10 pounds of apples

[dr_whom]

So okay, I think I've mentioned this to some of you before but I don't think I've posted on it.

The brand of apple cider that I buy a lot of advertises prominently on its gallon jugs: "Made from 10 pounds of apples!" And I'm sure that the main purpose of saying so is just to make the buyer think, 'Wow, that's a lot of apples!' and not really analyze it further than that. But you know me better than to expect that I'd do just that.

So I'm thinking, what exactly is it that's so impressive about 10 pounds of apples? (Note that a gallon of cider itself weighs about 8 pounds.) Is it:

• we're supposed to be impressed by what a large mass of apples has been stuffed into each jug of cider? E.g., if they only used one pound of apples in producing each jug of cider, that would clearly produce much less than a gallon's worth of pure apple product, and they'd have to fill up the rest of the jug with water and other non-apple ingredients. So, "10 pounds of apples" means 'the contents of this jug is all apple, no filler', and 10 pounds is a large number.

Or is it:

• we're supposed to be impressed by how much of the apples has been stuffed into each jug of cider? E.g., if they used 100 pounds of apples in producing each jug of cider, then that would mean only 8% of the total mass of each apple makes it into the cider. But what differentiates cider from apple juice is the fact that cider isn't filtered to remove pulp—which means that cider contains a greater proportion of the mass of each apple than apple juice does. So, "10 pounds of apples" means 'this apple cider is rich and unfiltered, with fully 80% of the mass of each apple ending up in the jug', and 10 pounds is an impressively small number.

I find both of these arguments compelling! And yet in a certain sense they're incompatible, and therefore "10 pounds of apples" is uninformative—you could in principle say "10 pounds of apples" if you only used 8% of the mass of each apple and then filled up the rest of the jug with seven pints of water and filler. I guess the "from" in "made from 10 pounds of apples" is doing a lot of work here?

Comments

[ophblekuwufu.livejournal.com]

I think we're supposed to be impressed that two whole pounds of apple were sacrificed in order to propitiate the gods of delicious cider. Hardcore, man.

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

I think the point is that it is made from lots o' apples rather than lots o' other things.

Though personally, I'd be surprised to get better than a 50% return on my apple pressing, since they don't seem all that juicy compared to the weight of the pulp.

[novalis.livejournal.com]

I think we're supposed to think that drinking that gallon of cider is just as good for us as eating ten pounds of apples would be (even though this is almost certainly not true).

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I think I'd never notice the weight of the cider itself, and wouldn't think anything about the proportion of apples to cider; rather, I'd think "ten pounds of apples? Wow, that's a lot of apples!".

[leech.livejournal.com]

I have always assumed the first argument. The second seems roundabout to me.

[dr_whom]

The thing is, though, now that I think about it further, I think the "from" in "made from 10 pounds of apples" kind of makes the first argument redundant, right? "Made from" seems itself to indicate 'no filler', which means that the "10 pounds" ought to be providing some other information. I think.

[leech.livejournal.com]

I can see how one would infer that; if they didn't mean to suggest that apples were the sole ingredient, they should have said, "Made with 10 pounds of apples." But I would read it as a grammatical approximation.