Taste and purity.

Beck's beer have been running their "Only four ingredients" ad campaign for a while now. Don't get it, myself: I mean, Diet Coke's got hundreds of ingedients, and it tastes great. But it appears to have triggered some competition: there's a Stella Artois poster gone up in my street boasting that they, too, only use four ingredients. (Are Evian going to go down this route, I wonder? "Only one ingredient"? Come to think of it, Shredded Wheat have been running that one for a couple of years now: "Nothing but absolutely nothing but one hundred percent whole wheat, because reading ingredients labels is just too damn complicated and the only food you can really trust is stuff with nothing else in it." For some reason, these ads are always followed immediately by "And why not try our new Shredded Wheat Bitesize with fruit and sugar and loads of other stuff added?" Go figure.)

Anyway, the thing that struck me about the Stella Artois poster was, well, this:

Only four ingredients.

Hops. Malted barley. Maize. Water.

Is there some brewing-industry technicality that means that that isn't five ingredients? Or are they just hoping that no-one notices?