05/29/2026
1. HAND MADE. Restaurants love to advertise hand made. But hand made just means the product was touched by human hands, at some point in production. If it was made in a factory on an assembly line, frozen, shipped to restaurants, and dropped in a fryer straight from frozen then it qualifies as "Hand Made"
2. FRESH. What qualifies as fresh? Freshly defrosted? Freshly harvested 7 months ago and kept in preservation? I can open a Fresh jar of spaghetti sauce and claim its "Fresh" Its meant to make you believe it was recently harvested, but in reality "Fresh" just says the ingredie ts weren't spoiled!
3. SCRATCH MADE. Technically ALL food is made from scratch. Even Spray Cheese. Open 12 cans, simmer the contents for 15 minutes, and you have a "Scratch Made" Chili. But when you Dice and mix whole Garlic, tomatos, caramelized onion, and ground beef is also get a "Scratch made" Chili. Which one are you paying for?
4. AUTHENTIC. This one is very deceptive. We often associate Authentic with tradition, quality, and old world charm, but what makes a dish "Authentic"? Is it the recipe, the ingredients, the cook, chef, or the owner that makes the dish Authentic?
5. FREE RANGE. You're meant to imagine animals roaming free threw tall fields, but in reality it just means they had access to 0.1square inches of outdoor space per animal. Its a made up marketing term to make you feel better about mass produced meat.
6. LOCAL. To where? On what scale? Tasmania is fairly local to Kansas in terms of interplanetary travel. "Locally made on Earth" is still local.
7. ORGANIC. By now everyone knows "Organic" just means less or different pesticides. Theres no real nutritional benifit to organic. Home Grown is the best 'Organic' you can get.