An excess of adjectives

I don't normally watch the TV news magazines, but I happened to catch ABC's 20/20 friday night. They did a segment on how restaurants market food and it fell right in line with something I've been noticing (and commenting upon—oh alright, complaining about—to my friends) for a while now and that is the proliferation of adjectives on restaurant menus.

As best I can recall—and perhaps my memory is faulty—restaurants used to simply list their meals and prices. I've noticed in the last several years that more and more places list colorful descriptions of all their entrees (not just the specials). They might say something like "...pan-seared to juicy perfection..." or "...golden brown with a light buttery taste..." etc. You get the picture. It doesn't seem to be enough anymore just to say "fried flounder with mashed potatoes and string beans." My friends kid me about having something against adjectives, but I just see through it as a marketing gimmick.

Turns out I was right. This 20/20 report covered a few food-related angles, but among them they told how experiments revealed that people tend to eat more when such descriptions are added to ordinary menu items. Less chili was consumed when it was sold simply as chili, but more when it was relabelled as "Grandma's homestyle chili." Even something as simple as peas were eaten in greater quantities when dubbed as "power peas."

I don't know about anyone else, but I just find that silly. In my mind, I strip off the obviously superfluous descriptions and boil an entree item down to its essence which might be simply the old "fried flounder with mashed potatoes." I learned that just because they say something is "grilled to mouthwatering perfection" doesn't mean that's how it will really come out of the kitchen.

I guess it's just another example of my cynical nature showing through, but I found it interesting to see confirmation of what I've suspected (which is not to say I was at all surprised to have it confirmed).