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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 17, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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a show that profits from making people look stupid when they fail to identify the difference between products that literally have different ingredients

FWIW it's BBC so they're actually not making a profit, though obviously yes the individual showrunners and the BBC at large want to see the programs get good ratings.

I think the general point though is that of course if you care to pay attention to these things you can tell the difference, but most people are not an 'enthusiast' about most of the things they eat and drink. A ketchup enthusiast may have genuine and consistent preferences, but I doubt that's true of the majority of the population. On the whole it's a pretty sedate show and if you watch it while there are sections of the show (not the swaps week bit) which are likely semi-staged (alongside ordinary consumer advice scripted bits in factories etc. which aren't pretending to not be so) I doubt anybody would care enough to fake it. Most of the time they aren't make to look total fools - in fact much of the time they will correctly identify that something has changed, but will say they don't mind it anyway and would happily change to save money. So often rather than not being able to tell the difference (though that does happen) it's more that own-brand stuff is not actually worse than brand-name even if 'different'.

between products that literally have different ingredients

Well they aren't usually as different as the example of hot sauces, it's more things like cheese, vegetables, soft drinks etc.