While we all try to save money most of the time, we also tend to have a couple things where, for whatever reason, we really want the quality product and are willing to shell out the extra cash. It may be that we simply love that particular item so much we want to enjoy it in luxury, or it could also be that we have a moral hangup with the way the product is usually sourced, and the higher end stuff gives us a chance to enjoy it guilt-free. However, the unfortunate reality is that many speciality products may not be exactly what you think they are, even if the advertisers aren’t technically lying.
10. Fair Trade Coffee Is Only Fair To The Company Shareholders
When a lot of the world gets up in the morning, they start their day by either making a cup of coffee, or going and buying one from somewhere. Most people love it, and even those who don’t tend to love caffeine, most of which naturally comes from coffee or tea in the first place. Now, while plenty of us like coffee, many have concerns about the coffee farmers and whether they are getting a fair shake. For this reason, many people are happy to splurge and spend a good bit extra on Fair Trade Coffee in order to feel less guilty about what they buy.
However, the problem is that Fair Trade Coffee is mostly fair to the company selling it, and not really that fair to the farmer. The problem is that Fair Trade basically just means that the company has to pay the farmer a decided minimum price for their coffee. This would work if the minimum price was fair, but farmers are only currently paid $1.40 a pound for their coffee in order to call it Fair Trade. When Fair Trade Coffee is marked up by several dollars and the farmers are only getting 40% more of a pittance, it doesn’t seem very fair.
9. Your 100% Fresh Squeezed Florida Orange Juice Is A Zombified Abomination
Orange juice is one of the most popular drinks in the United States and many people drink it at breakfast as a matter of habit, so much so that most hotels couldn’t imagine a breakfast service without it. Most orange juice is sold as 100% fresh squeezed Florida orange juice and we are happy knowing that at least one fresh, natural product is actually affordable, and exactly what it says it is.
Except that it actually isn’t really, at least not as far as most people would be concerned if they knew the truth. And the truth is that orange juice is often kept in vats for up to a year, in order to make sure the companies always have fresh product to sell. In order to keep it fresh in these vats they take all the extra air out, but this robs it of taste and nutrients. To make up for this, they add something called a flavor pack to fix the problem. So from a certain technical point of view what you are drinking is sort of still orange juice, but it is also something else entirely.
8. Most Of Panera’s Items Are Not As Fresh As You Probably Think
Panera Bread charges you a rather big markup for a fast casual dining restaurant, and gets away with it by making you feel like you are eating really, really healthy and fresh food. They show beautiful salads, advertise their fresh breads, and serve delicious (and “healthy”) sandwiches and soups that you can feel good about. Despite the high costs, many people feel it is worth it because of how fresh they are eating, and will happily pay the added cost.
However, Panera isn’t nearly as fresh as you may think. For starters, the thing about their bread being fresh is true, but maybe not as fresh as you might imagine. Bakers do come in overnight, but they are only putting frozen loaves of dough in the oven. This makes them even less fresh then Subway, as Subway will make more bread during the day, and Panera will not. As for their famous soups, it turns out there isn’t any actual cooking going on at Panera either; they all come out of a plastic bag.
7. Cage Free Eggs May Not Be Cruelty Free
Many people will buy cage-free eggs and spend the extra money in the hopes that they can buy eggs that are not being taken from cruelly treated chickens, but this whole concept is really hard to get a proper grip on. The regulations can be kind of vague, and people will interpret it to mean that the chickens are being treated kindly. But this label means little when it comes to any real value. A company may be treating the chickens kindly, but the label doesn’t prove it.
All the cage-free label really means is that they are not confined to a cage, but they could still be trapped in a crowded warehouse in awful conditions with no room to move around. If you really want to be sure, you will need to do more research on the company involved and see what is really going on. Now, you could go free range instead, but that just means they are allowed outside and have a total of two square feet to themselves — which is still pretty horrible.
6. Fresh Sushi In The United States Does Not Actually Exist
People like to eat fresh (just ask the people who frequent Panera! Oh, wait… ), and to spend extra money to know they are eating fresh. Nowhere is this desire more pronounced than when it comes to sushi. With fish already being best when it’s right out of the water, sushi especially just makes sense to eat fresh if you are paying a premium. However, the problem is that if you live in the United States, you have probably never eaten fresh sushi, and this is actually a good thing.
The thing is, due to fear of worms and other parasites, all sushi that is sold in the US has to have been put through a deep freeze first, in order to kill off any worms that may be inside it. While some may find this bothersome, you really shouldn’t be worried about it, as you really do not want to get worms. (No, seriously. You don’t.)
These infections tend to be more common off the coast of Japan, where they don’t always freeze their fish before turning it into sushi. As you might imagine, the results are not pleasant. There is more than one worm you can get, but they all provide some of the same basic issues. Mainly, that they will absorb nutrients you need, and over time, if not caught, can continue to burrow into more and more important organs, leading to all sorts of horrible complications.
