Retail

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Kettle Chips: When Cutting the Fat Doesn’t Cut the Calories

When a product is air fried, one expects it to have fewer calories. Such doesn’t seem to be the case, however, with Kettle Chips.

Here is the regular variety of Kettle chips. It has 140 calories per ounce and nine grams of fat.

Regular Kettle Chips

Now here is the “air fried” Kettle chips.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Air Fried Kettle Chips

This variety says “air fried” in huge letters, but in small type that some people might miss, it says “kettle cooked, air finished.” What? The chips are really deep-fat fried, but then blown dry, so to speak?

That alone could be misleading, and so the company was just sued in March by a consumer.

But look closer, comparing the two nutrition labels. The air-fried product says 30% less fat than the regular version, and sure enough, it has six grams of fat per ounce versus nine grams of fat. But how is it possible that the bag with less fat has the exact same amount of calories per ounce? The ingredients in both products seem to be in the same order of predominance.

We asked Campbell’s Soup, the maker of Kettle chips, for an explanation. They did not reply.

Now it is your turn. What could explain that there is no change in calories in the air-fried product despite having one-third less fat?

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Movie Theater Drinks Not 24-oz. As Promised

Earlier this year, a Texas consumer went to a local Cinemark theater and bought both a 20-ounce beverage and a 24-ounce draft beer. Somehow he suspected that the 24-ounce clear plastic cup didn’t look like it held four more ounces compared to 20-ounce one.

He took the cups home and measured how much liquid the larger one actually held. To his surprise, it only held 22 ounces despite being sold as the 24-ounce size and actually being marked as such on the bottom.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Cinemark 24 oz cup

After hearing about the issue, this TV reporter tested one of the 24-ounce cups herself to see if what the consumer claimed was true.

Sure enough, the consumer was right. And as any aggrieved customer would do, he hired a lawyer and sued the movie chain for misrepresentation.

One has to wonder how many consumers across Cinemark’s over 300 theaters have been shortchanged, and for how long (if these cups were used chainwide)? Does this now mean that in addition to sneaking in snacks to the movie theater, we also have to bring a measuring cup?

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Home Depot Sued Over Fake Regular Prices

In the past, we have talked about class action lawsuits where it is alleged that a clothing retailer used inflated regular prices to give customers the impression that their products were currently being offered at a great, low sale price. Now come two straight-shooting Texas consumers claiming that The Home Depot has been making exaggerated savings claims too by jacking up the so-called “regular” price of major appliances to levels at which they never or rarely ever sold. (See lawsuit.)

One of the consumers bought a Samsung gas dryer for $798 — that he thought was at a 33-percent discount from the $1199 “strikethrough” price. The other consumer bought a top loading Samsung washer for $578 that he was led to believe was usually $899. In the seven months since he purchased the washer, for example, his lawyers say it never sold for the $899 “regular” price.

In fact, they checked a variety of major appliances at Home Depot tracking their prices for months.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Washer sale price history

In this example, they tracked a washer like this one for four months. At no time in their checks was it ever off-sale or close to the $999 so-called regular price shown.

The lawyers say that The Home Depot engaged in unfair business practices, misrepresentations, and broke a specific regulation that specifically prohibits sellers from “making false or misleading statements concerning the reasons for, existence of, [and] amounts of price reductions.”

Time will tell if this case has legs, although MrConsumer has little doubt that the company uses strikethrough higher prices to make shoppers think they are getting a bargain.