It's alive! Or contains carbon!

[pyat]

velvetpage bought some unrefined salt. Its packaging describes it as "organic."

Organic salt?

Organic salt?

Pardon me, while my inner tech writer fantasizes about hunting down and killing a marketing copywriter.

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

That's because the creation of new words is an organic process.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I can think of a very round about way to get organic salt, but, ewwww.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's not the creation of a new word, it's the misuse of an old word in the service of marketing. You might as well describe it as Electric Salt or Radioactive Salt. And, in fact, marketing people have done that before, back in the days when anything electrical or radioactive was considered better.

One expects them to suddenly revive the use of the word "Galvanic" as a marketing term to...

Oh... they did that already. (http://images.google.ca/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=galvanic+health&btnG=Search+Images)

Of course, all words are organic, since they are the product of living brains. :)

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I think it's moved beyond that though, considering there are laws regarding "organic foods".

[pyat.livejournal.com]

New! All natural Star-Salt! Collected from clothing stains in the armpits and crotches of celebrities! Guaranteed*!

_{*Celebrities consist of 99% imprisoned notorious murders, Carrot Top, and local radio show hosts.}

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yes. I agree! It's deliberately misleading. Bring me my bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire: Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

(http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/M-113_creature)

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Gold isn't flammable.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Also, what are you doing making image searches at work with safe surf off? ;)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I like to pretend I come across furry porn accidentally. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

She could be the spokesperson!

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

Hah!

One of Frazer's vendettas is against the use of the label "organic" on food. All food is organic! (Well, excepting salt as we've just established). If it wasn't organic, it wouldn't be food!

The fact that he's fighting a lost battle is irrelevant. It's like the fact that the word decimate was misused for so long that the OED finally accepted the alternate version as also correct. It was such a good word, too. That really irritates him.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

YES! Decimate! That was a good word, a specific word, with specific meaning implicit in it. Now it means something vague along the lines of "total destruction."

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Post that to cranky_editors. Muahahaha!

[thebitterguy]

Which makes it even better for burning.

[thebitterguy]

While that's true, the term is generally supposed to be used to refer to foodstuffs prepared using specific methods, as opposed to mass produced in factory farms.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Presumably the word applies to the process by which the salt arrived at your table, and not the salt itself. For example, a quick look at wikipedia reveals that for ordinary "table salt", the process of "refining" involves adding a variety of wonderful things to the salt to "make it flow freely and prevent caking", &c.

Shades of meta-dioxin.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know THAT. It's just "unrefined" salt. Or rather, "less refined salt," because raw sea salt isn't so good for food.

I don't like that they're slapping the word "organic" on it. It's meaningless in this context. It's still being collected by some kind of industrial process. It is NOT raw sea salt. It's just being put in a smaller package.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know. In the same way that "Galvanic" and "Ultraviolet" and "Magnetic" are applied as adjectives to water.

However, it's especially meaningless in this case, because it's not farmed. It's still being collected in SOME kind of industrial process, and refined to some degree.

[thebitterguy]

Oh, God, yes. Using it to refer to salt is just ludicrous. There's already enough strange "make it more expensive" qualifiers to slap onto that.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Let's go beat up some hippies! We'll take your Smart car, to confuse 'em!

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

I frequently find that 'organic' refers to the type of fertilizer used to create the food product.

So maybe they're just admitting that their 'unrefining' process is just full of manure.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I might!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I suspect you might be correct. I also suspect they just buy "kosher salt", put it through a grinder and call it "organic."

[relee.livejournal.com]

Like Nanotechnology Pants! (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/18/popsci.nantech.pants/)

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

As long as the grinder can be shown not to leave heavy metal particulates in the output... 8)

[taluagel.livejournal.com]

I've always HATED the term Organic in the way its used now adays. Bugs me like how even at the age of 10 the science expert in Alien plainly states "It must be some sort of molecular acid".

The terms original meaning is with or from Organs, it will never make sense to me used outside of that context.

[taluagel.livejournal.com]

I think its more along the lines that their company is full of shit.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

She's probably looking for work... (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1859611/)

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Dude, the robot was programmed by a giant interstellar megacorp. Of course they're going to cut corners on the programming expenses...

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

My husband who took chemical technology says that organic means no chemicals were used in the processing. So, yeah, it's organic.

[catsarah.livejournal.com]

because sodium chloride is no chemical ;)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

But... some chemicals are organic! And they DO use chemicals to process sea salt for "organic" sea salt!

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

Obviously, everything is made of chemicals. But in the processing of the salt it isn't treated with chemicals.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure, though, that "organic" is simply being used as a sort of "healthy" adjective, rather than a technical term.

[catsarah.livejournal.com]

unless it's iodized and then it is!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I think the sea salt stuff lacks iodine, but they do something to it to remove the unpalatable chemicals that exist naturally in sea salt.

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

Is kosher salt circumcised? *ducks thrown objects*

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

I agree completely on the word decimate.

The army's been decimated?
So, we're at 90% strength? Press the attack.

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

I vant to suck your salt.

I want to press a-salt charges, Captain!

[mrs-dm.livejournal.com]

Sure they use chemicals to process sea salt. Dangerous ones too, like dihydrogen oxide;)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! That stuff eats through iron, and turns copper green!