I was vaguely listening to the radio t’other day on one of my 5 times a week school runs to Bakewell and and back.
Two different ads for carpet shops / show rooms came on during the trip.
The first mentioned that their carpet started at “just £3 per square metre.”
The second seem even better value at, IIRC, “prices from 50p per square foot.
Until, of course, you do the maths.
There’s over 10 square feet in a square metre.
Meaning their prices start at over £5 per square metre.
Now, of course, we know nothing about the differences in quality.
But it struck me as a great example of massaging figures to make things seems better.
A bit like is often done with crappy food.
Where the labelling will tell you there is only X grams of sugar / salt / fat / something else per ‘portion’.
But, when you check, the portion is tiny.
It might be a square or two of the chocolate bar you fully intend to demolish yourself.
An amount of a cereal that would struggle to satisfy an anorexic mouse.
A volume of some sauce or condiment that would barely affect the taste of a normal sized meal.
The amount of something in, say, half a pack of crisps.
I don’t bother with crisps personally.
But, if I did, I can’t imagine leaving half the bag to another day.
You get the idea.
It’s another example of food marketers describing things in a way that makes them sound healthy.
In attempt to get people to buy them.
You don’t need to analyse the label of every single thing you eat.
But a good, rough awareness of what you are actually putting into your body is hugely important.
And, as a simple approach, going for food that doesn’t actually have a label will usually send you in the right direction.
Real food.
Meat, fish, fruit, veg, nuts, etc.
Much love,
Jon ‘Carpetright’ Hall and Matt ‘SCS’ Nicholson
P.S. 5 days to that find out more meeting –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting 🙂
