Allow me to elaborate

I feel the need to explain my last post here.

I've said before that one of my biggest pet peeves is calling vegetable broth vegetable stock. It's a simple matter of misinformation.

While that particular example sticks out, the general idea of telling people the wrong thing is just irksome.

I've come across this problem in a few different ways.

Sometimes people just don't know any better. If you've never been told the difference between stock and broth, it's understandable that you might confuse the two.

Sometimes it's a marketing gimmick. This one is, as far as I'm concerned, a bit of a dirty trick. To say, for example, that a certain vegetable is cholesterol free is essentially implying that others aren't. This is probably worse when it's done with a product (like a certain type of peanut butter), where consumers might buy that brand for that reason. It's taking advantage of ignorance.

Sometimes it's straight up lieing to make more money. Saying that the spread on a bagel is neufchatel sounds a bit nicer than calling it cream cheese. There is extremely little difference between the two (in fact today I tasted them side by side and was hard pressed to notice much of anything). But they're not the same thing. I've also seen this happen with people calling sour cream creme fraiche. Again, these are two very similar products, however you'd probably be able to tell a difference when eating them side by side (and those more acquainted may know the difference anyway). There's nothing wrong with sour cream, and calling it something else just so that you can charge more is plain wrong.

So much of the time people do this because "They don't know the difference". This is, unfortunately, true. But that is also the absolute worst reason to do it. Instead of using someone's lack of knowledge to slide something past them, you should educate them so that they can tell the difference, or at the very least so that they know a difference exists.

This is why seeing that bit about cholesterol-free veggies in a culinary textbook set me off. This is an educational facility. And they're pawning off misleading information. And I'm paying for it.

It's not the first time, either. When the culinary students are in a lab that's not an actual kitchen lab (such as the beverage service class, or meat cutting) we'll eat in one of the dining rooms. If I remember correctly the appetizer was naan with a tomato cucumber salad and baba ghanoush. That's what it said, anyway. Rather than naan, a thin, almost wafer-like bread, I was given pita. Now I will say that this particular dish was one of, if not the best dishes that I have had in either that dining room or the advanced dining room (with an equally advanced class cooking the food).

But it wasn't naan.

Incredible as it was, they lied to me. Now I know what naan is, but not everyone who ordered that is going to. So what happens now? You have culinary students who are taught that naan and pita are the same thing.

Editor's Note - Okay, so I may have gotten ahead of myself on the naan thing... and by "may" I mean "completely". Naan and pita are, by and large, the same product. Naan is Indian in origin and pita is Mediterranean. Pita can be made to rise more, but not always. But hey, that's why I'm in school. In any case, the point stands (which, in part, is why I'm taking the time to correct myself).

People who accept the responsibility of teaching, regardless of subject, have to present viable material.