Lite Creme



"...[my son's] diet consists entirely of products which advertise on Saturday morning cartoon shows and which, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong (Noo Creemy Choc'n'Cheez Lumps O'Froot)"

- Dave Barry

The implication of qualities or ingredients in a product that aren't there because of certain words or spellings of words that vary from the standard. This is usually done to get around government regulations on truth in advertising laws. This is how you end up with products like fruit/citrus "punch" when something contains no actual fruit, "choc" or "choco" when something contains little to no actual chocolate, and "creme" spread that contains no dairy cream. The intent of the law was to prevent advertisers from using words like "chocolate" and "cream" to describe products that didn't contain the ingredients mentioned, but the feds didn't count on consumer illiteracy; too many people now assume that "froot with choco creme" is the same thing as "fruit with chocolate cream", and assume they're getting vitamins and minerals they really aren't. And advertisers happily take advantage of it.

Generally speaking, added quantifiers indicate lower amounts of an actual ingredient. If the product also uses Xtreme Kool Letterz, any nutritional value and unadded flavors are likely an unintentional side-effect. You're probably better off eating Soylent Green. (Much more nutritious and tasty than Soylent Yellow and Red!)

Consumers during the age of mass food production in the 1900s lobbied against artificial foods being sold alongside 'normal' food and demanded such food be distinctly labeled; margarine, for example, received a push to be dyed pink so consumers would not confuse it for actual butter, and for a while it was illegal in some places to sell margarine that was dyed butter-yellow (it's naturally white). Company lobbyists learned using Lite Creme was an easy escape, as no one wanted an ominous 'artificial' label on their product. Official nutritional labels on products are somewhat more informative, though overly technical writing can obscure this for the same reasons. Ingredients being listed in decreasing order does not specify actual amounts, nor does the use of several names to indicate variations on essentially the same ingredient.

Note Lite Creme products may in fact taste like 'normal' foods, and brands being sold directly as food replacements (such as vegan) directly advertise as such. In general, as All-Natural Snake Oil can tell you, there's nothing particularly wrong with something being a processed food in and of itself, and things that are "natural" can be just as unhealthy as Froot Choco-Cheez. Generally though, Lite Creme in the public image brings to mind bizarre concoctions of usually unhealthy additives.

