{"id":18917,"date":"2017-02-28T15:50:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T02:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18917"},"modified":"2017-02-28T21:08:37","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T08:08:37","slug":"disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/02\/28\/disinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brewers Association’s new disinformation campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The truth is a brittle thing (adapted from a threadless.com design by macdoodle<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More information always seems<\/em> like a worthy\u00a0idea. But the truth is a complicated thing and some people are very<\/em> skilled bullshitters \u2014 able to spin a rare species of lie from saying something entirely accurate, which carefully exploits ambiguities in someone’s question or levers off errors in their background understanding. ‘Beer the Beautiful Truth’<\/a>,\u00a0a new campaign launched by the Brewers Assocation<\/a>,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> is sadly\u00a0just this kind of bullshit. It’s the opposite of what beer needs right now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The idea is simple enough, and appears initially laudable: both Lion and D.B. (the Assocation’s two New Zealand-based members)<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> are undertaking to voluntarily add a bunch of “nutritional information” to the packaging of (some of) their beers. The pitch is that this is in response to customer demand for these things and to fill in gaps in consumer knowledge. I might be being cynical here \u2015 though\u00a0I suppose a cynic is just a skeptic who\u00a0is bored of being proven right \u2015 but I call\u00a0shenanigans<\/em>. This just stinks of big breweries bullying their smaller competitors, and further muddying the waters to their benefit.<\/p>\n

\"Steinlager<\/a>
Part of the problem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let’s not forget that the woeful state of public understanding here is mostly\u00a0their fault<\/em>. If Lion and D.B. are upset that “most people” don’t know that beer is (usually) low in sugar and free from preservatives, they’d benefit from a look over their own history: these are the companies who market a few individual beers as “pure” or “low-carb” in a way that quite-obviously leaves room for the assumption that other beers\u00a0aren’t<\/em>. If you’re losing sales because you’ve miseducated a generation of customers, then that’s your damn chickens coming home to roost \u2015 you can’t expect the rest of us to help clean up their shit. But sadly, there really is a built-in hostility to non-participants, here; when you say something about\u00a0these<\/em> beers, you inevitably imply something about\u00a0those<\/em> beers.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It happens at the small scale\u00a0\u2015 where Steinlager Pure suggests\u00a0weird (and untrue) things about what superscience or witchcraft might be involved in the making of Steinlager Classic<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u2015 and it happens at the broader level: the big breweries are here leaving room for people to assume nasty things about beers that\u00a0don’t<\/em> carry these labels. And I suspect that’s intentional.<\/p>\n

Think of it like this: if I started up\u00a0a little food truck\u00a0and its slogan was “Our burgers\u00a0aren’t<\/em> radioactive!” that’d just come across as a weird attempt at humour. But if McDonald’s and Burger King launched a flashy and coordinated international ad campaign that said the very same thing \u2015 especially in a world where people misunderstood their burgers as much as they do their beer in ours \u2015 then that’d be a\u00a0very<\/em> different dynamic.<\/p>\n

\"JoyJoy<\/a>
Equally relevant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The claims in ‘Beer The Beautiful Truth’ are similarly empty nonsense or distorted beyond any usefulness. “99% Sugar Free!” is true enough, but not really at issue \u2015 it’s like when confectioners put “Fat Free!” on their candy. To the extent that there’s a problem with candy, it isn’t fat<\/em>; to the extent there’s a problem with beer,<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> it’s the booze and the kilojoules, not sugar as such. The B.A. knows this, of course. It’s not rocket surgery. If you want to educate<\/em>, then do so. As it stands, this effort is indistinguishable from pandering to ignorance for profit.\u00a0You can see it in how they use calories front and centre when the metric standard unit is kilojoules\u00a0\u2015 but kJs give a superficially bigger number for the same amount of physical energy.\u00a0The broader explanatory guff deftly minimises sugar as an ingredient<\/a> and patiently explains that bubbles and booze come from fermentation<\/a>\u00a0\u2015\u00a0meaning that the “99% Sugar Free” claim amounts to “It’s Fermented”, which just beautifully parallels the famous story of Lucky Strike’s “It’s Toasted” slogan<\/a>, the absolute paradigm case of a shallow piece of marketing wank that doesn’t mean a damn thing.<\/p>\n

\"Steinlager<\/a>
Not helping<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And look at what isn’t included in the campaign: ingredients<\/em>. The B.A. here just hide behind the line that ‘most beers contain just four ingredients: water, malted barley, hops and yeast’. Which, again, is true so far as it goes \u2015 but a) masses of those previously-misinformed consumers care (perhaps wrongly, but sincerely) about whether beer is\u00a0made with<\/em> sugar,<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> not just if it’s in the final product, and b) there’s a whole lot of other relevant things that people definitely care about and deserve to be able to easily know: vegans want to know if your beer is fined with isinglass and various\u00a0allergies might mandate avoiding beers with lactose or wheat or whatever, just to list the blindingly obvious. I can’t see any good reason not to include a full (if generalised, to protect the actual recipes) accounting of ingredients, but it’s all too easy to reach the ungenerous conclusion that this campaign just isn’t what it says it is.<\/p>\n

