I have a smorgasbord of cold drugs now and the interesting thing about them is how many of them say they are antibacterial or other claims like that, then have disclaimers that say there's no evidence that it helps the severity or duration of colds. No matter, I'm only trying to treat symptoms anyway.

[–] liv@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now's your excuse to eat tons of icecream!!

I think people are trying to avoid getting a bacterial sinus or throat infection on top of the cold?

That said antibacterial everything is flavour of the month these days and it's kind of dumb. We're meant to have bacteria, if you kill it all you're in big trouble.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey I'm way ahead of you on the ice cream!

And with regard to "antibacterial", in most cases it's just alcohol. I presume they put it there as a preservative or something then marketing gets involves and suddenly it's a selling point.

[–] liv@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably. Re: marketing bandwagons, I once saw some iceblocks labelled "gluten free"... which is kind of a given in iceblocks.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You also regularly see 99% fat free on lollies made of 99% sugar.

And "made in NZ" (or wherever) can quite often be used in a way that barely counts. e.g. if you're looking for bacon with pigs grown in NZ (with our stricter animal welfare laws), it can be near impossible. Go to your supermarket and you'll find almost all the bacon is "made in NZ", but almost all of it is only brined in NZ, the meat is from cage-grow, pigs raised overseas.

Buy electronics made in South Korea or Taiwan, and they were propably just assembled from Chinese parts.

And don't even get me started on italian slave tomatoes.

I'd love for NZ to have food labelling like Australia does. "Made in Australia from 95% Australian ingredients" tells you a lot about what standards it adheres to, what conditions staff worked under, and how far the food travelled to reach us.

[–] liv@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

Argh yes the fat free lollies!!! Especially if it's gummy snakes or something... I should hope there's no fat in there! And the "lite" heart tick stuff that has compensated for its low fat status by being weirdly high in sugar.

I read a thing that said the more processed your food is, the more likely there is to be slavery involved somewhere in the ingredients. Which sucks because the processed/preserved slavery stuff is often much more affordable.

I agree, better labelling would really improve our ability to make better choices.