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Comment by canucker2016 | Hacker News Reader

canucker2016

Not sure if it's only in Great Britain where this occurs, but the food manufacturers have taken the acronym WYSIWYG to heart.

Don't expect anything more than what is visible in the food packaging.

The little plastic window in the packaging shows lots of pepperoni?

Don't assume the whole pizza is uniformly covered in pepperoni.

You'll just make an ass out of yourself.

see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-5274153/Phot...

I've seen pix of sandwiches where the packaging looks like there's tons of filling only to reveal that all the fillings have been jammed to the front of the package window.

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Is that actually intentional? i.e. if you bought a bunch of them would they all be like that?

It could just be that they have machines that try to randomly scatter pepperoni (or whatever) and then the ones where none of the pepperoni ends up visible fail QA. I think that's happening with at least the waitrose smoked salmon in that article, because I have had that before and it definitely wasn't misleading.

Some of it is completely intentional - some cakes and chocolates literally come with a vacuum-formed tray that takes up 80% of the volume of the package. And of course, many brands of crisps/chips come with enormous bags that are almost empty.

Of course, I'm sure the corporations would say it's "to stop the product getting damaged"

Most recent example of empty bags I have encountered is salads/greens. The same bag size used to contain twice as much salad by volume just a year or two ago.

> Of course, I'm sure the corporations would say it's "to stop the product getting damaged"

It's marketing meant to grab the consumer's attention on a competitive shelf. If you look at the box of chocolates, for example, it's space meant to balance required flashiness (graphics + window to see chocolates) with their target price point. Companies do this all the time when selling tech gear that isn't measured in weight or volume. Small stuff like webcams will often have giant mostly empty boxes so they have room for graphics and copy. Shaving and perfume sets also do this all the time too.

Yes, totally intentional. There are many clever tricks being played. 'michaelt mentioned trays taking most of the volume. I've also seen spacers added to the package to fill the area not visible through the little window, glass jars with very thick bottoms (covered by the label), and glass jars with double-layered bottom where the top layer is strongly convex - making the jar 10%+ smaller on the inside than it looks from the outside.

The toppings can slide around during shipping. If someone turns a box of pizzas on its side, the pepperoni slices will tend to slide to the low spot. When I make a frozen or take-and-bake pizza I almost always have to redistribute the toppings before I put it in the oven.

It's weird that they wind up in the transparent portion of the packaging so often, though.

ah, daily mail...

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