In a hefty serving of reality, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rebuked a bakery in Massachusetts for suggesting its granola contains a rather abstract ingredient: love.

We’re sure you get the joke here. Yes, granola – that incredibly delicious but frustratingly calorific breakfast – contains oats, nuts, honey, and some extras, which are all quantifiable, testable things. Sure, you can say that your food's secret ingredient is love, but if you add it to the official list of ingredients, the FDA will slap your wrist.

The same applies to any added emotion really. Do you make your donuts with hate? Have you ever baked a cake with indifference? Don’t even think about adding those to the list. As has been suggested, the FDA may have a point here: some people find that love can, in fact, make you sick.

In any case, the folks from Nashoba Brook Bakery in Concord clearly have a sense of humor, unlike the FDA. A letter sent to the bakery is so thoroughly strange that parts of it merit a read through.

“Ingredients required to be declared on the label or labeling of food must be listed by their common or usual name,” it read. “'Love' is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.”

The public appears to be siding with the bakers. Someone tweeted that love was “The one ingredient we could all use more of.” Another, using quantum mechanics principles, explained, “physicists have proven the act of observation creates physical changes."

“Challenge [the] FDA to prove love is not an ingredient,” they suggested. Unfortunately, proving a negative is setting an impossible standard here, but we’re sure the support is appreciated.

Yes, there are some genuine concerns on the FDA letter about the way the bakery handles its allergens, for example – but it’s not difficult to see why the love part is getting all the attention here.

“As if 2017 couldn’t get any worse,” someone else opined on Twitter.

[H/T: Washington Post]