Comparing food products with their package photos - Germany

A German website, Pundo3000.com, has conducted a study of 100 different products by comparing the look of the products as shown by the packaging with the actual contents inside the boxes. Quoting the website, which is in German: “All products were purchased, the packaging photographed and the contents prepared and photographed too. All products were then eaten up.” and also: “The purpose of the project is not to discredit any brands or products but to critically compare the packaging advertising with the inside contents”.

Personally, on the chocolate Hörnchens, I think the real stuff looks better than the photo. Otherwise, just highlights the crap that some people eat*.


Photo: Pundo3000.com

* me excluded naturally

Jebus, them hacksteaks in photo 31 look so gross.

Take a look for the small print, I am sure it says "Serviervorschlag" somewhere on the box.

Can we deduce from these photos that Photoshop has a Veggie-Fake function?

There are fake veggie "meat" products so why not? ;-)

I meant introducing veggies into pictures of dull brown/grey sludgy products to liven the appearance up - veggies going where no veggie had gone before. I'm sure that pics of tofu burgers are just as guilty of being tarted up to give the impression the product actually tastes of something besides MSG.
Hamburger, before and after Prettified Heringssalat
But as Sarabyrd says, it probably all comes under the heading of "serving suggestion". You want to eat unreconstructed sludge, no-one's stopping you.

I understood you, Crusoe. Just noting that if veggies can be tarted up to look and taste like meat, image doctoring is sooooooo last week.

I used to make a lot of tv adverts for food, particularly farmfoods and the like. there were lots of rules about what you could and couldnt do to the product, but we have definately done the following.

Replaced the veg piece for piece on a frozen pizza to make it look better.
Spraypainted frozen chicken nuggets with radiator enamel and varnish to make them look cooked as they would look too dry under the studio lights.
Sorted through 11 boxes of chocolate eclairs to find six good ones.
Browning sausages exactly with a blowtorch to get the colour just right, then varnishing them and sitting them on top of a bowl of dry ice to make them look hot.
we could do pretty much what we wanted to make the food look good except make it look smaller, bigger or significantly different in quantity. If a photo of a pizza has six slices of pepperoni, then the photo has to also have six slices.

and there was the mashed potato fight with terry wogan, but thats another story.

Tell! Tell!

Gratuitous link to Terry Wogan's jumbo sausage

Ha, one of my roommates had the exact meal pictured above a few months ago. We all made fun of her. I still say the noodles look like brains.

Some of the differences between the photo and the real product are shocking!