Yesterday I got home from Information Resources’ Consumer Package Goods conference (sexy!), where I spoke on a smart panel of mom bloggers to a roomful of close to 1000 marketers, salespeople and retailers about marketing to moms, the power of The Blogger, and what matters to us when make decisions for our families.
We were straightforward. We were honest. And I think we scared them a little talking about things like honesty, corporate responsibility and doing right by your consumers; and that considering how the internet works these days, transparency is going to happen with or without your participation. Essentially, you can fix problems now and address reasonable customer concerns as they come, or you can wait until the number two google search for your brand X soap is Brand X Soap Sucks and Here are 46 Reasons Why
At one point I said: I’m putting you on notice: High fructose corn syrup is your next big problem.
It was kind of quiet at that point.
This afternoon, entirely coincidentally, I got a press release from Log Cabin Syrup, the official maple-esque syrup of my own childhood. It would seem that that they are officially removing HFCS from their syrups and replacing it with real sugar.
Real sugar!
I like real sugar.
Now personally, I’m all about real maple syrup too. Stick a pail under a maple tree and tap that sucker. But still, the effort gets a big honkin’ whoo from me. So here I am shilling for Log Cabin Syrup (r), just to let you know that there’s a company out there doing the right thing.
Any other brands out there taking HFCS out of your products? Let me know and I’ll list you here so we can sing your praises. (At least until I get tired of this and move onto the next crazy consumerist rant.) And I’m kind of hoping Coke gets in touch. Because God, I love a nice cold Coke.
- Log Cabin Syrup
- Oroweat Breads
- Snapple (coming soon)
- Pepsi Raw, Pepsi Throwback, Mountain Dew Throwback (coming April)
- Ocean Spray juices (I have it on good word but would still like to see the press release)
- Hansen’s Cane Sodas
- Simply Heinz Tomato Ketchup
83 shards of brilliance… read them below or add one
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Woohoo! HFCS really is their next big problem and I’m so glad you said it to them.
Bravo! The only thing worse than high-fructose corn syrup is partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Let’s get back to real ingredients, folks! Enough with the chemistry.
A topic out of my own heart. Arnold breads are HFCS free. Kudos to them!
We buy Arnolds bread. And glad to hear about Log Cabin.I’m sort of sick of buying $15 maple syrup every two weeks.
GOD, you’re the best. I love you. Thanks for officially putting them on notice. We just had Maple Sunday up here, so we’re all about the real stuff. But it’s good to hear about Log Cabin.
Good news! We buy Arnold breads too. I was SHOCKED the other day to find HFCS in my canned kidney beans from Publix. WTF?After HFCS and trans fats I’m also worried about dyes.
FYI, you can buy Coke in glass bottles made with cane sugar at Costco. (At least you can in CA) It comes from Mexico.
Not trying to pee on anyone’s parade, but…Just exactly WHAT do you (or they) consider Real Sugar?Sucrose? It’s a dimer of fructose and glucose. Glucose? Mannose? One of the other gajillion simple sugars?I’m not a big fan of HFCS either, but if you are going to complain about it, you need to understand the alternatives. And carbohydrate chemistry is not simple. Alas.
Ocean Spray. They’ve taken HFCS out of all their products. And if you’ve tasted a natural cranberry straight off the vine (*wince*), you know why the hell they need sugar. I gave my old coworkers a high five. As Dylan once said, “That’s cranrrific!”
yet another reason for you to move to canada and live with me: i have a forest behind my new house. maple syrup! you’re such a smart cookie.
Pepsi and Mountain Dew will soon have sugar versions available (try googling Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback). My husband and I are eagerly waiting for Coke to follow!About a year and a half ago we cut HFCS out of our diet. We now make most of our own breads, sauces, desserts, etc. My husband lost 25lbs and we both feel healthier and surprisingly have had less headaches. And food made with sugar just tastes better!
Wow! Here it is…History in the making. Great work!
Orowheat breads! Tasty and HFCS free.
Didn’t Quaker take the HCFS out of some of their flavored products and put in real sugar after they were listed as being one of the top competitors for having traces of mercury in their food?I may have imagined it, but I think they did. Or at least, I think I heard they did or read they did?Or I’m insane?
Orowheat took it out of their breads. It was a happy day when I discovered that!