Advertising
""'Lemony taste'. What does that mean? Right. It means no fucking lemons!""
 * At one time, "Lite" had no meaning and could be legally used on packages of lard. "Light" often referred solely to color, and not caloric content. Consumer attention paid to this term, though, has resulted in changes to marketing and (in 1993) to the relevant FDA regulations.
 * "Light" olive oil still retains its label, and it still has the same caloric content as any other kind of oil—lots, since it's a type of fat. The term refers to its taste: it has a more mild flavour.
 * In regards to food, government regulations prevent using the word "cream" when the product contains none. "Creme" is used whenever the impression of a creamy texture or flavor is desired, but the product in question contains no actual cream or, usually, dairy product (and in some cases, isn't even edible). Creme snack cakes usually contain long-lasting vegetable shortening, giving them a potentially long shelf life.
 * "Creme soda" has a slightly different origin, as it is named after the ice cream traditionally added to the original drink.
 * There is historical precedent for using "creme" (e.g., creme de cassis) or "cream" (cream-style corn, once known as "creamed corn") in reference to nondairy foods that have a more-or-less creamy texture.
 * Probably the best known indicator of a lack of any actual food product is the term "Cheez."
 * If the phrase "Cheese Food" appears anywhere on the package, it may be neither. It sounds like cheese food isn't cheese, it is what cheese eats. In fact "Cheese Food" is real cheese... kind of. It consists of at least half melted, reconstituted cheese; and no more than half other, um, things.
 * "cheese food product" contains less than half cheese, and sometimes no cheese at all. In fact, any food with "product" in it is a worry.
 * When James Kraft invented Velveeta, the words "processed cheese" that appear on the packaging were a compromise with the court system. The rest of the cheese industry had been lobbying to force him to label it "embalmed cheese." Technically, Velveeta is based on a pretty standard cheese sauce recipe. It's got extra protein (in the form of whey and nonfat dry milk) added, so it'll set up into a semi-solid loaf, and instead of the roux a normal cheese sauce uses, it uses a starch-like gum called "alginate". Cheez Whiz is basically the same thing with the cream swapped out for vegetable oil, and flavors like mustard seed and Worcestershire sauce added. Neither is very good for you, mainly because of the salt and fat.
 * There is a "cheez-y" food that is a low-fat parmesan imitation, for sprinkling on pasta and such. The actual description from the actual label? parmesan style cheese grated topping. The emphasis is theirs.
 * In Norway, many products named "pizzaost" (ost=cheese) were legally forced to change names, because they legally couldn't call them "cheese". If in Norway, beware: never buy anything called "pizza-topping" or just "revet" (shredded) instead of "revet ost" (shredded cheese).
 * Also from Norway, fruit-flavoured "brus" (fizzy drink/pop) can only be labelled "appelsinbrus" (orange fizzy drink) if they contain a certain percentage of actual juice of the fruit in question. Since they usually don't, they have to be labelled "brus med appelsinsmak" (fizzy drink with orange flavour) instead.
 * An item can only be labeled as "chocolate" if it contains both cocoa solids/powder and cocoa butter. No such rule exists for foods labeled "chocolate-flavored" or "fudge", so beware.
 * "Chocolate-flavored" usually means that the product contains chocolate liquor, but replaces cocoa butter with carnauba wax in order to reduce fat and improve tempering. It's usually better for you than real chocolate, since it doesn't have an edible fat and still contains all the caffeine and serotonin mimics of regular chocolate.
 * "Chocolatey". That usually means "Cocoa-flavored lard".
 * In Australia, you can sell "Choc". As in "Fondant-filled Choc Bar" or "Sponge cake with choc coating"
 * Unfortunately, none of the "chocolate" legal restrictions apply to white chocolate (cocoa butter) in the USA, so most white chocolate sold here... is not.
 * There have been at least four attempts to sue the makers of Froot Loops due to the lack of actual fruit in their product. So far, none have been successful.
 * George Carlin had a good routine about this.


