For George Carlin, I hope I did his style some kind of justice

Dear Planters

I just purchased one of your snack sized nut sacks from a local gas station today and I have some questions and concerns about it.

First of all how is it that 6 ounces comes to 5 servings, according to the nutritional information on the back? If this is being marketed as a snack size why is each serving size calculated as two tablespoons. How many people really carry measuring spoons around with them to ensure proper portion control while driving? Further more if you have to cut 6 ounces down to 5 1.2 ounce servings to keep the fat and cholesterol numbers low maybe you shouldn’t even be marketing it as a healthy snack food in the first place.

On the back of the package I noticed where it said, “Manufactured on equipment that processes nuts.” Manufactured? Maybe it is just because I work at a factory that manufactures auto parts, but saying my little bag of trail mix was manufactured somehow makes it less appetizing to me. What about it was manufactured in the first place? Do you have a bunch of people with tubs of nuts and raisins doing piecework assembling each, visually appealing, mix in to the bag? Most likely you have giant vats of nuts seeds and raisins that feed into a tumble mixer that then feeds down to a pipe and gate valve to dispense the mix. Maybe you should think about calling it “Packaged” instead. Mc Donalds doesn’t call their food preparation techniques manufacturing, although that is probably a better description of their process then cooking, so you shouldn’t call it manufacturing either.

Lastly, why is it even necessary to put that phrase on the package? If you didn’t process nuts on the equipment I would start to have serious concerns about what I was eating. Don’t tell me you have to in case someone with a nut allergy accidentally went to eat them. Let me tell you if they didn’t see the big lettering on the front that said, “Nuts, Seeds, and Raisin.” Or the smaller lettering immediately under that which listed all the different nuts and seeds you used, or the clear cellophane that allows you to see the vary nuts that are in the package, or the picture of the Planter’s Peanut logo, or the ingredient list on the back which is in the same size text as the manufacturing warning, then they are not going to see or read the manufacturing warning either.

I hope you take my concerns seriously and use them to better package and market your nut sacks.

Thank You