Man Bought a Dollar Tree Rice Dinner. The Photo Didn’t Match the Food: ‘It’s False Advertising.’
Budget-friendly, ready-to-eat food is sometimes the only other option someone with nothing more than a dollar has. Tim Campbell (@timcampbellsms) put Dollar Tree on blast for a food purchase he made. His frustration comes from the mismatch between the photo of the food on the packaging and the actual product.
“Dear Dollar Tree, why do you hate poor people?” Campbell said on TikTok. He also mentioned Regal Kitchen Foods USA LLC, a company from Florida known to produce ready-to-eat food items. Campbell is a third-year social work student who uses photography to communicate social justice issues.
He is currently working on a photo series called ‘Dollar Store Dinners,’ which documents what low-income people eat. In his project, Campbell goes to dollar stores to purchase budget-friendly food. Then, he would photograph the food to include in his series.
“Growing up, my mom had to access dollar stores and food banks to put food on the table,” he explained. For Campbell, the photo docuseries is both an autobiography and a documentary.
Dollar Tree rice didn’t match up to reality
On TikTok, he showed a pack of Eat Regal Veg Fried Rice from Dollar Tree. According to Regal Foods Kitchen, each pouch contains rice, mixed vegetables, and seasonings.
“I want to draw your attention to two things.” Campbell showed the small bowl of rice on camera.
“This is mainly brown rice. There are some peas that are like the palest green you’ve ever seen. There’s a couple pieces of corn, and nothing else in here,” Campbell said. When he showed the photo of the packaging above the bowl of rice, he pointed out that the rice did not look the same.
“I’m a photographer, and let me tell you that it would take some wishful thinking to edit even this rice to make it look this orange,” Cambell commented. He also mentioned that there were carrots visible on the packaging and that they were listed as an ingredient.
“There are no carrots in here. Red bell peppers are listed on the ingredients—there are definitely no red bell peppers in here,” he alleged.
Regardless of the price of an item, consumers expect to get what they paid for. It doesn’t matter if buyers are complaining about a $700 hair dryer not working as promised or if they are not getting the ingredients listed on the nutritional facts of a dollar store meal. They bought the item as advertised and expect it to function as promised.
“I think my biggest concern for this is that it strips people who would have to be buying this… It strips dignity away. It’s false advertising,” Campbell alleged. He further argued that the packaging is exploitative against low-income people, as they are the target consumers of the item. Because of a lack of resources, Campbell concluded that the demographic is unlikely to complain about false advertising on a package.
“This gives them hope. Look how interesting it looks, look how nutritionally dense it is, or how nutritionally dense it could be,” Campbell said of the photo in the packaging. He contrasted it to the final product, which he said lacked the vegetables promised by the label.
“Shame on Dollar Tree for carrying this and Regal Kitchen Foods USA for producing this. Do better,” Campbell stated. He will still be photographing the Dollar Tree vegetable rice for his series. However, Campell also wanted to document the “false advertising” he observed in this instance.
(featured images: Eva Bronzini, Tim Cambell, Harrison Keely)
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