> For example, sweets can be "fruit flavoured", crips (US/chips) can be "bacon flavoured", with no expectation (either cultural or legal) that they are made using real fruit or bacon.

I'm not sure that's really the case.

> For example, orange flavoured sweets derive their flavour from real oranges, but orange flavour sweets are synthetically flavoured.

https://www.slough.gov.uk/business/trading-standards/food-st...

So it's basically the same word, one being a noun versus the other being an adjective. That difference is so tiny that I can't see how it can be legal or meaningful. Are consumers really expected to think of parts of speech when reading labels?

I'm not sure it's that silly. Some sweets are flavoured with orange. Some just have the same flavour as orange, but weren't actually flavoured with any orange.

How can it be meaningful and legal? Well someone decided to give it a meaning and make it a law (or regulation).

I don't mean to sound snarky, but noun versus adjective is hardly a "tiny" difference. (I think you'd find quite a lot of written laws to lose their meaning were these two fundamental tenets of basic grammar to be conflated)

I stand corrected

+1 for using slough borough council as reference.

:)

There are actually a lot of kosher "bacon" potato chip flavors. The flavor is usually faked with smoked paprika. "Bacon salt" is also kosher, for the same reason.

In that case, keeping it kosher widens the market a bit, and the man on the street probably can't tell the difference anyway. Beside that, it's probably cheaper and easier to flavor with smoked paprika than actual bacon.

I have some truffle oil at home and always wondered how it could possibly be profitable to produce; one wouldn't want to squeeze anything out of a truffle. I guess now I have the answer, but I'm not too upset about it. It's probably as close to truffle-flavor as any grocery store in my state will actually get.

I was on a bus with some bacon flavoured peanuts. I read the ingredients (which was thankfully in English; most of the package was in Russian) and noticed it had no actual bacon.

Two of my friends on the bus were vegetarian and one said, "oh yea, smoked paprika. That's used in a lot of vegetarian stuff for bacon-type flavour." They then precoded to try some bacon peanuts.

The "bacon bits" sold at most US grocery stories under brand names like "Bac'n Pieces" and "Bac-Os" are a famous "I can't believe it's vegan" food - they're just bread with smoked paprika / liquid smoke based flavoring. Similarly, "Butter Lover's" microwave popcorn is generally vegan also.

Well what is the butter flavoring then?

Typically diacetyl, acetylpropionyl or acetoin, the first falling out of favor due to lung disease risk.

They should go full throttle and just label things "Truffle Blasted!"

It's Got What Plants Crave!

> with no expectation (either cultural or legal) that they are made using real fruit or bacon.

I'm sorry, no. If there weren't a cultural expectation that words have these meanings, they wouldn't feel the need to put it on the label. It's a lie.

"Maple flavoured syrup" is another one.