1757 Untold

The hardest thing about modern products is the descriptive language you find on them. I'm not sure it qualifies as language at all because in the end I'm not sure what they describe actually means anything. And isn't the purpose of language to convey meaning?

Let me describe an example. The other day I bought some hairspray. I was attracted by the label that said ,"3-in-1," and proclaimed one of the three as sunscreen. As summertime looms, and my hair thins, sunscreen hairspray seemed a good idea. But I was also encouraged to buy the product because it said "unscented."
I hate scents of certain products, or I should say odors, preferring to reserve my olfactory bulbs for the scents of the real world. Imagine my surprise when the hairspray had a scent. And not just any scent, a scent that was notably different from the scent of the hairspray I currently use. Which, by the way, is also unscented.
Odd that two unscented sprays would actually smell unalike. They must have a different unscent.
Or someone doesn't know what unscented means.
Here's another confounding product example. I'm a sucker for flavored chips. So one I saw recently got me. Lay's "Classic BLT" flavor.
The ingredients panel said it had "all natural" flavors. Tomato was covered by “dehydrated tomato powder.” But bacon was represented as "all natural bacon type" flavor.
What is bacon type flavor? And why is it natural? Why worry? Because carmine dye is natural too. But it comes from ground-up beetles.
Maybe bacon type flavor is similar. Perhaps rancid bacon fed to beetles and harvested from beetle feces. Or the bacon gene inserted into beetle DNA.
With today's technology, that’d be as easy as adding unscent to hairspray.
And unmeaning to words.
America, ya gotta love it.