I’ve not in real life encountered regulators applying a reasonable consumer standard. Certainly, the standard has varied over time, but the core principle remains that consumer protection laws must protect reasonable as well as unreasonable consumers.

From the Second Circuit: “That law [the FTC Act] was not ‘made for the protection of experts, but for the public— that vast multitude which includes the ignorant, the unthinking and the credulous; and the ‘fact that a false statement may be obviously false to those who are trained and experienced does not change its character, nor take away its power to deceive others less experienced.'” And the Ninth Circuit: “…courts have, ever since the enactment of the Federal Trade Commission Act, sustained orders which sought to limit the use of language which, although seemingly innocuous to the expert was likely to deceive the unlearned and gullible.” Perhaps there hasn’t been survey evidence supporting whether actual deception has occurred, but it’s hard to survey the ignorant and unthinking.

Consumer protection law protects the “reasonable” consumer. The empirical evidence suggests that reasonable consumers understand that “plant-based meat” or “soy meat” or similar terms are not actually derived from animals. Indeed, there is no evidence at all of any consumers being “misled.” This underscores the depravity of this policy intervention.