Happy hollyday

[MooMoo2]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Thanks for the story and the pics

No problem!

One of the interesting souvenirs we got over there was wild Alaskan salmon jerky. But it wasn't the food that made it interesting; it was the ingredients list. The list started out normally (wild king salmon, salt, brown sugar, etc.), but it had this at the end:

"Contains fish"

Hmmm, isn't that obvious?

Oh well.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by MooMoo2

No problem!

One of the interesting souvenirs we got over there was wild Alaskan salmon jerky. But it wasn't the food that made it interesting; it was the ingredients list. The list started out normally (wild king salmon, salt, brown sugar, etc.), but it had this at the end:

"Contains fish"

Hmmm, isn't that obvious?

Oh well.

I believe packets and jars of peanuts now come with a similar 'duh!' warning, 'contains peanuts'. Thank, you, tort lawyer lobby!

(Which is not imply the latter group serves no useful, or a purely negative, purpose - just some of the resulting excess-of-caution ends up being of the laughable "look, if you're that lacking in common sense maybe you should do evolution a solid and kill yourself off" kind.)

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I believe packets and jars of peanuts now come with a similar 'duh!' warning, 'contains peanuts'. Thank, you, tort lawyer lobby!

(Which is not imply the latter group serves no useful, or a purely negative, purpose - just some of the resulting excess-of-caution ends up being of the laughable "look, if you're that lacking in common sense maybe you should do evolution a solid and kill yourself off" kind.)

Reminds me of a book I bought over 20 years ago: The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America by Philip K. Howard. Sadly, it seems to me that the problem is in no small part due to people wanting to avoid thinking.

Along with the nearly tautological warnings, there are the promotional proclamations that steak, for example, is GLUTEN FREE. The warnings that the product is made in a factory that also processes common allergens X, Y, and Z , probably merit more attention.

[LaurV]

Well, salmon containing fish and peanuts containing peanuts may not be uncommon, but here we buy "pork dumplings", which by the way are very tasty, (SWMBO uses her own way too cook them) and the ingredient list starts with a lot of herbs and salts and stuff including vegetable oils and 3% pork meat extract (there is no other mention of pork) and ends with "41% fish". No joke. I mean, yeah, it is some joke, in the sense that we always use to joke about, like "let's buy some more pork dumplings with 41% fish"...

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by LaurV

<snip> but here we buy "pork dumplings", which by the way are very tasty, (SWMBO uses her own way too cook them) and the ingredient list starts with a lot of herbs and salts and stuff including vegetable oils and 3% pork meat extract (there is no other mention of pork) and ends with "41% fish". <snip>

That's interesting. Here in the good ol' USA, food ingredients are listed in order of predominance (by weight I think), highest to lowest. I think it's a legal requirement. Hmm, wonder what Thailand does...

<rummage rummage>

Huh. According to this page from the The National Center for Biotechnology Information,

Since 1982, Thailand had required more comprehensive declarations with percentage of weight expressed in descending order of magnitude. Thailand was ahead of the Codex for a Quantitative Ingredients Declaration (QUID)

Of course, that might only apply to items being exported...

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

According to this page from the The National Center for Biotechnology Information,
Of course, that might only apply to items being exported...

They do list them like that, for most products. For other, there is no list at all, including imported stuff, and for others the list is a mess. Related to imported products, the importer must add a Thai label on it, which bothers me totally, because they always find the "most interesting" part to read of the original label to cover with their sticker and I have to peel it off to read the original

There are also a lot of funny examples where the original and the Thai do not match at all.
But we are hacking this tread, aren't we?

[Nick]

Sinterklaas is one of the sources of the popular Christmas icon of Santa Claus.

Happy Sinterklaas everyone!

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Nick

Happy Sinterklaas everyone!

Likewise! Growing up in Austria, our regional version of Nikolo (abbrev. for Feast of St. Nicholas) featured Krampus with his wooden Rute as the assistant specializing in dealing with naughty kids. My mom would bake special holiday braided sweetbread with raisins, and give those to use kids along with mandarin oranges. Not religious myself, but enjoy the traditions. Over the weekend put up the large cloth/colored-felt Advent calendar we made as kids, with little matchboxes decorated with fancy papers for the dates, and filled them with little chocolate squares - dates start at the 6th, so have to wait 1 more day for the first chocolate.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Nick

Happy Sinterklaas everyone!

Thanks, we had some nice readings on wikipedia following your link, however we are a bit puzzled and still trying to decide what the guy in the photo holds in his right hand...

[Nick]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Thanks, we had some nice readings on wikipedia following your link, however we are a bit puzzled and still trying to decide what the guy in the photo holds in his right hand...

Do you mean this?

[axn]

Originally Posted by Nick

Do you mean this?

No, the other hand.

EDIT:- He knows what that is, but it is a suggestive picture, if you look at it a certain way.