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Dual-Purpose Food


teagal

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I don't like the trend of companies marketing food for something other than eating.

Cheezits has a Scrabble Jr. box, Coke with all the names on their cans and bottles, Twizzlers and Pringles advertising that they aren't just for eating. Is the food so horrible that the marketing departments of these companies have to invent new uses for

the product or are they trying to boost sales since people aren't buying as much 'junk'

or do they think any advertising is good advertising? It doesn't work for me.

What do you think?

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality. Clifton Fadiman

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And vinegar is marketed as a cleaning agent. There's an absolutely enormous pool of money pouring into consumer foods every day. At this scale even hundredths of a percentage of market share is real money.

I take way more umbrage with supply line and manufacturing adulteration/efficiencies.

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Desperation, and the employment of new college/marketing grads who have never cooked a meal in their lives, call for 'desperate measures' (not always good ones though). In my estimation, unless all they all want is the entire market share of college kids, they should figure out new ways to use their products AS food, beyond just eating them out of the package - but then I am an old fogey.

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I'm with Deryn on the old school marketing.

 

I have several recipes that I have collected and saved over the years that were developed as marketing ploys by the distributors of food products. Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate cake, Quaker Grits "Baked Cheese Grits," and a corned beef and cabbage casserole recipe with egg noodles, Swiss cheese and caraway seed from the Libbey's corned beef can label, pop to mind off the top of my head, but there are many others. These have made me use more of the marketed product than I may have otherwise by actually adding value to what they are trying to sell.

 

I miss the manufacturers' recipes. They used to be a good risk, because the writers were highly motivated to give you a good dish, so that you'd want to come back and purchase their product again. They're few and far between these days. Sad for those like me who care, and sad for the corporations, because a tasty recipe can hook people for a lifetime. I really doubt any of the trendy nonsense the OP, teagal, mentioned will do that.

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> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

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I have two "Brand-Name Cookbooks" filled with recipes from the labels on food cans or boxes.  The problem with that is they are from the 80's and practically none of them work anymore because the products have changed either the size of the package or the ingredients, or both.

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I have two "Brand-Name Cookbooks" filled with recipes from the labels on food cans or boxes.  The problem with that is they are from the 80's and practically none of them work anymore because the products have changed either the size of the package or the ingredients, or both.

 

Another reason to cook with and eat "real" food.

 ... Shel


 

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Will somebody please tell me what Pringles is advocating doing with pringles besides eating them. I've googled this but have only found things to do with the empty cans.  This information doesn't interest me since to get the empty can, you first have to eat the pringles.  When they first came out I bought a can of pringles, I ate the pringles, and that was the last can of pringles I ever bought, and I probably threw the can out. Now Glenfiddich canisters, there's a canister you can do any number of  useful things with.  I had to google twizzlers to find out what they were, and anything you can do with a twizzler that doesn't involve eating it is an improvement.

I'm with the others who prefer the old style of marketing.  My split pea soup recipe comes straight off the back of a Jack Rabbit split pea bag. 

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"A fool", he said, "would have swallowed it". Samuel Johnson

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I think I saw some Pringles ads where people were using them to pretend to be duck-billed platypus-ses or something that resembled that strange animal - perhaps as they danced around performing some strange medieval rite. Can't quite recall the details but that scene didn't exactly send me rushing for my car keys to go buy some.

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In a video about making potato dishes, Heston Blumenthal showed how potato starch could be used as wallpaper paste.  In fact, he papered a room using potato starch as the adhesive.

 ... Shel


 

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In a video about making potato dishes, Heston Blumenthal showed how potato starch could be used as wallpaper paste.  In fact, he papered a room using potato starch as the adhesive.

 

Didn't you make flour and water paste/glue in elementary school?  I still remember the smell of it. 

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In a video about making potato dishes, Heston Blumenthal showed how potato starch could be used as wallpaper paste.  In fact, he papered a room using potato starch as the adhesive.

 

I first used potato starch glue over 40 years ago. Pretty standard. Didn't need a Blumenthal to teach me that one.

We got a lot of fun from potatoes. Used them for printing, too.

Oh, and we ate them, too.

 

Bonfire night (Guy Fawkes' Night) was a big favourite when I was a kid, as we cooked our spuds in the ashes of the bonfire.

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...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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liuzhou,

 

I definitely remember flour and water paste in elementary school in Chula Vista, CA. We also did carved potato prints with tempura paint, although, I can't remember actually carving the potatoes. I doubt they allowed us knives, because we were relegated to the rounded-end scissors. We also made necklaces from macaroni, and glued various colored legumes and pasta to a backboard to make artwork.

 

I didn't question the adults at the time, but now it seems wasteful of food when I think about it. It was a lot of fun at the time, though.  :smile:

 

SylviaLovegren,

 

I remember the smell of flour/water paste when allowed to sit too long. Horrible. I think this happened at home for some papier-mâché sculptures I was working on. I learned to make smaller amounts and not try to save them over from day to day. I attribute this experience to the reason I don't try sour doughs at home, although I love them when someone who knows what they're doing makes them.

 

 

Later on, we did the science experiment with powering a light bulb with potatoes. That was really cool, but I'll be dogged if I truly understand to this day what makes it work. I wish we'd done it later in school, so I would really get it, but I guess if I wanted to I could spend the research time on the internet. It may be related to why even stainless steel screws and fittings can corrode in use on sea-going vessels, and one day, I may get enough of a bur under my saddle to get a better handle on it.

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> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

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