Ed Carney contributes this additional intelligence on bait-and-switch tricks, and flags a particularly obnoxious one. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Calorie Deceit”:
“This reminds me of an experience I had at a local Big Lots store. I had seen their ad, which indicated that select headphones were fifty percent off. Since I have somehow destroyed every pair of headphones I’ve owned, I was in the market for that item and I figured that taking the price from twenty dollars down to ten dollars changed it from unaffordable to barely affordable to me. So I went there and searched their shelves but could find no indication of which ones were on sale. I took the one’s I thought might be and had them scanned at the front of the store, and when that turned out to be wrong I asked which ones were indicated by the ad. By turns, every employee squinted at the picture next to the “save 50%” label, scoured the shelves, and turned the search over to someone else until finally a manager explained to me that none of the headphones were on sale, and that when the ad proclaimed that their price was fifty percent lower, it just meant they were fifty percent less expensive than what you would pay at another store. I have not been back since.
“My thought process was about the same as yours with the Chex Mix. Fifty percent less than what other store? For every item they want to advertise, can they just send somebody out to find the absolute highest price tag just so they can say they’re not technically lying when they don’t change their prices yet still mark them as fifty, sixty, seventy-fiver percent off? For that matter, can I start selling a product and advertise it as being five thousand percent off (of what you would pay if it was imported from the moon)? Maybe this is why Dominos wanted to open that lunar franchise.
“And I just realized that this is the same crappy trick employed by all those annoying infomercials I’ve seen since I was a kid. “Buy now and we’ll throw in a limited edition, premium, waterproof combination cell phone charger and apple corer – a thirty-eight dollar value, yours for only 19.95!” A thirty-eight dollar value according to whom? Evidently not the people who set your prices, unless you’re honestly telling the customer that when he calls in he enjoys a net gain of eighteen dollars.
“Oh God, I don’t know who to be angrier at: retailers who employ these tactics or customers who fall for them not because they’re in a hurry but because they actually expect to be told whatever they want to hear.”
Ethics Alarms 
My wife scolds me because I eat “sugared cereal.” She’s a good girl, because she eats Grape Nuts and shuns Trix. I’m a bad boy, because I prefer Trix. (In the preceding two sentences, I was being sarcastic.) Arguing over which commercial breakfast cereal is more (or less) nutritious ought to be just deemed unethical…but till then…
The nutrition labels, if they are to be trusted, do not justify my wife’s antipathy toward Trix, vs. Grape Nuts. If anything, a serving of Grape Nuts is more of a “carbs bomb” than an equivalent serving of Trix (by weight or volume). Grape Nuts has no sugar added; I’ll grant that. Grape Nuts also has a ton more protein and fiber per serving than Trix, but that does not matter in my case since I get those things from other foods I choose (which my wife does not eat) at the same meal. But one serving of Grape Nuts has upwards of twice the number of carbs that one serving of Trix has, and I have to be especially careful not to eat too many carbs.
Besides, Trix is easier for me to chew. Grape Nuts cereal sometimes literally hurts me when I chew it. I have to let Grape Nuts soak in milk for a few minutes (I use skim, or “nonfat”) before I am comfortable chewing it. Eating Trix, I can crunch down on those little balls right away, without discomfort. The sweetening and fruit flavorings in Trix are delightful. Without adding something to sweeten Grape Nuts (I usually use honey, but sometimes use fruit), I feel like whenever I am eating Grape Nuts, I am eating petrified grass seeds – not enjoyable.
All that said, food labeling is tricky; I hope labelers get more ethical, before they get regulated into making themselves criminals, or suspects in crimes. Until then, to be more sure about nutrition in cereal, one can always get raw ingredients and make homemade granola.
To add to that, cereals use the combination of a specific milk when giving nutritional value for their cereal. So good luck figuring what the cereal alone gives in nutritional value.