How skeptical are you when it comes to advertising??

I've got to confess - it's my one pet hate.... Advertising.

But just how do these marketing engineers manipulate the truth or omit certain facts?

Here's a few that I see going around. I'll add more as I see red. Please feel free to play along and add some more of your own.

1) Statements such as "could" or "may" keep your heart healthy. Very ambiguous eh? After all, I "may" be hit by a passing meteorite, or I "could" be attacked my some killer cannibals.

2) Or stuff like only contains only 14% fat. That sounds low, but in actuality it pretty darn high. A low fat food must be 5% or less. Not to mention that often "low fat" foods get filled with chemicals to make them taste like their counter parts. mmmmmmmm....

3) "Does not contain any artificial colors". However, they often omit to let you know that it's full of E numbers or chemicals instead. It's total misdirection - "hey look at this!". So you wont look at what's going under you nose.

4) Want to get your kids eating a certain brand of Junk food. Make a website with a video game on it - and plaster the logo all over it. Yum.

5) Start to have a look at the fine print now having to be added to the commercial (finally the gov are copping on). This highly sugary yogurt is grrreaaaat for you. But the fine print says... "as part as a healthy diet lifestyle". Well, so is virtually anything in that case.

6) How about you'll loose weight in 2 weeks - if you have 2 bowels of "our" cereal a day, and a sensible dinner. Well, that would be the case as you're now eating less. And why does it have to be "their" particular cereal? Surely it can be anyones....

7) "We'll give you a big fat loan... no prolemo...." And the fine print says.... failure to make weekly payments could put your house at risk.

8 ) Lets not forget that our "friendly" supermarkets who make everything oh so cheap for us. They dabble in a bit of "price fixing" now and then. Which is illegal of course, and stops the consumer getting more benefits. Well, every little helps.

That's it for now....

9) It's funny the way certain products shrink every now and then. Especially certain Chocolate bars and bags of crisps.