Petty Gripes

I'm just sharing some very nit-picky observations today: hiding or underreporting details to make something more appealing to consumers. It's disappointing and misleading. 

My case in point is claiming a bread recipe has only 3 ingredients, as in "3 Ingredient Artisan Bread" - only to find there are actually 4 ingredients, but the water is not considered an ingredient! Here I was thinking I could find a quicker, or cheaper, or more efficient way of making bread than my usual one, only to find out that it's identical to the one I use except that it 'pretends' that water is not an ingredient.

My Jalapeno Cheddar version of the 4 ingredient bread!

I was 'caught' by another one that read like this:

Ingredients For Three Ingredient Cake
1 pkg cake mix, any flavor
1 can any flavor pie filling
3 eggs

Wait! Since when is a cake mix an ingredient? Never, in my experience. I understand there is a thing known as a 'Dump' cake, which tells me a lot, but not mentioning this made me think it was worth looking at - I guess that is the point! I fell for it - if it sounds or seems to be too good to be true, it is, so don't bother.

No, these petty observations didn't ruin my day, but I was irked at how misleading they were. And this is only because it was presented in a topic with which I am very familiar. How many other headlines and bylines lead us astray or misinform when it's a subject with which we are unfamiliar or less hands-on?