This year’s Super Bowl was a bust. It was a game in which everybody lost except the sellers of pizza and chicken wings.

It was a boring game. The only good thing was that each team had a former Cornhusker playing for them, a record 26 straight Super Bowls with a former Husker playing, so I watched them and ignored most everyone else.

The game that was loaded with controversy was split by an awful halftime show with a tattooed Adam Levine taking off his shirt (not a Janet Jackson “equipment failure”) and rapper Big Boi in a full length fur coat in 80 degree temperatures. I guess they were the only options left after Rihanna and Cardi B opted not to perform because of the controversies surrounding the game.

Even the multi-million dollar ads lacked their usual humor and saw Budweiser attacking Coors for using corn syrup and poking the corn industry in the eye. Seriously, if the worst thing for your health from drinking beer is the corn syrup in Coors Light, then we can consume all the alcohol we want as long as it does not contain corn syrup.

Driving Under the Influence of corn syrup. Stupid ad.

But the worst ad airing on TV currently is about Kraft cheese.

In January, Kraft announced they were going to be offering Kraft “natural” cheeses to their consumers; cheese that has no added rBST. Why? Because to quote their press release: “Over one half of our consumers try to avoid added hormones in their food.”

Excuse me Kraft, but using rBST in dairy cows does not “add” hormones to milk. Milk already contains hormones. There is no increase in hormone levels, nor is there any FDA approved test that can detect any difference between rBST and the cow’s own bST. The milk is simply the same stuff regardless of the animal husbandry used.

You know you are simply trying to play on consumers’ unfounded fears and gain a market share with misinformation, while at the same time contributing to raising the price of dairy products and removing them from some kids’ tables.

But back to the commercial that offends my intelligence; In it, a teenage girl and a teenage boy, presumably siblings, are fighting.

The girl yells out to her mother, “Mom. He’s blinking too loud.”

The boy responds by blinking multiple times and asking, “Is this too loud?”

Seriously, you have to see it to believe any PR person actually wrote this script. The punch line follows; “You don’t need any more hormones in your house, so buy Kraft natural cheeses with no added rBST.”

From the ridiculous fighting about loud blinking to the suggestion that cheese made from cows supplemented with rBST will add to the teenagers’ hormone levels and simply increase the discomfort of home life makes me want to throw a yellow flag and yell, “Off sides” or “Over the line” or something.

This one ranks right up there with the USDA approved labeling of poultry products as being raised “with no hormones added” and “cage free.”

No wonder consumers are confused.

No “added” hormones

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