 * If you see the phrase "juice extract" appearing on the label of a "100% fruit juice" beverage, then no matter what else the package may claim, sugar has been added... but since that sugar was extracted from juice, it somehow doesn't count. You can even eat a brownie from an alleged "health food" store that contains no sugar, but copious amounts of "cane juice extract"... yeah. Figure that one out.
 * The terms for "cane" sugar aren't law: Cane sugar and cane syrup could be unprocessed, leaving in the molasses and its nutrients (not to mention a lot of flavor) or it could be pure sucrose ala table sugar derived from sugar cane rather than sugar beets.
 * "Pear juice extract" and "grape juice extract" are two of the biggest culprits here. In most cases, they just mean "no sucrose," allowing them to claim that there's no sugar while using a slightly different type of sugar instead. Conversely, some companies will take great pains to point out that they only use real sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup.
 * Namely, they use glucose—another half of the common sugar (sucrose) molecule, which consists of glucose and fructose bonded together.
 * Pet food suffers the same problem, where aside from the organization of the ingredient list the qualifiers are regulated but not generally known to the public; "Beef", "Beef Dinner", "Chicken and Beef", "Beef-flavored" all designate an increasingly smaller amount of actual beef.
 * On the human food side of things, "Ham", "Ham in natural juices", "Ham, water added", and "Ham and water product" have connotations of less ham, in that order.
 * Also, any sort of "meat byproducts" is generally bad news. By-products means skin, organs and bone meal; feathers and beaks don't make it that far into the process. Your pet is likely to not give two shits, because they like that stuff just as much as muscle tissue—but depending on which wibbly bits it is, it may not be good for their health if they eat nothing but. If it just says "meat" without specifying what animal it comes from, anything goes.
 * If the food in question has chemicals in it, but the chemicals were extracted from naturally occurring plants or fruits or what have you, that food can be marketed as "All natural". If the food contains the exact same chemicals, but the chemicals were built from scratch, it's artificial now. As one food chemist put it, "'All natural' just means 'we did this inefficiently'".
 * Sometimes those exact same chemicals are only members of the exact same chemical family, where even the natural versions have numerous variations. The important parts of each molecule may be the same, but could a few seemingly minor chemical bonds in unimportant places have unexpected consequences? If it hasn't (yet) been proven harmful, it must be safe... right?
 * "Natural flavors" rarely seems to specify which flavors. For example, 7-Up currently touts their product as using only natural flavors... and the side of the can also specifies it contains no juice, leading one to wonder exactly what "natural" product is being used to flavor the soda if it's not lime and lemon juice.
 * In many cases, there's no citrus juice in a citrus-flavored food item because the citrus oil (which comes from the rind, rather than the flesh) is a more effective flavoring agent. Also, watch word placement—while "natural flavor" denotes a flavor that is natural, "natural lemon flavor", for example, denotes a natural flavor that tastes "like lemons" but may not necessarily have ever been lemons.
 * Several members of the mint and sage families have strong citrus components. Along with a history of enhancing lemonades and teas, it's possible that such herbs have been used as nondescript "natural flavors".
 * The flavoring Vanilla is derived from orchids in the genus Vanilla native to Mexico. It contains a mixture of several hundred different compounds in addition to vanillin. Vanillin is the major flavor that you can taste from Vanilla. However, if you create vanillin through chemical synthesis, it is labeled an artificial flavor.
 * By the way, a lot of "artificial" vanilla extract (especially from Mexico, interestingly enough) is actually "extracted" from wood as a byproduct of paper making. The chemical they're extracting from the wood is the same as one of the chemicals they extract from vanilla orchids, so don't panic. Of course, the real stuff tastes a lot better.
 * There's also whole, grated vanilla pods, which one might imagine to be very difficult to synthesize in the lab.
 * Another common one is "(X) flavour" as in "chocolate-flavour" or "banana-flavour". Something described as "chocolate flavour" likely contains no actual chocolate and may not taste anything like chocolate at all. It's probably the right colour, though.
 * Case in point: "Strawberry" flavor—such as that used in Strawberry Yoo-Hoo—rarely tastes anything like real strawberries. Similarly, "Watermelon Flavor" rarely tastes like real watermelon. And "Peach Flavor"... urgh. The point here is that rather than using real strawberries, the strongest of the thousands of chemicals which give them their flavour—possibly only one or two—are isolated or synthesised to give the flavouring agent.
