This organic tomato sauce may or may not contain severed head

My friend Gord sent me a link from Good that points out a pretty hilarious packaging gaffe. Or is it?

Tropical Traditions, originally a coconut oil importer in the US, has branched out into organic packaged foods. One of them is an Italian pasta sauce line, with labels showing women from Renaissance Italian paintings.

Organic Spicy Tomato & Roasted Garlic, for example, features Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, but without the breasts:

Organic Tomato & Basil uses Raphael's Woman with the Veil:

Organic Tomato and Grilled Eggplant gets one of my favourite portraits, Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo:

OK, the weasel is a little weird for a food label. (Assuming the sauce doesn't have much weasel in it.) 

But let's move on to the final jar, Organic Tomato & Porcini Mushroom:

What is with that woman's face, anyway? She doesn't look too impressed. Perhaps we should have a look at the uncropped painting, which is Caravaggio's... Judith Beheading Holofernes?!?

That's right, it's a decapitation. In the apocryphal Book of Judith, the eponymous heroine is a righteous Hebrew who saves Israel by talking her way into the tent of Assyrian general Holofernes, then hacking off his head after he passes out drunk. Since Christians love them a good grisly death, this scene has been portrayed by several artists over the centuries.

But why choose it for a food label? Especially a food that itself kind of resembles gore?

There is no way the designer was unaware of the painting's context, as she or he would have had to research a public domain version of the whole work from which to crop the label.

In fact, I believe what we are seeing here is a clever little prank. A designer who counted on his or her client to be ignorant of the source material. The Botticelli and Leonardo portraits are well-known enough that they probably sold the idea of using Renaissance Italian paintings of women to give the sauces a note of "old-world authenticity." But a severed head, spouting arterial blood, is probably one of the last things I want to think about when I pour this on my spaghetti.

A message from the False Advertising Industry about "natural" foods

Adfreak just shared this hilarious takedown of weasel words in food advertising:



The irony here is that, worldwide, "Organic" is a certification that is not as absolute as you might think. And the health benefits of organic foods are always in question. (In our household, we're more concerned about farmers' exposure to toxins.) But it's still a fun bit of advocacy.

Organic market billboard offers sexual Rorschach test

Via Copyranter

"Vat do you zee here? Now tell me about your muzzah..."

David Lynch has a new coffee commercial, and it is also weird

After pissing off Mattel with his previous bizarre coffee ad (in which he has a conversation with Barbie's disembodied head) David Lynch has just decided to rip off himself in this new one:

David Lynch Coffee

(I know! You had to watch a preroll ad to see another goddamn ad!)

For those of you unfamiliar with his work, that's pretty much what it looks like — but with more awkwardness, violence and girl-on-girl sex.

But hey! It's organic.

Via Grubstreet

Obscene tomatoes sell organic produce

Some are a little naughty, others might arouse an oddly-formed space mutant.

The cutline in Ads of The World says "Ad for the organics food brand Ja! Natuerlich in a special edition to mark the Vienna Design Week."

Umm... okay.

F'd Ad Fridays: Organic dairy boy band is no joke

And that, in itself, is ridiculous. Despite transplanting all the well-worn 'N Sync et cetera audio and video clichés to a farm setting, this campaign for Yeo Valley organic dairy never actually manages to be funny. Even the moo and the "Got Milk?" moustache shot seem genuine and earnest.



Meanwhile, AdFreak notes that this mad-up group, "Churned", will appear on Britain's The X Factor talent show and will have this song available on iTunes.

Is this some kind of super-subtle new British humour I'm not aware of?

Are you ready for the age of waste-free grocery shopping?

Where I live, grocery bags are on the way out. But can you imagine shopping at a supermarket that had no product packaging whatsoever?

According to Time:

"in.gredients will sell 100% package-free products. This means shoppers have to think ahead and bring their own containers. (The store will kindly offer disposable bags in case they forget.) The store plans to sell everything regular grocery stores do—grains, seasonal produce, spices, daily products, meat, beer, wine and cleaning materials—minus the junk food."

Actually, the store bags are "compostible", which achieves their goal of not adding to landfill, but does not fully support the "package free" vision. They also support local, seasonal and ethical suppliers. And need I add that they are also brand-free?

Hmmm... isn't that called a Farmer's Market? Or a bulk food store?

Anyway, this Austin business has successfully claimed a new retail food space from a marketing point of view. It's a good idea, provided they can crowdfund it. Although I imagine it will have a fairly select target market.

I just wish their infomercial wasn't so full of (organic, local, unpackaged) cheese...

The organic dilemma

My wife's grandfather was literally a "meat and potatoes" farmer. For over 50 years, he coaxed seed potatoes and feed for his cattle out of the thin, rocky soil of south-central New Brunswick.

He also used a lot of what he called "spray" — pesticides. And over half a century, he sprayed and inhaled just about every nasty substance science has unleashed to control vermin.

But that's not all the "spray" did. A couple of years ago, I shared in the sad experience of watching a formerly tough and independent man waste away from multiple ailments, including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. He did not survive.

To this day, my wife blames "spray". As a result, we have changed over a significant amount of our weekly grocery budget to tracking down local, organic, and farmer-direct foods whenever possible.

Unfortunately, the whole organic foods movement was dealt a PR blow this week with the release of a British mega-study claiming that organic foods are no more nutritious than "conventionally" grown ones.

In relation to my own purchasing motives, this was a big "so what?". But it shines light on a real marketing problem when it comes to organics.

First of all, what is organic? According to the Canadian General Standards Board, it must have involved none of the following:

• All materials and products produced from genetic engineering.
• Synthetic pesticides, wood preservatives or other pesticides, except as specified in CAN/CGSB-32.31.
• Fertilizer or composted plant and animal material that contains a prohibited substance.
• Sewage sludge used as a soil amendment.
• Synthetic growth regulators.
• Synthetic allopathic veterinary drugs, including antibiotics and parasiticides, except as specified in this standard.
• Synthetic processing substances, aids and ingredients, and food additives and processing aids including sulphates, nitrates and nitrites, except as specified in CAN/CGSB-32.311.
• Ionizing radiation and forms of irradiation on products destined for food.
• Equipment, packaging materials and storage containers or bins that contain a synthetic fungicide, preservative or fumigant.

And, after years of trailing the U.S. on federal standards, Canada just passed Organic Products Regulations to make it official.

Now, I like organic food because I hate pesticides. But I am not 100% against chemical fertilizer (as long as it doesn't pollute waterways), irradiation, or even GMOs. In worldwide agriculture, these are complicated issues that affect the food supply for millions of people. Even limited use of pesticides, when there is no other alternative, is understandable to me.

And then there's meat: I'm more interested in humanely-treated, local animal products than I am strictly against the use of non-organic feed or antibiotics on individual sick animals as a last resort.

My issue is just the industrial mass-application of pesticides, drugs and hormones to drive down food commodity prices, which in the process makes it hard for independent family farms to compete without taking on the same harmful practices. Organic for me was never just a question of nutrients, or even residual pesticides that I had to wash off my food. It's about the health and sustainability of my wider community, which includes regional farmers who take care of their land and take pride in their products.

I could be the only one who thinks this, but I believe that in future the organic "brand" should be less about politics and nutrition, and more about environmental and community health.

Most importantly, farmers shouldn't have to die for our fries.

What do you think?