\"Malk,<\/a>
But\u00a0there’s very little meat in the gym mats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So what should we be doing, instead?<\/em> I think it’s definitely the case that beer is under-labeled in this country (and probably most others). I’ve rambled on for years about how I think brewery and company of origin should be discoverable from the package simply because it’s a thing that enough people give a damn about and deserve to be able to factor into their purchasing decisions. So it is with ingredients. And I think it’s fair enough that energy content should be presented just as the level of booze is disclosed: both are about moderating your intake and balancing your life, after all. If\u00a0this<\/em> was the requirement \u2015 or if it was the B.A.’s campaign, for now, to lead the way and raise the rules question later \u2015 the hostility towards small breweries would vanish. Requiring every small-batch release to go through ten rounds of nutritional testing to figure out its dietary fibre levels to some ludicrous level of accuracy is obvious\u00a0nonsense.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0The compliance costs would vastly eclipse\u00a0any\u00a0benefit and anyone proposing such a thing\u00a0is plainly\u00a0just wagering that their deeper pockets and more-stable product ranges will seem them come out ahead. So how about that? My official policy prescription is that beer should be required\u00a0to show: its ingredients, its alcohol content (as a percentage, and as “standard drinks”), and an estimate of its kilojoule content (perhaps with the usual “%RDI” measure).<\/p>\n

As it stands, ‘Beer: the Beautiful Truth’<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> fails in two ways; by doing too much (pointless other nutritional information like dietary fibre and carbohydrates) and too little (by refusing to declare what the individual beers are made of). Even if<\/em> it’s not a calculated bullying tactic\u00a0\u2015 and that’s a massive if<\/em> \u2015\u00a0it’s\u00a0nothing praiseworthy and you should be looking distinctly sideways at the people who proposed it and are now eagerly awaiting your applause.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More information always seems like a worthy\u00a0idea. But the truth is a complicated thing and some people are very skilled bullshitters \u2014 able to spin a rare species of lie from saying something entirely accurate, which carefully exploits ambiguities in someone’s question or levers off errors in their background understanding. ‘Beer the Beautiful Truth’,\u00a0a new … Continue reading The Brewers Association’s new disinformation campaign<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-finds","category-blahblah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17436,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/09\/16\/trophies-and-truth-telling\/","url_meta":{"origin":18917,"position":0},"title":"Trophies and truth-telling","author":"Phil","date":"September 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Last\u00a0weekend, a small army of judges assembled in Christchurch to assess a considerably-larger army of entries in the annual round of the local Brewers' Guild Awards. We won't know the results until\u00a0next weekend\u00a0but \u2015 SPOILER ALERT \u2015 Tui will\u00a0not\u00a0win the trophy for New Zealand styles. I don't say this because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Brewers Guild of New Zealand 2015 Awards Guide","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/BGNZA-2015-Trophy-criteria-blur.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/BGNZA-2015-Trophy-criteria-blur.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/BGNZA-2015-Trophy-criteria-blur.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/BGNZA-2015-Trophy-criteria-blur.jpeg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18730,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/01\/28\/boycotts\/","url_meta":{"origin":18917,"position":1},"title":"Boycotts in Boomtime","author":"Phil","date":"January 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This piece originally appeared in the summer edition of SOBA's magazine,\u00a0The Pursuit of Hoppiness. A few recent discussions of whether (and how) we should more-openly mix our politics and our pitching or\u00a0purchasing have reminded me to belatedly post it here. Introducing himself and his mission, Michael Jackson (the drinks writer,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The header from my Pursuit of Hoppiness piece (Summer 2016, p60)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":741,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/08\/yeastie-boys-pot-kettle-black\/","url_meta":{"origin":18917,"position":2},"title":"Yeastie Boys ‘Pot Kettle Black’","author":"Phil","date":"September 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"'PKB' -- as it quickly became known; the full version of the name is meant to highlight the seeming-contradiction in a beer being both hoppy and dark -- was the first Yeastie Boys release. 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Despite reading a possibly-unhealthy amount of beer-related writings,2 I've never joined in before, but was moved to do so when invited \/ challenged by James Davidson (of Beer Bar Band),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Session logo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/session_logo_all_text_300-246x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3094,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/05\/23\/invercargill-pitch-black\/","url_meta":{"origin":18917,"position":4},"title":"Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’","author":"Phil","date":"May 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The aforementioned 'St. Bernard' was proving a popular guest, and comparisons to 'Pitch Black' (made, unprompted, by quite a few people) had kept up enough that a couple of circuits of my ever-skeptical brain had started to fire up and crackle with the question of whether we were all just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Invercargill 'Pitch Black'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Invercargill-Pitch-Black-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3497,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/06\/24\/firestone-walker-velvet-merlin\/","url_meta":{"origin":18917,"position":5},"title":"Firestone Walker ‘Velvet Merlin’","author":"Phil","date":"June 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Karma is a bitch, sometimes. 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