Looking at a restaurant menu today, I see the "95% fat free milkshake." Let's do the math on that. Say it's a pint milkshake. "Pint's a pound the world around", and a pound is about 450 grams. 5% of that is 22 grams of fat, or about 40% of your RDA for fat. (This milkshake is on the menu at a burger joint, so the rest of the meal should cover the other 60% easily.)
So, yeah. Doesn't "95% fat free" just sound so much better than "5% fat"?
Not really sure why people keep commenting on this entry. Apparently "fat free" draws the web searches much more effectively than "technology is frustrating". Maybe I need to add some carefully chosen text about the FAT sound of my FREE VST synth over on the Tiny God page.
So, anyway, let me clarify. I'm not on a diet. I'm not neurotic about fatty foods. I understand that milkshakes have fat. None of that is at issue; none of that is what my original post was about. The point is that "95% fat free" does not mean "95% of original fat content eliminated", even though it sounds like it ought to. If you dispute this statement, then before posting here, please go to your local supermarket and look for items that say "X% fat free". Note two things: the X% is almost certainly going to be over 90% (because very few items have more than 10% fat content), and when you do the math (100% - X%) times (grams content), you should get the same result as grams-of-fat as listed in the nutritional info (allowing for rounding error).
Now, go read "How To Lie With Statistics".