this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Mildly Interesting

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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

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I've never seen labeling like this before. Interesting.

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 151 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Can we start doing this with everything?

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 45 points 2 months ago (2 children)

ingredient lables can be pretty long. I think we need a QR code with this and much more information. it should be able to back track where you product came from and such.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 20 points 2 months ago

Either that or it creates an incentive to use fewer, simpler ingredients.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Can QRs fit enough text to hold all the ingredients and their descriptions?
I'd hate it if they were just links to some crappy government website that'll inevitably go down couple of years down the line

[–] randy@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maximum 4296 alphanumeric characters, but that's with the largest-sized code and low/no error correction (so not always practical).

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

And with only the English alphabet, just like in the good old days of ASCII.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago

this is one of those things where distributed ledger would be useful as it should at least track chain of custody then there should be enough room left over for the ingredients table.

[–] cogman@lemmy.world 35 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The problem is a lot of nasty things come from less scary sounding things. For example:

Ingredient: Ricin, Where it comes from: Castor beans, What it's used for: Poison.

[–] Fatal@piefed.social 35 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There's historical truth to this. In toothpaste, no less.

Ingredient: Asbestos

Comes from: naturally occurring mineral

Used for: mild abrasive

[–] NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

To be fair here though, how much toothpaste do you dry and snort these days?

[–] shynoise@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I assume there's a better example to make your point because at least here you're explicitly stating ricin is used for poison, an objectively good thing to know.

[–] cogman@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

My point being that knowledge of where something comes from doesn't tell you if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

I could have rephrased "what it's used for" to be "laxative". A true statement which doesn't expose the fact that ricin is a pretty powerful poison.

People are biased to think "chemical name bad, common name good" and that's the problem I'm exposing. You can pull out a lot of toxic stuff from things that sound harmless.

[–] protist@retrofed.com 10 points 2 months ago

The calculus here isn't strictly whether it's "healthy" or not. There are quite a few ingredients that can be derived from both plants and petroleum, for example, and I would choose the one derived from plants every time

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 7 points 2 months ago

This is still an improvement, let's leave it at that.

[–] turdas@suppo.fi 9 points 2 months ago

Ingredient: Hydroxyl acid Where it comes from: Deep underground well What it's used for: Industrial solvent

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I wish. That would be rad.

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Inb4 food corporations go: Water - water - extra weight for cheap