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New Nutrition Guide’s “Plate” Uses New Math

The USDA last week unveiled its replacement for the decades’ old food pyramid, and calls it MyPlate.

It has generally received rave reviews and positive press for more clearly showing the types of things we should be eating daily and their proportions. If you read the details, however, you would see that what looks like roughly equal portions of five food groups at a meal is not what they suggest you eat. And that was the value of the old food pyramid — it better depicted relative quantities of each of the food groups that should be consumed daily.

Digging deeper into the “plate”, you discover what the actual amount of each category of food the government suggests we consume.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Here, for example, the government suggests that most people should eat three cups of dairy per day. Depending on the particular dairy food, that could be a good amount or a crazy amount.

It turns out, however, when they tell us to eat three cups of dairy a day, they really don’t mean three cups. But that is the unfortunate term they chose.

*MOUSE PRINT:

A cup of milk is a cup’s worth, and the same goes for yogurt. But when they tell us to eat a cup of cheese, they really mean to only eat as little as an ounce and half. Except for cottage cheese. A cup of cottage cheese should be two cups.

And the ice cream industry really must have lobbied the government hard, because a cup of ice cream is really a cup and half.

Confusing, huh?

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Dell XPS-15z: The Thinnest Laptop on the Planet?

Dell just came out with a new notebook computer that it is claiming is “the thinnest 15-inch PC on the planet”.

Advertisements sent by Dell via email and on their website in the U.S. look like this:

According to the London Guardian, however, the advertisement a reporter saw there in an unnamed UK newspaper, but did not include in his story, had a little asterisk after the claim. To our trusty mouse, asterisks are like cheese, so he hunted through newspaper after newspaper in the UK to find the suspect ad. And he found it! In an Internet exclusive, here it is (pictured below) and in a fuller view here .


The hard to read disclaimer says:

*MOUSE PRINT:

“Based on Dell internal analysis as at February 2011. Based on a thickness comparison (front and rear measurements) of other 15″ laptop PCs manufactured by HP, Acer, Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, MSI. No comparison made with Apple or other manufacturers not listed.”

Taking a page from the advertising tactics that we have reported on here, Dell omits computers in the comparison that might actually be thinner than their own. That is like Alamo claiming they are the biggest rental car company* (*if you don’t count Hertz and Avis).

In this case, they exclude Apple, among others. The Apple Macbook Pro is 0.95 inches thick, while the Dell laptop is actually a hair larger at 0.97 inches thick.

From a legal standpoint, Dell is using a hyper-technical definition of “PC”, which in many circles refers to an IBM compatible computer as opposed to a Mac. (Remember the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials?) Where the company may have a problem is in its press release, email ads, and website, where it repeats the thinnest claims but does not include any disclaimers.

Does the 0.02-inch extra thickness of this Dell laptop really matter? Of course not. The problem is their use of a tricky claim to proclaim something that really isn’t true.

Thanks to Mark Young for the tip on this story.

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Congratulations, You’ve Won… Nothing

While visiting a news site recently, a pop-up appeared notifying MrConsumer that he had a chance to win one of four or five valuable prizes, including an Ipad 2, a Dell laptop, an iPhone, etc.

Scrolling down further on the page were three testimonials from previous winners, including one who lives in my home town — Somerville, Massachusetts. What a coincidence!

MrConsumer googled the local winner, Jason Meeks, and discovered a person in Boston by that name was jailed in 2008 for manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years. I don’t think he’s been busy entering too many contests.

Doing a bit of further research using part of Jason’s quote, turned up a host of other websites where the apparently very lucky Jason was also winning iPads. But, apparently he must have transferred prisons.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Now Jason Meeks appears to be from California. Looks like he and Jennifer Layton, the person pictured first above, swapped homes because she is now in Somerville instead of Los Angeles. And the guy in the middle, Mr. Wong, maybe is also wanted by the law, because he changed his name from Jason to Jesse. Well at least he won’t have to throw out his monogrammed towels.

As it turns out this trio was indeed very lucky, because on yet another site, they were also big winners.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Now it appears that Jennifer Layton has settled down in the Boston area, but her name is now Jennifer Louie. Maybe she got married. And our friend, Mr. Wong, has once again taken on a different first name — this time, it’s Jeff. He really seems to like the “J” names. Lastly, our jailbird Jason Meeks seems to have transferred prisons once again, this time to New York. And now he is known by a different name as well. Maybe he doesn’t want the other prisoners to catch on to all the iPads he’s won.

Under FTC guidelines, testimonials presented as being made by real people must be real and represent their honest opinions. Clearly, what the research uncovered suggests otherwise.

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