5. A 4K Monitor Without A Powerful GPU To Back It Will Make Your Gaming A Slideshow
4K is the next big thing (at least until 8K starts to really take off), and right now 4K TVs and computer monitors are being sold to early adopters who are willing to pay a premium for the experience. The idea is to give you an even better, crisper, and more fantastic viewing experience, and many have already jumped at the chance to upgrade. Now, if you are mostly watching TV or playing low-end video games, a 4K TV or monitor might be right for you.
However, if your goal is to get a monitor to improve your gaming experience while playing high-end games on even decent graphics, you are going to need a really, really strong GPU that probably costs a lot of money. And of course, this all goes back to the concept of bottleneck in general when it comes to gaming. If just one part in your setup isn’t on the same tier as the rest, it can slow down everything else, making your expensive setup basically pointless. Products like this sound nice, but without the proper backup, they are only going to stutter and give you a broken experience.
4. Tide Isn’t Just Laundry Detergent, It Is One Of The Hottest Black Market Commodities
Tide has become so famous that for some people it is basically synonymous with laundry detergent in general. It dominates a huge part of the laundry detergent aisles, and there are so many sizes and varieties of it that it’s almost dizzying. While it is dominant, it’s also a very expensive detergent, and some people saw this and decided that they could make something else out of it.
See, it turns out that the black market has figured out a way to use it as currency of a sort, for a number of reasons. For starters, we all need to do laundry, and it is very hard to trace. Furthermore, it is expensive, and has a fairly fixed market price. It keeps easily, doesn’t require a lot of storage space for a decent amount of currency, and there is no crime to having a lot in your house, even if it is suspicious. Now, for some time it seemed its status had faded a bit, but it turns out that Tide theft is on the rise once again.
3. Many Products, Especially Shredded Cheese, Contain Wood Pulp
Most people tend to think of wood as something that you use for furniture, and not something that you normally put in your mouth; however, if you have eaten shredded cheese, parmesan cheese, or many other products, you have actually eaten wood pulp. This may surprise a lot of people, but the truth is it’s actually a very common practice because it is considered perfectly safe. In products like parmesan cheese, it is often used as an anti-caking agent, but in the cheaper parmesan cheeses it’s there in higher quantities.
In shredded cheese it serves a similar purpose, which is to try to keep the cheese from sticking together, but that is not the only reason that wood pulp, also known as cellulose, or sawdust, is added to your food. It’s not edible, but being safe and being fiber, it can help push food through your body. This means some products slap on their label that it has “added fiber” because they put a bit of wood pulp in it. If you ever saw a product that had added fiber and you didn’t know where it could have came from, it was probably wood pulp.
2. Truffle Oil Is Not Made From Real Truffles, But You Might Hate Them Anyway
Truffle is considered by many to be basically the height of luxury. Truffles are incredibly rare fungi that can usually only be found in select spots with specially trained animals. For this reason they are insanely expensive, and are prized by fine dining chefs who are looking to give you the most amazing experience in the world. Now, for most of us we are not likely to ever be able to afford truffles, and certainly are not going to make them a regular part of our dining experience. However, some people feel that truffle oil can give them a chance to experience the real thing, in its essence, at a reasonable price.
Unfortunately, the truth is that truffle oil is not actually real, but is more like artificial vanilla. It’s flavored sort of like truffle, but it isn’t the extract of the real thing. This may not be such a bad thing though, as a lot of people just don’t even like them, and won’t no matter how much they try to. You see, if you cannot smell a chemical in truffles called androstenone, then you will likely hate them anyway, as you cannot properly taste them.
1. Antihistamines Being Advertised As Sleep Aids Is All Kinds Of Weird
If you have ever spent even a few minutes looking at labels in an over the counter drug section in the United States, you may have noticed that Benadryl, also known as diphenhydramine, is often sold as two different medications. Diphenhydramine is often sold as both an allergy medication and a sleep aid. This is because some allergy medications are not only antihistamines, they are also anticholinergics.
However, many doctors would argue that using anticholinergics to make you sleep is really a misuse of a medication. The thing is, diphenhydramine and others make you feel drowsy because anticholinergics block the transmission of acetylcholine in the brain, which is important for cells sending messages to each other and for basic nerve function. Basically, by taking this you are telling your body to slow a lot of things down to stop allergic reactions.
For sleep, however, it often gives poor quality sleep when it does work, and can cause hyperactivity in children. It can also have side effects like dry mouth, dry eyes, constipation, and disorientation, even when taken according to dosing instructions. Worse yet, taking it on a regular basis is linked to an increased risk of dementia. If you really just cannot sleep, a dose of melatonin would be a much better choice.