, see what happens. Chips are sold by weight, not volume.

Anonymous said...

Here we go again! Every time we attack another foreign country, we are given this air in the potato chip bag thing to worry over! It never fails!

Anonymous said...

7:30 is correct! Assad gassed the citizens in southern Syria because they were sending him bags of dried date chips that were mostly air.

Anonymous said...

Kleenex cut the box down to 160 tissues and jacked their prices again.

Anonymous said...

lol

Anonymous said...

Does yogurt settle during shipping? My Chobani was 2/3 full this morning as it is every time. I understand daypack goods settling, but not liquid.

Anonymous said...

7:41 That was done because trump won and the crying increased exponentially.

Anonymous said...

Cereal, toilet paper......0n and on with most things bought these days. Parmesan cheese that's not Parmesan, olive oil that's not olive oil. Big biz and big pharma continues to rape us

Anonymous said...

7"41, the Syrians needed the extra Kleenex to cry over their dead relatives. We must make that sacrifice, lol!

Anonymous said...

Well here is the thing, it is deceptive because the size of the bag, with air in it or not, adds to the weight including the actual chips... So This person should take out the chips in a video, and weigh them, if it equals the amount on the bag, then no problem, you are getting what you paid for... If the weight on the bag, includes the bag, air and chips, then yes you are being deceived and not getting what you paid for...

This is similar to how fast food places stuff yuor cups with nothing but ice, and the actual amount of drink you get will be less...

Kurt Vonnegut said...

Doesn't it depend on how much gravity there is on any given day, 9:04?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Go vac pack a bag of chips, see what happens. Chips are sold by weight, not volume.

April 7, 2017 at 6:50 AM

Go read the text of the lawsuit and you will realize why your statement falls flat.