The phrase, “A low fat snack,” has amused me whenever I break open a package of Twizzlers. Who does this ploy fool? Do people crack their pound of sugar sticks and think these provide necessary sustenance to their body?

Don’t get me wrong. I love all things sucrose. I love all things glucose. I love all things carbohydrate — I know your game, carbohydrates. However, what I find ridiculous are corporations and their advertising firms that are presumptuous enough to insinuate the populace cannot see through their sleight of hand.

That is exactly what the advertising firms that resort to this tactic are using: a sleight of hand, a card trick.

Anyone who has ever tried to learn or understand a card trick can understand it: Distract with the left hand while the right hand does the trick. In this case, the firm will use the idea of offering fat free snacks as the distraction.

The customer says, “Wow, this snack is fat free! That is great. Now I can gorge myself on this nutritious snack.”

Then, when he least expects it, BAM! He now has type II diabetes. Go buy your lifetime supply of insulin, son, because the makers of Twizzlers just pulled a fast one on you.

The misleading phrase does not sound as convincing when the situation is changed a bit. Allow me to perform the mental exercise by taking the gimmick from the comfortable confines of sugared candy and throwing it into the cutthroat world of cigarette advertisement.

In my mental dream-world, I like to imagine a tobacco carton with the phrase, “Now with 50 percent less sodium in each one!” plastered in italics between the picture of advanced jaw cancer and the surgeon general’s warning of certain death to every user.

Naturally, when I think of cigarettes, I do not think of death by salt. There are a host of cancer causing substances I would like to see in the place of sodium in that phrase. Something like, “Now with half the arsenic!” would bring me great comfort. I have very little interest in how much salt they were able to extract from my cancer stick.

As an aside, let us discuss how reduction in sodium occurs in the production of cigarettes: It must be assumed tobacco has little in the way of natural salt. Naturally, then, the salt must come from the moist brow of the manual laborer that dutifully brings our Camels to market. So then, the health-conscious folks at Phillip Morris must have supplied antiperspirant to half of their works. That is at least how I like to imagine it.

Commercial food establishments are rife with this style of advertising. Kentucky Fried Chicken was sued recently by the Federal Trade Commission for propagandizing that fried chicken is a way to “Eat Better.” The first question to be asked must be, “Better than what?”

Advertisements like this exist in every industry. The remedy to the problems associated with these dubious tactics is simple: Be aware. Do not be caught watching the left hand when the right hand is killing you.