If anything deserves scrutiny, it’s not Tesco’s labelling but the predicable, laborious voices that turn the most negligible of changes into a full-blown culture war.
The culture vultures are not especially discriminating in their choice of targets. Their latest supposed casualty is Tesco, accused of “turning woke” for rebranding some gingerbread products from “Gingerbread Men” to “Gingerbread People.”
The story, reported by the Sun, centres on Tesco’s “Free From” gingerbread biscuits adopting gender-neutral language. The paper notes that Morrisons has made a similar change, saying it wanted to “promote inclusivity to all,” and that Sainsbury’s has also faced criticism for selling “Gingerbread People.”
The supposed backlash appears to consist largely of a few indignant social media posts. One user complained: “Run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I am the gingerbread person? Tesco this is pathetic.” Another reached for the culture-war cliché: “Go woke, go broke.” A third demanded an explanation, insisting that “Gingerbread MAN” is neither offensive nor inappropriate and “always has been and always will be.”
Tesco declined to comment, though it’s understood that product names are routinely reviewed as part of standard range updates. The company continues to sell products labelled “Gingerbread Men,” and there is no suggestion these are being withdrawn. There is no prohibition, no linguistic purge, just an additional, more inclusive label on certain lines.
To give the controversy intellectual weight, Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, was invited by the Sun to interpret the reaction. He suggested that people feel they are “losing their language” and becoming marginalised by changes to familiar terms relating to “man” and “woman.”
But Furedi is no disinterested academic voice parachuted into a neutral debate. He has long fulminated against so-called cancel culture and has been associated with political currents aligned with Viktor Orban’s right-wing populism in Europe. In the past, writer George Monbiot accused him of backing libertarian campaigns against gun control and tobacco advertising restrictions. More recently, he was recruited by the Daily Mail to stoke outrage over Paddington Bear and a reimagined Palestinian lullaby raising funds for humanitarian aid, presented as evidence that the BBC had “gone woke.”
There is a familiar pattern to these episodes. A corporation makes a minor branding adjustment. A handful of social media users profess outrage. A right-wing tabloid elevates the noise into a national controversy. A reliable culture-war commentator supplies the thesis that civilisation is under threat.
Meanwhile, the biscuits remain on the shelves. If anything deserves scrutiny, it’s not Tesco’s labelling but the predicable, laborious voices that turn the most negligible of changes into a full-blown culture war.
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