Serving suggestions

I'm an eagle scout--something I'm fairly proud of accomplishing. In my journey to earn my eagle, I went on my fair share of camping trips. When roughing it in the woods, there is always the question of what to bring to eat. Tin foil (or I guess they'd now be called aluminum foil) dinners were a big hit. Basically, it was potatoes, carrots, onions and ground beef heavily covered in salt and pepper and wrapped in foil. To cook it? Simply throw it into the fire and wait until you hear the "sizzle".

Hotdogs were also popular. Find a stick, sharpen one end to a point, skewer the hotdog, hold it over the fire until at least half of it is charred and tada! Dinner!

On one of our trips, one of the leader had brought something along the lines of cup o' noodles. Again, fairly easy to make. Just boil some water over the fire and pour it into the cup. I remember this leader taking the time to teach us a lesson. On the cover of the cup o' noodles was a picture of the noodles mixed in with all sorts of vegetables and even chunks of meat. He then showed us what he had made. They didn't look close at all. He explained the concept of "serving suggestion" which is really a way for the product to look better than it was.

For me, the most common example of a serving suggestion is those pictures on cereal boxes where it shows a bowl of the product, a glass of milk, a glass of Orange Juice, toast (w/ butter), half a cantaloupe, a 101% bran muffin, and 12 waffles.

And then sometimes the serving suggestions make no sense whatsoever.

I guess the suggestion is that you cook it before eating it.

It's Rice-a-roni! How is this a suggestion? That you use a fork?

Their suggestion is to feed the young boy a whole plate of  sausages.

If I was given a cone that big, I'd probably have that same expression.

I'm leery of any product that suggests I serve it with a large, blue, ferret looking monster that likes to hug kids when it eats.

So, what happens if your product doesn't really work with the whole idea of serving suggestion? Well, you enlarge the product cover to "show texture". I've never really gotten this whole concept. So, a really bumpy cracker with all sorts of nooks and crannies makes it a better product how? Let's not kid ourselves, they enlarge the product so your mind thinks, "Wow! That's one big cracker! *AND* there is a whole box full of them! I'm going to be eating like a king for weeks!"

Need more proof?

The words "enlarged to show texture" are so small, it makes the cracker look even bigger!

How would you even begin to eat something bigger than your head?

Lastly, this picture doesn't really fall into a category. I just thought it was funny.

No relation to the author of this blog.