I found something interesting on BoingBoing today. I don’t usually repost stuff that I see elsewhere, but this one intrigued me. A German site bought 100 different packaged food products, photographed the image of the food on the packaging, and compared it to the actual food (the linked site isn’t the original, but it’s easier to see what they were doing in the setup at the link).

I think we all know that what we see on the package isn’t that likely to be what we get — after all, the photos of food in fast-food restaurants always set you up for disappointment with the real thing. But what surprised me was how consistent the differences are.

1) The color is enhanced so that things look brighter and warmer.
2) If there’s an especially yummy part of something (it has raisins, or a caramel or cream or mint filling, or meat inside of a pastry) the yummy part is shown in high detail and larger than in reality.
3) The form is always portrayed as symmetrical and unvarying, where the real food might have varying amounts of dark and light pastry, or an uneven swirl of chocolate on top. If there are layers, the layers are shown thicker and more even than they actually are.
4) The texture is enhanced. Rice is separated instead of gluey, noodles curl pleasingly, rice pudding is thick and lumpy instead of a smooth gunky cream.
5) If the food comes with sauce, there’s much more sauce in the real food than in the picture, where the sauce is usually used decoratively and sparingly.
6) If the food comes with vegetables or meat along with noodles, rice, bread, broth, or sauce, the pieces of vegetables or meat on the packaging are larger, brighter, and more plentiful than in the real item. (Where are the fleischballen in the real Kartoffelsnack? Look at that tiny meatball on the right!)
7) If the food is presented nicely on a plate, it’s usually either in separate compartments or all mushed together. Any decorations on the package (parsely, onion curls) are definitely not in the real food.

Candy and simple snacks are usually more accurately presented than soups and entrees. For example, the Wasa cracker sandwiches, pistachio nuts, and the Corny Milsch bar, among others, look a lot like the real things, plus the standard color balance and texture enhancement.

Some of them look just terrible. The green beans look awful on the package and even more awful in reality, and the dull white block of noodles in the very first picture, accompanied by meat swimming in sauce, just looks dull and nasty. Several that look like they have texture and substance on the package (Currybrustensalat, Eiersalat, Herringsalat, Fleischsalat, and Krabbensalat, along with the “spaghetti carbonara” and “pizzeria salami” — whatever that is!) are just textureless junk in tons of sauce. The Herringsalat, being pink in reality, is especially nasty. Maybe Germans just don’t understand that salad should not be drowning in sauce…