That is fantastic that companies are listening to this next big complaint. It will be great to reduce HFCS. BUT I think so many of the foods also just don’t have to be SO sweet!!!! Like flavored yogurt? I mean come on! I mix ours half and half with plain yogurt. Yoplait cut their kids one down by 25% which is great. I wish ALL companies would follow suit. I am rooting for yogurt with 50% LESS sugar/or any sweetner.
Good for you for giving it for them straight! And, yay for those that are kicking it out!
You do realize “Real Sugar” is at least equally as bad as HFCS, right?
Hi Kelly, I’d love you to elaborate on that theory that sugar is at least as bad as HFSC.
Liz, you are my hero! Arnold bread is hfcs-free, by the way!
Janice, I can’t find a Yoplait product w/o HFCS? What am I missing? We have switched to Stonyfield Farms for all of our yogurt or Archer Farms (Target). Oh and Danimals are HFCS free as well.
I don’t know about Coke, but you CAN get Dr. Pepper sweetened with Pure Cane Sugar instead of HFCS. I’m not sure you can find it in the can, but you can in the small glass bottles. And it IS yummy!!!
I read Snapple is taking it out. Going back to real sugar. They said it actually takes 40 calories out of a bottle. I am with you, I really hope Coke takes it out. I love Coke, but I rarely drink it anymore. I am going to look for it at Costco the next time I go. Thanks to Anon at 6:37pm for that.
I’d like to hear Kelly’s reply to Mom101, too, not because I’m necessarily a sugar fan, but I honestly don’t know all that much about the pros and cons of either. And now there are those weird, really awkward commercials about how HFCS is just fine, and I’m like, hunh??? Nothing about the name, except maybe “syrup” even sounds remotely ok, but to push it on TV now, I feel like it’s one of those prescription drug commercials, only without the benefit of the tell-all side effects, including death and dismemberment, blah blah blah.
Pepsi is doing a “natural” version with real sugar (it is OK), but I want Coke to so very very badly. I miss Coke. The “light” breads with HFCS should be slammed for mislabeling. Products marketed to kids should also have to not have it. What drove my husband to get on the no HFCS wagon was those creepy commercials. He said if they had to advertise to say how not bad they were, they had to be up to something.
Orowheat is taking hfcs out? AWESOME!
Good on your warning. Thanks for standing up for us out here.
Wow thank you all for these great tips. And go, Pepsi! I like you too. @selfmademom HFCS is made in part with corn syrup. The < HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup" REL="nofollow">wikipedia article<> is helpful. @Jen that article is interesting. It says that both may contribute equally to obesity. It doesn’t look at other factors like hormone disruption, liver function or the fact that HFCS is starting to be revealed to have small amounts of mercury in it because of the way some plants process it. Eek.I always have to believe that a natural product like cane sugar is always going to be better (relatively) for our systems than one that’s processed or created in a lab.
Oh, funny you write this. I just saw Michael Pollan speak last night and I am now his minion (well, I was pretty close to this before last night). Real food. That’s it. HFCS sucks but so does a lot of the crap that is in food. Log Cabin syrup is still not maple syrup no matter what they do to it. But at least they are making an effort, and I hope more companies jump on the ‘bandwagon’.
Oh girl you must get you some Mexican Coke! It is made with cane sugar and tastes SOOO much better than American Coke!
That is great news… and good for you for putting them on notice!
I can’t speak for Kelly, but back when the mercury thing hit, I decided to go look up some of the science articles on the metabolic differences between HFCS and sucrose (what I think most people mean when they say “real sugar”) and I couldn’t find any peer reviewed articles that showed any actual difference in how your body handles the two. Now glucose vs fructose, yes there is a difference. But sucrose is 50-50 glucose-fructose and most HFCS is 45-55. I wrote a blog post on it, and I’ll be crass enough to link to it in case anyone is curious for more details: http://wandsci.blogspot.com/2009/02/some-research-on-high-fructose-corn.htmlAs I state in that post, I’m open to any peer-reviewed science anyone finds that might change my mind. And I haven’t looked into the other main complaint about HFCS, which has to do with whether or not it is encouraging a corn monoculture on American farms, and whether or not that should bother us.In general, I’m with @Janice- I’d rather they make products that are just less sweet overall, regardless of how they sweeten them.
