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How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

bonappetit.com

131–140 of 157 posts

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea why the hell people are being so hard on you. I think it's this and the gatekeeping in general. > Store bought blueberries are garbage. They're obviously not garbage and some people don't have access to fresh Blueberries.

I can't really fault OP for that. I would absolutely say that store bought tomatoes are garbage, even though I buy and eat them. The quality is so much better with fresh tomatoes that I think it's fair to say that the store bought ones are garbage. I understood OP as meaning the same thing with respect to blueberries.

Tomatoes are an example of something that's not great especially out of season at the supermarket. I do support my local farmstand during the summer but for some fruits and vegetables there's less of a difference than with others. Honestly a lot of the time when I buy local low bush blueberries in Maine, they're frozen

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#132
post #109

Even more insidious is the armies of salaried mechanical turks on 'grass root' social groups and forums pushing forward a company's whisper campaign without any form of disclosure. You'll notice the same messages surfacing in various online avenues of certain niches nearly at the same time. They make people believe they are on the inside lane of something new and count on them spreading the 'insight' organically amon…

I'm convinced that this is why every recipe on Youtube now suddenly involves "delicious" Almond milk (which is not delicious and not milk). If you are going to be shilling for the vegan processed food industry, at least use oat milk (which you can make at home) or soy milk (which is actually delicious - at least the processed versions I had in Japan).

Almond marketing is totally insane. I think it's because they feel they have to fight against all the people who point out how environmentally bad they are. It's hard to blame the people in CA who are upset when they're constantly asked to ration their personal water usage while the almond industry there takes more water than all the indoor water use of the entire state.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#133
post #31

Wait, are blueberries "shilled"? I had no idea, but I indeed "shill" them myself. Eating blueberries early in the morning has improved my digestion. They also make me feel really good throughout the day. So much so, I've made numerous attempts at growing blueberry bushes myself (unfortunately I don't have a green thumb). Likewise with coconut water, a habit I developed in Thailand. If they're shilled, so be it. It wo…

You don't get paid or get any other benefits from saying blueberries are good for you? Then you don't "shill" them

It's a slang expression and commonly gets used even if pay isn't involved.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#134
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which kind? I'd shill for these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilberry which are the local kind in scandinavia; solid blue inside.

You can get Bilberry spread and syrup at Ikea in the U.S. It's very good. But it probably also has added sugar.

Oh - that's the best jam for pancakes (the thin flat pancakes) or just using the fresh berries themselves instead of jam, with some maple syrup.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who the hell needs to pay anyone to shill butter? Any company that makes butter as good as the below [1], and has an idea that some people haven’t heard of it. It’s silly expensive. It’s so great. https://www.lewisroadcreamery.com/collections/grass-fed-butt...

I'll have to see if I can find it at a store. I'm always down to improve my butter experience. I will say that I was very let down by Kerrygold. It's noticeably better if you are having just plain buttered toast, but otherwise I can't taste any difference between it and the normal butter one sees at the store.

It's true of a lot of things that, if you taste them in isolation, there's a noticeable difference. But if you're using them as just a supporting element or mixed in with a lot of other flavors, they may not be worth 2x the price.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#136

Honestly? Better than shilling your highly processed industrialized food.

Except that it'll inflate the price of the healthy foods in order to make up the costs of all the advertising they do on social media. Too many people struggle accessing and affording healthy foods as it is.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#137

I'm amazed that people still depend on "influencers" to make decisions. After all we've seen over the last 10 years of sponsored posts, and "influencers" people still blindly follow their lead.

It's often cool to say that you're an independent thinker. Or to imagine that's true. But in almost every respect, the vast majority of people want to be sheep who fit into some herd or another.

Even those that very much don't want to be "sheep" are stuck with the same cognitive biases and vulnerabilities we all share. We're all easily manipulated and advertisers have spent hundreds of years and insane amounts of money on research designed to help them exploit that fact. Nobody is immune from the influence of advertising, especially not the people foolish enough to believe that they are.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#138
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slow down: are you seriously trivializing the fact that the food industry was able to very expensively sue someone over criticizing their product ... when she turned out to be correct ... just because she eventually won?

No, I'm just trying to keep the facts straight.

Then you're ignorant of how the tone of that comment comes off.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who the hell needs to pay anyone to shill butter? Any company that makes butter as good as the below [1], and has an idea that some people haven’t heard of it. It’s silly expensive. It’s so great. https://www.lewisroadcreamery.com/collections/grass-fed-butt...

I'll have to see if I can find it at a store. I'm always down to improve my butter experience. I will say that I was very let down by Kerrygold. It's noticeably better if you are having just plain buttered toast, but otherwise I can't taste any difference between it and the normal butter one sees at the store.

Found that to be the case with any butter really, when you cook with it or do anything that dilutes it, the flavor beyond "lipids" ends up lost quickly amongst the other flavors. We buy cheaper butter for stuff like frying eggs or to add to recipes that call for it and buy a smaller amount of really good stuff to put on (cooked) bread/steak/potatoes or other times where the flavor difference feels noticeable (also usually do unsalted for the normal, and salted for the high-grade). Note I said cheaper not cheap, I'd say like wine you shouldn't cook with butter you'd refuse on its own.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#140

Who the hell needs to pay anyone to shill butter? Butter is widely known to be absolutely delicious, to the point that people go out of their way to tell us to eat less butter for the sake of our health. I can't think of anything which needs promotion less than butter does.

> Who the hell needs to pay anyone to shill butter? Any company that makes butter as good as the below [1], and has an idea that some people haven’t heard of it. It’s silly expensive. It’s so great. https://www.lewisroadcreamery.com/collections/grass-fed-butt...

How much did they pay you for this comment?
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