Ben’s Weblog

A rather humorous bit I came across in the last edition of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, the NFL’s column that talks football and occcasionally diverges, as seen here:

Last week, the column noted Taco Bell’s “grilled carne asada steak” means “grilled roasted meat steak.” Eric Lund of Anaheim, Calif., home of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim — which translates as “the the Angels Angels of Anaheim” — reports the city boasts a King Pollo Chicken restaurant. As pollo is chicken in Spanish, the name translates as King Chicken Chicken. Jonathan Clough adds that Starbucks offers “chai tea latte.” In India, chai means “tea served with milk,” while latte means “milk” in Italian. So the translation of “chai tea latte” would be “tea with milk with tea with milk.”

Will marketing wonders ever cease? Of course, I work for a company that makes a fat-free cream cheese, which is an oxymoron permitted by US food labeling regulations. Fat-free? Self-explanatory, and defined in 21 CFR 120.10. Cream cheese? Legally required to contain a minimum of 33% fat (21 CFR 133.133). Cream by itself? Legally required to contain at least 18% fat (21 CFR something-or-other)

Then there’s something like a reduced-fat butter, which we can translate as “reduced fat fat”.