Oops, I should have made that a real link. Here is < HREF="http://wandsci.blogspot.com/2009/02/some-research-on-high-fructose-corn.html" REL="nofollow">my post on why I don’t think HFCS is any worse than sucrose<>.
You can get sugar-sweetened Coke; it’s in the ethnic foods aisle. No, I’m not kidding.I’m exhausted by the HFCS topic, having written about it in depth. Yes, in most uses it’s 55/45. But it’s found in plenty of places where sweeteners simply don’t belong.And frankly we’re all eating way too much processed shit (and way too much of it) anyway, which is where HFCS is usually found due to its preservative properties.
Amen! Give us real sugar and real food. Seriously. This cheap processed crap has gotten us to a bad place.Thanks for speaking out about it.
Re coke: Look for the Coke bottles with the yellow cap that are Kosher for Passover (on shelves now)–these are made with sugar, since corn is verbotten during the holiday. Score 1 for the yids! Also, word is Coke Natural, in production will give you all sugar Coke all year round. And that, I say, L’Chaim!
Rock it!!!
Isn’t coke still really bad for you no matter how you sweeten it? I don’t claim to know anything about any of this but I’ve been reading the linked articles etc. I think it’s a “sweet” problem in general. I didn’t feel any different about eating bread made with “sugar” than I did when it had HFCS in it. I switched to a no sugar added bread. (Kroger makes one)
Great question ST – I think that yeah, Coke is not something I’m going to be putting in Sage’s bottle before bed anytime soon, but as a treat, I’d feel better about it if it were made with cane sugar. Time for a trip to Mexico!
One product my family really loves is Smucker’s Low Sugar jelly/preserves. It has no artificial sweeteners and no HFCS. And trust me, it’s plenty sweet. When fruit is in season, we make our own strawberry and peach preserves. But when those supplies run out, it’s nice that there is an alternative that works for us.Thanks for the post! - Julia at < HREF="http://midwestmoms.blogspot.com" REL="nofollow">Midwest Moms<>
we have jumped on the arnold’s bread bandwagon. couldn’t believe i missed HFCS in my reg whole wheat brand…also in love with 365 ginger ale from whole foods. waiting for coke to add cane sugar…
I was going to keep quiet, because I don’t really think HFCS is worth defending. I don’t eat much of it. It is empty calories. But so is “real sugar”.Also, “Real sugar” is made using chemistry, too. There is no plant that grows sugar in a form that can go directly into Coke or whatnot. What we think of as “sugar” is made by processing sugar beet or sugar cane. < HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Production" REL="nofollow">wikipedia<> has a little bit of info on how. It is chemistry.I have no argument with people who decide to cut HFCS from their diet. I don’t really have an argument with people who want to campaign to get rid of HFCS because they believe in natural foods, think HFCS is skewing our food policies, or whatever. But I feel strongly that if you’re going to argue based on science, you have to look at all the science, not just the studies that support your argument. I was outraged when the Bush administration suppressed science because it didn’t match their political views. It would be hypocritical of me not to be bothered by similar behavior wherever I see it.In this case, I can’t find any studies that indicate HFCS is causing any problems with health when compared to sugar. I do find studies indicating that fructose causes changes in liver metabolism and hormone levels when compared to glucose. But replacing all the HFCS in our food supply with sucrose (“real sugar”) won’t realy change the amount of fructose we eat. I’m afraid that people will get the wrong message, and keep drinking gallons of Coke and eating heaps of processed crap, because they found versions that don’t use HFCS. I suspect they’ll be just as unhealthy as they were when this whole thing started, because really the science is pointing to a problem with our intake of refined sugar of any type. And now I’ll shut up, because really if I want a different campaign than the one you’re talking about, I should go ahead and start one.
I got the same press release from Log Cabin, and it actually made me want to eat waffles w/syrup again.I know that Thomas’ English Muffins are now being made without HFCS (’cause I see the announcement on the bag when I look at it every morning).And on a slightly different topic, Coke is working on making several of their diet drinks sweetened with Stevia instead of aspartame. Stevia is a natural source of low-cal sweetness, as opposed to all of the research out there showing aspartame may be risky.
