from &lsquofamily owned&rsquo and &lsquocreated with love&rsquo, to &lsquohand crafted&rsquo and &lsquoauthentic&rsquo, foodpacket rhetoric is now mainly in the business of selling nice feelings pudding manufacturer gü is one of the most aggressive foodpacket philosophers. photograph alamyrecently, a finnish manufacturer of meatballs was told its meatballs didn&rsquot contain enough actual meat to qualify as meatballs. so now it says on the packet simply &ldquoballs&rdquo. one might agree that the mechanically recovered slop that is the main ingredient of these balls should not be called &ldquomeat&rdquo. but if advertising authorities banned all inaccurate, arguable or just plain ridiculous language on food packets, our nosh would have to be wrapped, as cigarettes soon will be, in completely blank packaging.foodpacket rhetoric, like most advertising, is mainly in the business of selling nice feelings. especially ontrend these days is an ersatz, kitschy friendliness. on a bar of chocolate, for example, the manufacturers boast that &ldquowe use only the finest quality organic beans from our friends in the dominican republic&rdquo. isn&rsquot it nice that they are friends and everything else seems to be from the tiniest of farms, or a &ldquofamilyowned&rdquo business, or a kitchen a readymeal lasagne is &ldquocreated with love in our kitchen&rdquo. is this kitchen, perhaps, the exact shape and size of a small factory a brand of snack bars is made &ldquoin small batches at our own makery&rdquo. makery i am guessing that &ldquomakery&rdquo is a portmanteau for &ldquomadeup bakery&rdquo.we are constantly reassured about the manual labour that has gone into premium supermarket fare. plasticpotted ready meals and potages are &ldquohand cooked&rdquo or &ldquohand crafted&rdquo some bacon has even been &ldquohand rubbed with sea salt&rdquo. it is very respectful to massage the pig after it is dead. and ingredients are always &ldquosimple&rdquo or &ldquonatural&rdquo, and always &ldquoauthentic&rdquo. i found some &ldquoauthentic&rdquo cumberland sausages that had no meat in them, because they were vegetarian sausages. lord knows what the finnish authorities would make of that. one food company ingeniously boasts of using &ldquoclean ingredients&rdquo. one expects they use potatoes that have never been near any soil.foodmakers will also burble on about their &ldquophilosophy&rdquo or their &ldquomission&rdquo or their &ldquostrong core values&rdquo or the &ldquoadventure&rdquo or &ldquojourney&rdquo they have been on in order to get their products triumphantly shelved in waitrose. feelgood words are liberally sprinkled over the cardboard, even if they don&rsquot make any sense. &ldquonature&rsquos path is a friendly, familyowned, &lsquoorganiconly&rsquo cereal producer where words like taste and trust stand side by side.&rdquo taste trust trust taste one of the most aggressive philosophisers is the pudding manufacturer gü, which issues a list of commands on the packet, including &ldquogive in to happiness&rdquo and &ldquoreject propriety, embrace variety&rdquo. it is left tantalisingly unclear whether we should reject or embrace satiety.this is a rhetorical mood that has lately shifted from cookbook to food packet the gastroimperative. food packaging now issues orders on the front, rather than serving suggestions on the back. &ldquomake a meal more memorable with gressingham duck,&rdquo it says on a duck. if you are cooking for a vegetarian, it will definitely be memorable. a packet of quinoa insists &ldquomix with chicken stirfry. toss in a salad.&rdquo simultaneouslya particularly elaborate gastroimperative on a line of posh ready meals seeks to gain obsessive control over every detail of your evening. &ldquoturn off the phone,&rdquo it instructs, &ldquodim the lights and crack open a bottle. steal back some time by letting charlie prepare you a truly delicious meal. all you have to do is relax and enjoy each other&rsquos company.&rdquo on reading this i felt a powerful urge to scoff the lasagne alone while checking twitter on my phone and drinking beer from the can. but then it passed, and i phoned for a takeaway.the right answers should be easy to guess by now. what are all prepackaged vegetables &ldquosweet&rdquo and &ldquocrunchy&rdquo. what is cheese &ldquomatured in caves.&rdquo what is the foodist&rsquos equivalent of farrow & ball paint clarence court&rsquos old cotswold legbar eggs, which have &ldquopastelcoloured shells&rdquo. what is the greatest number of things a food can be &ldquofree from&rdquo while still legally qualifying as food actually, that was a trick question logically, the answer must be infinitely many. even finnish &ldquoballs&rdquo are probably free from aubergine, bulldozers and gwyneth paltrow. 
