Two related questions from different readers arrived this week, each related to food labeling.
From a reader we’re called Howard, we received the question of what can be called “gourmet” food. From another we’re calling Jesse, we were asked what “homemade” means when attached to prepared food at his neighborhood grocery’s delicatessen counter.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has published guidelines for many food labeling items such as “organic” or “natural,” I’ve been hard-pressed to find anything definitive by it or any other agency that clearly lays out the qualities a food must have to be called “gourmet” or “homemade.”
“Whose home do they mean?” Jesse asked in his email. Good question.
Near as I can fathom, when something is labeled “homemade” like cole slaw, potato salad or roasted vegetables, it simply means the food wasn’t made by a machine, but instead was cooked and assembled by a human being.
It’s more likely that the homemade stuff was made in the deli’s kitchen or a central kitchen rather than anyone’s home. The regulations for selling food made in a home kitchen are estimable enough to thwart that preparation route as an option.
The “gourmet” moniker is typically a marketing maneuver used to suggest the finest ingredients were used in its preparation to make it all fancy-like. But who determines what makes such ingredients fancy enough to warrant a gourmet label is unclear or nonexistent.
It seems akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s response in 1964 when asked how he determined something was obscene: “I know it when I see it.” Hardly satisfying, but nevertheless it persists.
That all gets us back to Howard’s and Jesse’s overarching questions about whether it is wrong to label something as “gourmet” or “homemade” if neither the seller nor the customer knows what each label means.
As consumers, we face similar situations regularly. What, for example, does “supersize” mean when affixed to a package? It’s used to entice us and make us believe we’re getting more bang for our buck at the cash register.
There’s nothing wrong with such marketing tactics, as long as the seller is not trying to label something that is clearly not what they are trying to sell.
As consumers, the right thing is to educate ourselves to have a glimmer of a sense of what it is we are buying. Looking at the ingredient label is far likelier to be useful than to rely on a word like “gourmet.”
Referring to the unit price tags on store shelves that inform consumers how much items cost per a consistent weight measure is a far better method of determining value than relying on words like “jumbo” or “super.”
Are sellers trying to manipulate us to buy stuff because they use fancy labels that are hard to define consistently? Yes.
But if consumers really care about the food they are consuming or the amount they are spending on it, the right thing is for them to be as informed as possible.
Grocery stores already help with this by featuring unit price tags. Ingredient labels are another method.
If the ingredients include things you can’t identify, it’s good to question how willing you are to put food in your body when you don’t know what it’s made from.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin
(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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