 * That's exactly how it is. More realistic artificial flavorings are complex blends of various chemicals that should be carefully balanced to give a proper representation of the taste and aroma profiles of a real deal. Flavor chemists that create them are not unlike perfume makers, and they should have not only a good chemical knowledge, but also well-trained senses of taste and smell, or employ a specialist tasters. Cheaper flavorings, on the other hand, use one or two chemicals that give something broadly similar to the intended product (sometimes very broadly) and call it a day. Strawberry flavor is notorious for being a very complex blend of various tastes and aromas and is very difficult to imitate convincingly, so hardly anyone bothers.
 * "Bac-Os" are vegan. There's nothing in them but vegetable matter and artificial additives. They're supposed to be bacon bits! If the ingredients list doesn't so much as say "Natural and artificial flavors". There is something disturbing about an imitation meat product that wasn't made for the specific purpose of being an imitation meat product.
 * Bacon Salt actually boasts that it's kosher and vegetarian. The packet for Chicken, Bacon and similar varieties of 'Super Noodles' (isn't that a name that just inspires confidence?) used to quite prominently display that they were "suitable for vegetarians". Quite skewed advertising priorities there. There are types of cream cheese frosting that are vegan. And "creme" cookies.
 * Oreos are vegan. The creme is palm oil.
 * Long John Silver's, a fast food seafood restaurant, advertises that they serve langostino lobster, another term for squat lobster, a species closer to hermit crabs than what we would think of as lobsters.
 * This is pretty common in marketing sea food. When it was discovered that the evil-sounding Patagonian Toothfish could be profitably raised in fish farms, its name got transmogrified into "Chilean sea bass" on the way to the grocery store, and "dolphinfish" became "mahi mahi".
 * "Vegan" / "Vegetarian" is dangerous when preceding a food product that shouldn't be. Vegan apples are fine, vegan mashed potatoes probably good, vegan chicken parmesan... not so much. Often overlaps with "food product", as in "Vegan Frozen Dessert Product". In fairness, the people buying vegan chicken parmesan usually want a meat substitute.
 * In New York, wine can only be sold in dedicated liquor stores. Grocery stores can sell beverages that are up to 6% alcohol by volume, including beer, hard cider, and "wine products." Please don't confuse Chateau Diana Wine Product for actual wine.
 * In Canada, buying "maple butter" is definitely better than buying "map-o-spread". Speaking of maple products, be careful when buying maple syrup in the US. "Real Maple Syrup" is not. "Maple Syrup", by contrast, is. And "Natural Maple Syrup" is just a bad idea. If you don't want to worry about it (and who does?), just get corn syrup. But not "Corn-Flavored Syrup", which is neither corn syrup, nor delicious.
 * Look for the USDA sticker and classification in the US. If it says Grade A/B Light/Medium/Dark Amber, it's good. (But if you're really particular, pay close attention to the label. Dark Amber has a much stronger maple flavor than Light Amber.)
 * Not surprisingly, the Canadian government has an entire sub-department dedicated to ensuring the purity and quality of Canadian-produced maple syrup. Any hint of a company selling ersatz maple syrup will bring the wrath of God (or at least the Department of Agriculture - sometimes they're hard to tell apart) down on someone's sorry head. This troper has never seen anything as fierce as when an American company tried to market its maple-flavoured dreck as "pure maple". The government literally smashed the bottles out in the street in front of the warehouse as if they were Carrie Nation taking it to barrels of Prohibition hooch. Entertaining but weird.
 * In Mexico, you can find a fried taco-like snack where one of the flavors is not "guacamole", but "huakamolez". The description reads something like "Huakamolez-flavored rolled fried corn snacks." Mmmm ... Whack-A-Mole flavor. For some reason, in the Netherlands, it's really hard to find guacamole that has more than a few percent of actual avocados.
 * The reason is very simple. Avocados don't keep that well, so they're usually hellishly expensive outside of Mexico (or their other producer for that matter).
 * This troper can attest to that. When some enterprising souls discovered that a particular coastal region of Spain (the "Tropical coast" of the province of Granada) has just the perfect climate to grow some tropical fruits, avocados (which used to be "exotic fruit nobody you know has ever tasted") turned overnight into "everyday salad ingredient".
 * If you're looking for fruit juice from something other than apples, grapes, pineapples, or oranges, it's very improbable you'll find it. Instead, you're likely to see things such as "apricot nectar," "pear cocktail," "lemon drink," "blueberry punch," and "cherry blend." All of these will probably consist of as little of the top-billed ingredient as legally possible (usually in the form of pulp,) large amounts of filler juices (usually apple or white grape), lots of water, and sugar or other sweetener.