@cloud, NO don’t shut up now! I love this discussion and any additional info is great to have. I probably have to look at the science more myself, but my understanding is that fructose creates way more issues than sucrose. When folks I respect like < HREF="http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/magazine/article/548974" REL="nofollow">Dr. Mehmet Oz<> say that HFCS is one of 5 foods to avoid because of things like leptin and insulin blockage I’m listening. He explained: “It’s not so much the 150 calories in the soda pop — it’s the fact at that same meal you will normally consume an extra 100 calories of food than you would have.”It also would seem that nearly all the studies saying HFCS is the same as sugar are < HREF="http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/magazine/article/548974" REL="nofollow">funded by companies who make or use HFCS in their products<>. And that a lot of the issue is the vast quantities of it in foods these days.I’m also very freaked out by the tip of the iceberg research from the former FDA scientist that indicates small amounts of mercury in HFCS because of the way chlorine is used to separate the corn components. Yikes.If you’ve got a campaign, let me know – I’ll jump right in.
And thanks to all of you for the great brand recos and other information.I will still refuse to drink diet sodas – I prefer the evil (sugar) I know to the ones I don’t – but I’m glad there are alternatives out there for everyone else.
I know Thomas now offers english muffins without that junk. The NYT just did an article last week about the replacement of HFCS w/sugar. I wish Heinz would catch on, until the it’s $6 a small bottle agave sweetened catchup/katsup.
@Mom101- I think we probably agree more than we realize. I completely agree that the studies indicate that the high levels of fructose in the average American diet are a problem.My main point is that sucrose has fructose, too. Sucrose is a disaccharide composed of glucose + fructose. HFCS is a mix of glucose + fructose. The most common form of HFCS has a little bit more fructose (55% vs 50%), but none of the studies I can find demonstrate any difference in how our bodies actually respond to the two substances.So I don’t see any evidence that replacing HFCS with sucrose will make our diet any healthier. Decreasing the amount of refined sugars in our diet would definitely make us healthier. As far as I can tell, everything bad about soda that is described in that link you provided would still be bad if the soda is sweetened with sucrose instead of HFCS. It would still be a huge source of empty calories and extra fructose, and would still mess with your body’s satiety cues. The levels of mercury that actually made it into food were so tiny that I couldn’t bring myself to worry about it. I also wouldn’t be surprised to find similar levels of mercury or some other thing you wouldn’t think should be in there would be found in foods without HFCS. As I mentioned above, pretty much all sugars that are in a form that can be added to food have been processed chemically. The authors of that mercury study didn’t do the appropriate control, which would be to look at levels in foods without HFCS. The concern about study bias is a fair one, and I would never argue that scientists don’t have biases. However, our training tries to teach us to look at the data and let that guide our opinions, and most scientists I know genuinely try to do that. For one thing, it is professionally very embarrassing to have a later study come out and prove that you misinterpreted your data. Even studies paid for by industry have to go through peer review to be published. Most industry agreements to provide funding to academic scientists give them the right to publish their results regardless of the outcome. Universities insist on that. There may be subtle biases getting by- but I think that is true of any study. There were certainly biases in that mercury study, for instance. Wholesale fabrications of data do happen, but they are rare, and are usually caught by other scientists fairly quickly. Given all that, I find the volume of studies that see no difference in our metabolism of HFCS and sucrose to be convincing, especially since I can’t find a single study that has shown a difference in how our bodies respond to HFCS vs. sucrose (and I’ll say again- if anyone knows of one, I definitely want to see it).I wouldn’t be sad to see HFCS disappear from our food supply. But I am sad if people think that sucrose is healthier. Any sweetener should be used in moderation. Your occasional Coke as a treat is unlikely to cause you a problem whether it is sweetened with HFCS or sugar. But drinking several Cokes a day probably will cause problems, even if it is sweetened with cane sugar.I’m sorry for another long-winded comment. I appreciate your interest in hearing all views on this.
@Amanda- agave has very high fructose content (upwards of 80%, I think). If you’re worried about fructose, agave is not the solution for you. Neither is honey.But I hear that its very yummy, and maybe it is so sweet that there is less overall sugar needed?
@cloud you are brilliant. I want you to come over for dinner and fill my head with smart things.
@Mom101- Aw shucks. I’m not brilliant, I’m just a science geek. I don’t think this makes me a lot of fun at parties. But I would come over in an instant if I lived in NYC! I’m in San Diego.
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