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Sometime soon after I started working in my grocery store, back when parmesan cheese was in the dairy aisle and not above the pasta sauce where it is now, I bristled at the store brand of "parmesan cheese'. It was called "Compliments Value Grated Cheese Product".

That bothered me immensely and still does. Is the word "product" necessary? Isn't everything a product? In a sense yes, but then again, not really: real parmesan cheese would simply say "parmesan cheese". The same way ice cream--which is a frozen dessert--wouldn't be called "frozen dessert", and chocolate milk--which is a dairy beverage--wouldn't be called "chocolate dairy beverage".

(For the record: actual chocolate milk must contain at least 90% milk. Whereas a "chocolate dairy beverage" may contain as little as 51% milk. Much of the rest is "modified milk ingredients"...i.e. fat globules and such. In short, reconstituted milk. Why is this reconstituted milk in our chocolate dairy beverage? Tsk, tsk. In the grocery industry, the answer to any question that starts with "why" is "money". It's cheaper to transport and store fake milk. You haven't noticed the price of chocolate "dairy beverage" any lower, you say. Well, no. That's because our cost hasn't gone down. I can't say for sure where the money's going, but being as there are only three or four companies responsible for most of the items in my dairy aisle, I can guess.)

A few weeks ago, I noticed a new one, on what used to be Black Diamond cheese slices: Black Diamond "Cheddar-style" cheese slices. I don't know when the change happened--could have been years ago, I don't examine my cheese slices for style--but it has.

Now, processed cheese slices, I often joke, are one molecule removed from being plastic garbage bags. That's NOT TRUE, incidentally, but there sure isn't much nutritional value in a processed cheese slice. No matter. Adding the 'style' just accentuates the negative, you know?

I'm kind of scared what I'll see next. Fresh-processed orange-style juicy-juice? Henny's Ovular Eggish Delights? Or how about a label that just says "FOOD"?