 * Some of this is justifiable, because not all juices are good to drink. It's not hard to find lemon or lime juice, but they are ingredients, not beverages. And cranberry juice is unpalatable by itself. A lot of unsweetened juices from the more exotic fruits (meaning basically anything—not apples, grapes, oranges, or pineapples) do serve as a non-alcoholic alternative to wine, as their taste can be similar enough for the (presumed) intended purpose.
 * Ironically with some of these juices, the higher-quality ones have significant amounts of cane sugar while the "100% Juice [flavor of] Cranberry" only taste like their filler juices.
 * Boneless chicken nuggets with hot sauce on them tend to be called "wyngs" or "wingz."
 * These are sometimes marketed as "tenders," meant to be evocative of tenderloins without actually promising to be that particular cut of meat. They're likely processed from scraps from breasts, thighs, and others that were trimmed away from other cuts. "Breast tenders" and "white meat tenders" are similarly evocative of tenderloins.
 * Meat pies. Miscellaneous bits like tendons, ears, skin and snouts count as "meat". The meat may also come from camels and other random animals, instead of one of the more common domestic livestock, and even then the pie only has to be about a quarter animal bits to qualify as a meat pie. Mmmm, camel noses and soy filler. Delicious.
 * Most of them are actually kangaroo. Australia has a problem with the overabundance of wild 'roos, so they are often killed in the huge state-sponsored hunts, and all the meat Australians couldn't eat themselves is exported as an inexpensive beef substitute.
 * In the United States, Apple Juice means Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Apple Drink, however anything labeled Orange Drink, Grape Drink, etc. is likely to be mostly sugar water with a small amount of juice, sometimes 2% juice. Sometimes none, just artificial flavor.
 * The dairy isle of many grocery stores also has Chocolate Drink right next to the Chocolate Milk. (Sure, it has real chocolate, but not much else.)
 * In the U.S., Whole Wheat bread does not mean it is just whole grains. Unless a product says 100% Whole Wheat or 100% Whole Grain, it can be 1% whole grain and 99% refined grain. There are products that say "Made with grains." You know what else is? Soda pop. Also, any grain product that includes the USDA Food Pyramid is probably a refined grain.
 * In Australia, look out for "Reconstituted Orange Juice". If it's the first ingredient, it basically means that it's diluted. One outrageous example is a brand that advertises itself as "Only Juice". The ingredients list has multiple preservatives and artificial flavours.
 * Not only diluted, but powdered (or at least concentrated) first. That's the main meaning of the term "reconstituted".
 * Potted Meat Food Product. "There aren't too many products that feel the need to reassure you that they are, in fact, 'food'."
 * In Hungary there is "morning drink" and "cocoa drink" that look like milk but contain none, and "cocoa milk mass" that looks like chocolate but contains none. (The actual "D-Lite" phenomenon is nonexistent because the language doesn't allow most words to be spelled in multiple ways, but the usage of "inexact" words and circumscription serves the same purpose.)
 * You can often find a product in grocery stores sold next to the ice cream, in containers indistinguishable from the ice cream containers, that is rather unnervingly not referred to as "ice cream" but as "frozen dairy dessert", mainly because it doesn't contain any cream or for that matter any milk fat at all. And then, to provide for the same creamy consistency they put a lot of synthetic additives there.
 * In most cases there are very few, as they are not needed. The producers simply use margarine instead of butter and turn a skim milk into "cream" with vegetable oil and egg/soy lecithin.
 * If the stuff you're buying is in Spanish, beware of the word 'sucedáneo', which is a pretty obscure word for 'substitute', and 'producto', which means 'product'. That thing in your cart? It isn't butter, just a close enough substitute. Chocolate milk? Umm, no, just a milk product with something else (they won't tell you what) as a substitute of chocolate.
 * Meta example: "Nutritionist". Everyone who has contributed to this article is technically a nutritionist, but odds are, very few of the editors for this page are dieticians. Even worse, "Dr." as in "'Dr.' Gillian McKeith", usually means a PhD, often from a diploma mill.
 * "Vegetable" protein doesn't mean tomatoes and spinach. It means soy.
 * Vegetable oil, on the other hand, can mean any of the thousands of different oils of plant origin. But mostly it's either soy, corn or sunflower. Note that all of these are technically made from seeds—actual vegetables have usually too little oil to think of, except olives and avocados.
