New, But Not Improved.
I panic when I see the words “New and Improved!” or “Great New Taste!” on my foodstuffs. And it’s not just because I find the exclamation mark vaguely offensive, as if some guy from Marketing is screaming at me. It’s moreso that some person, or group of persons, has decided that what wasn’t broke needed fixing.
Probably the best example of this (or worst, depending on how you look at it) was New Coke. Some focus group decided that they wanted their Coca-Cola to taste more like Pepsi, and the folks at Coke apparently decided this was a good thing. New Coke begat a lot of pissed-off customers, which, in turn, begat Coca-Cola Classic, which was old Coke in new bottles.
Lesson learned? Not so fast. Doritos has changed their flavor multiple times, to a point where their product now tastes closer to the inferior Bravos than to Doritos. Cheez Doodles started coming in flavors that claimed to be made with real cheese, which defeats the purpose of the whole Cheez thing they had going in the first place. Some foods are just meant to taste artificial. Trying to make them natural, or healthy, is just screwing with the delicate balance of nature. Seriously, now: what is the point of healthy Twinkies? Someone tell me, or show me, where the Twinkie exists in nature. Where are all the Twinkie bushes I’ve been missing all this time? Can I plant a grove of Ding Dongs? Will there be a bumper crop of HoHo’s, or farmers being subsidized to grow Funny Bones? Give me my thicket of Jelly Krimpets!
Sorry. Got a little carried away there.
Speaking of sugar, why does chocolate taste like it’s got more sugar in it than it used to? It’s a good thing that Reese’s makes those gigantic peanut butter cups, since the salt in the peanut butter offsets all the freakin’ sugar they now dump in the chocolate. I used to think that this is because I’d cut way back on my intake of sugar, but I’m told by people who haven’t cut back (between vacuuming potato chip crumbs out of their bellybuttons) that the stuff tastes sweeter to them, too.
I know that the food industry is like politics. I know that what comes to my dinner table, or in my brown paper bag, isn’t so much the result of painstaking care, but of focus groups and marketing departments. But if you’re going to stick 25 people in a room to test your new product, could you at least get someone besides a group of disgruntled eight-year-olds? Please?
June 13th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
You’ve probably read it already, but Fast Food Nation has a fascinating section on how chemists “invent” new flavors for products. It’s sad.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
I did read it, and went around recommending it to anybody who’d listen for a month after… which was also about how long it was before I ate a hamburger again. Reminded me of reading “The Jungle,” and also reminded me that no matter how much time passes, the less changes…