#BsLabels, Boneless Bananas, Popcorn, and Marketing.

A few weeks ago, the Term “Boneless Bananas” came into my vocabulary for the first time ever thanks to a post on www.thefarmerslife.wordpress.com and its author Brian Scott.

What are boneless bananas?  Well believe it or not, you can purchase them at your local grocery store, market, or even the famous Trader Joes.  They are yellow in color, (sometimes pale green) are usually sold by the bunch (by the pound) or sold individually.  I can even guarantee that if you ever have eaten bananas you have consumed a boneless one at some given time in your life.

Confused? concerned?  I bet you never knew there was a such thing as boneless bananas!  The truth is there is.  That is simply because ALL bananas are boneless.  To say that a banana is “boneless” (according to yahoo answer search) simply describes their shape.  However, if someone (who didn’t know any better) saw a sales sticker in a store such as this:

Someone (again who didn’t know any different) may be more inclined to purchase these vs regularly labeled bananas.  Afterall the sign implies that other bananas have bones right?  And who wants to chip a tooth on a bone when biting into a banana!

     So how does this relate to popcorn?  While watching the local news the other day, a “heathy food expert” recommended popcorn as a good healthy snack.  Now, I like popcorn, and have actually grown some myself in the past, so she had my attention.  The next thing this “expert” said really caught my ear.  She proceeded to recommend “whole grain popcorn….” such as this…

Now, I’ve always known that corn, or popcorn in this case is considered a whole grain food in its natural state, but didn’t know if it was still considered a whole grain after popping.  A google search lead me to:

 http://www.orville.com/whole-grain-snack.jsp

This site stated that all popcorn is Whole Grain even after it is popped.  Very interesting.  I learned something new.  Taking this intriguing idea to the next step, I began to look around for signs of “Boneless Bananas”  well, similar #BSLablels.  I began to look for popcorn labeled as Whole Grain.  I found that like the picture above, mostly all of Orville’s popcorn (as well as a few other brands) are labeled as Whole Grain.   However many other brands  are not.  The question I had to ask myself is, If I didn’t know about popped popcorn being a whole grain, would I (or other consumers) be more inclined to purchase the package marked Boneless Bananas, (excuse me, sorry)  “Whole Grain” vs one that isn’t marked?  I’ll let you decide that one for yourself.

Since I usually (maybe excessively) try to take a look at the marketing side of labeling and packaging, (which I believe my wife is probably rolling her eyes right now)  I began to see why Boneless Bananas and Whole Grain Popcorn are marketed the way they are.  Its not about providing healthy popcorn or bananas without a hard boney center. It’s about getting you to purchase their product, even if it means stating the plain and simple truths that the consumer may not put much thought into while picking out food items at the store.

Moral of this story,

While the “Boneless Bananas” and “Whole Grain Popcorn” labels are clearly true in nature, they are not necessary because every Banana is Boneless, and Every kernel of Popcorn is Whole Grain.  In a way, that makes these labels #BSLabels

Want more BS Labels?  Search #bslabels on twitter, Facebook or blog sites around the internet today, for today is BS Labels Day!

I hope you enjoyed this post, learned something, and most importantly, it made you smile.  Now, I’m off to eat a boneless banana.  HAHA