 * Smart Balance describes 2% milk as having "more saturated fat than a small order of french fries". What they don't say is that french fries are cooked in partially hydrogenated soybean oil (less saturated fat than butter or lard, usually; more than regular soybean oil), or that the big problem with french fries is the calories.
 * Russia has a strict food labeling regulations, so visiting a supermarket can in a pinch substitute for a food processing class. For example only milk that never been through any modification (except fat separation) could be legally labeled "milk". If some milk fat was added to it, it's "normalized milk", if it was powdered at some point, it's "reconstituted milk", etc. So to escape stigma producers immediately turned to the same trick as Americans—they proudly display their (slightly modified) apellation as a brand, putting the real designation down there in a very fine print.
 * "Yoghurt" needs to contain actual yoghurt bacteria, or else it doesn't count. "Frughurt" etc on the other hand...
 * Condensed milk with sugar is basically Russia's peanut butter for all means and purposes. As such is even has a somewhat affectionate nickname of "condensey". Pretty convenient to put that nickname on the cover, because as it does not feature the word "milk" it does not need to contain any milk.
 * The Russian surrogate makers have managed to turn to their advantage the liberal (almost to the same degree as in Italian language) use of diminutives in Russian. Thus "smetana" (sour cream) is at least supposed to be a real deal, but "smetanka" (which, by the way doesn't mean "little (pack or jar of) sour cream", but is only used in a mildly affectionate context) may and does contain any amount of vegetal thickeners and fats.
 * There is also a substantive vs adjective trick. It seems that the use of substantive nouns is subject to regulations, but the use of adjectives isn't. It has lead to some rebrandings, with a creme'n'froots "Chudo-tvorog" (literally "Wonder cottage cheese") becoming "Tvorozhnoye chudo" (lit. "Cottage cheese wonder").
 * There are even weirder cases. Until the regulations were introduced, a mix of goat and cow milk had been marketed as "Goat milk". Since then, it's labelled (as per regs) as the "Goat quality" (believe me, in Russian it sounds as funny as in English).
 * Similarly, in Israel, milk with additives such as vitamins, iron and calcium must be labeled as a "milk drink" instead of just milk.
 * In late 2010, it was discovered that the "beef" in Taco Bell's food actually consisted of about 35% beef and the rest various chemicals, and thus couldn't be legally classified as beef. The chain subtly got around this by using the word "beefy" in their ads. A surprising number of people, particularly dietitians and some more scientifically minded foodies, actually applauded the revelation.
 * Taco Bell says its taco filling contains 88 percent USDA-inspected beef and the rest is water, spices and a mixture of oats, starch and other ingredients that contribute to what it calls the "quality of its product."
 * A common myth about Kentucky Fried Chicken is that the chain's name was changed to KFC, because they're not legally allowed to include "Chicken" in the title.
 * In 2008, Nestlé began cutting costs in its Dreyer's/Edy's ice cream brands by switching out milk and cream with skim milk and whey (a byproduct of cheese), respectively. This is labeled "frozen dairy dessert".
 * A certain healthful chocolate cereal contains as its first ingredient "Organic, All-Natural Evaporated Cane Juice". Which is basically a really, really fancy and circumlocutory way to say "sugar".
 * In the UK there are incredibly stringent guidelines as to what can legally be described as a Meat Sausage, so the cheaper variations (often sold en-mass by catering wholesalers) get around this by using various other phrases to describe the product. Bangers is one popular term used, as it's also a popular British slang term for actual sausages. A documentary by The BBC a few years ago found that these products are mostly water and grain with very little meat in them (and often said meat is not fit for human consumption).
 * Do not confuse "krab" with "crab." The latter comes from an actual crustacean. The former is actually pollock fish ground into a paste and formed into something resembling crab meat in terms of flavor...and a tube of string cheese in terms of appearance.
 * Nowadays you'd be lucky if you happen to find an actual fish there. Apparently, good ol' soy protein and enterprising use of additives/flavorings allows to make a crab stick without any animal matter.
 * Krab, unlike real crab, can be certified kosher—making it worthwhile for someone who wants to preserve the flavor of what would be a trayf dish.
 * A Finnish butter/vegetable oil mixture called "Voimariini" was forced to change its name due to it containing the Finnish word for "butter" (="voi") despite not being wholly butter. The change was due to an EU regulation prohibiting such "misleading" naming; the not-actually-butter in question had been called the same for about twenty years before the change.

