6 February—Good news first: The neck band on Ken’s Steak House Lite Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing proclaims “50% Less Fat, 42% Fewer Calories than regular dressing.” That’s precisely as it should be, “less” being used to mean “not as much” and “fewer” being used to mean “not as many.” Far too many people who should know better have never heard of “fewer.” (We won’t comment on “Lite.”)

Now for the bad news: The box of Clancy’s CheeseMelt (the Aldi store-brand clone of Kraft Heinz Velveeta at roughly a third the price) proclaims “1/2 Less Fat than Cheddar Cheese.” Liponutritionally (don’t bother looking the word up; deduce the meaning from context), Clancy’s “pasteurized process prepared cheese product” contains 4.5 grams of fat per one-ounce serving; ShopRite Bowl & Basket New York (alleged) Extra Sharp Cheddar contains 9 grams of fat per one-ounce serving, as does Cabot Vermont (pretty) Seriously Sharp Cheddar Cheese; Cabot lite 75 (moderately) Sharp Cheddar Cheese, however, contains only 2.5 grams per one-ounce serving. (There’s that “lite” again. The Cabot lite 75 contains or provides only 60 calories per ounce to the usual 110, by the way, but that’s not a problem. On the contrary, too bad the little Litchfield Stop & Shop doesn’t stock it.)

So what? So the Aldi copywriters betrayed their ignorance of language and/or logic or were simply asleep at their keyboards. Because Clancy’s Cheese Melt doesn’t contain 1/2 less fat than cheddar cheese any way you look at it. Here’s why: Clancy’s Cheese Melt does in fact contain half the total fat of most cheddar cheeses. But one-half less fat really means that it contains more fat than standard cheddar cheese. It doesn’t. And if it did, the box copy certainly wouldn’t boast about it these days. Take a minute or two to think about it.

(Clancy’s one-half less claim would almost be accurate were it compared to Cabot lite 75, 4.5 grams to 2.5 grams of fat. But why niggle and complicate the picture?)

Aldi’s copywriters clearly meant to convey to consumers that their Velveeta clone contained only one-half the fat of cheddar cheese. But they may well have been led down the path of mathematical and factual perdition by “less.” Consumers like—rather, love—that popular four-letter word in most contexts, so copywriters use it whenever they can—even when it puts the lie to what they intend to say.

Not that anyone but a supercilious pedant would notice or comment . . .