Comic Books

 * Spoofed in Judge Dredd where the fizzy wine-like beverage is called Shampane.

Literature

 * In Dorothy L Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey novel, Murder Must Advertise Lord Peter, who is working undercover at an ad agency as a copywriter explains the limitations and requirements of the English labeling laws in some detail to his sister and brother-in-law while visiting them.

Live Action TV

 * In the early 90s Comedy Central briefly had a show called Comedy Product.
 * In Cheers, Cliff mentions a favourite restaurant that serves "loobster" (with two "o"s).
 * In one episode of Friends, Monica takes a job attempting to create palatable recipes using "Mockolate".
 * Which may or may not have been made out of pure, concentrated evil.
 * In a That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch set in the research department of haircare product makers Laboratoire Garnier, Monsieur Garnier congratulates one lab technician on the invention of the word ‘Nutrisse’ - "Which sounds like ‘nutrition’ but doesn’t guarantee it."
 * In Will and Grace the eponymous pair dine at a restaurant which serves Lobbster stuffed with Cheeeeese.
 * One episode of The Drew Carey Show had him accidentally buying his girlfriend a box of "beljan chorklet".
 * Synthehol is used to replace alcohol in settings where intoxication could be deleterious, but many characters look down on its taste. People drinking it often aren't told that it's not real alcohol until after they comment on its differences.
 * And it may become real soon enough.
 * It's not stated explicitly, but considering "real" food and fresh produce in The Verse of Firefly are only available to the richest of the rich (and criminals), the "Fruity Oaty Bars" most likely contain only artificial fruit and may even have synthesized oats.

Western Animation
"Krusty: "I used NON-diseased meat from diseased animals.""
 * Many Krusty Brand products in The Simpsons TV show and comic books fall under this trope: the Krusty Burger (a "meat-flavored sandwich"), Krusty Partially Gelatinated Non-Dairy Gum-Based Beverage, Krusty's Non-Dairy Non-Ice Cream Whey Product Sandwich, and Krusty Brand Bite-A-Min's Imitation Vitamins. And Krusty Burger's Beef-Flavored Chicken. At least they were honest about their Whatchamacarcass Sandwich.


 * The school cafeteria serves "malk" instead of milk. It may or may not come from rats.
 * King of the Hill had Hank go into a health food store and get "not dogs". They're hot dogs made from tofu. He responded that he was allergic to tofu. Not surprisingly, they had fauxfu.
 * What would "fauxfu" be made from?

Video Games

 * In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials And Tribulations, there's a scene where Phoenix tries a meal from the restaurant Tres Bien. Maya (temporarily working as a waitress) introduces the meal as some complicatedly-named dish involving lobster. When you discuss the (horrible) meal with the owner and chief cook of the restaurant, and Maya mentions the complicated name, he tells her that there is no lobster in the dish. He reminds her that the menu clearly states that it's a dish inspired by [complicated lobster dish], and Phoenix remarks "but it may not contain any actual lobster."
 * Apparently averted in the Fallout world, where it's common to find "Apples" and "Salisbury Steak" that are still edible after 200 years. Fallout Tactics lampshades the improbability of accurate labels on pre-war foodstuffs (and at that point, it's a mere 120 years).
 * Judging from a Dummied Out audio diary in BioShock (series), real beef doesn't exist in Rapture. In BioShock 2, there are advertisements for "Beef•e" potted meat. Averted with "Calci-O" brand artificial milk, however; it at least claims to contain real calcium (which is probably true; seashells are made of calcium carbonate, a common food additive in Real Life) and bills itself openly as a "milk substitute".