Tag: better

Consumer Concerns Over Corn Syrup

  • The 'Sweet Scam Lineup' ad produced by the Center for Consumer Freedom is one of many run by corn syrup manufacturers and food companies. They're running to combat what these industries see as myths about high fructose corn syrup. (Center for Consumer Freedom - screenshot)

High fructose corn syrup and sugar sweeten lots of food.

They’re in sweet stuff like soda-pop, but they’re also added to pasta sauce, gravy, bread, and other foods that don’t seem sweet.

Scientists are debating whether high fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar when it comes to making us fat.

But Shawn Allee reports high fructose corn syrup is losing ground before that science is finished.

Transcript

High fructose corn syrup and sugar sweeten lots of food.

They’re in sweet stuff like soda-pop, but they’re also added to pasta sauce, gravy, bread, and other foods that don’t seem sweet.

Scientists are debating whether high fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar when it comes to making us fat.

But Shawn Allee reports high fructose corn syrup is losing ground before that science is finished.

Let’s face it, most of us did not know high fructose corn syrup sweetened so much food.

We have no excuse now: the food industry sponsors ads like this one.

“sugar cube face forward.”

Here, a policeman lines up suspects.

There’s an ear of corn, a sugar cube, and a plastic honey-bear bottle.

The cop turns to the victim of the crime.

“… Do you see the one responsible for you gaining weight?”

“I’ve seen that high fructose corn syrup guy on the news. maybe it was him.”

“you mean you’re making all this up without any proof?”

At this point … the policeman lets the corn sweetener go.

The sugar cube and the honey bear bumble out, too.

“maybe it’s a sugar-cube. No, no, no. the honey bear!”

There’s a reason we’re seeing ads like this.

One market research survey showed more than half of consumers had “some concern” about corn syrup.

Some feel like the victim in that ad – they have this vague fear corn syrup’s worse for your waistline than sugar.

And they know scientists really are looking at this question.

“this particular study has stirred up extraordinary interest … much more than we expected.”

Dr. Bart Hoebel is from Princeton University.

A while ago his research team fed rats watered-down sugar.

Those rats didn’t get fat, but recently his team looked at what happened when rats drank watered-down corn syrup.

“The ones drinking fructose gained more weight … even though they’re taking in fewer calories there was something special or different about the high fructose corn syrup in that group.”

Hoebel says there’re several studies like his moving through the scientific pipeline.

They all look at whether eating high fructose corn syrup is worse than eating sugar … but he worries the public’s missing a big point.

Nearly all scientists agree we get too many calories from both corn syrup and sugar.

But … market research shows people miss the caveats and mixed results behind the science.

They’ve made up their minds.

“They’re looking for an ingredient that they know and sugar is a more recognizable ingredient.”

That’s Dr. Helen Jensen.

She studies food economics at Iowa State University.

She says some food companies don’t care if customers have the science right or wrong.

“so from the manufacturer’s point of view, they’re looking to make more product mixes that offer consumers the choice of having a sugar-based product.”

That’s why you’re seeing products that say sweetened with real sugar.

For example, the Pepsi company is pitching a sugar-version of Mountain-Dew while its regular version is still sweetened with corn syrup.

Other companies are switching, too.

Jensen says this is a big change.

“Tariffs raise the price of sugar. And subsidies for corn used to make corn syrup cheap.”

today it’s a little different. While sugar is still more expensive, it’s not as expensive as it used to be.

So, Jensen says if consumers are pushing a company to switch from corn syrup to sugar, the company just might pay more for ingredients to keep more customers.

But Jensen has a word of caution for people who hope sugar wins the battle over our sweet tooths.

She says countries like Australia sweeten a lot of food, too.

But they use almost no corn syrup … they use sugar, and Australians have gotten more and more obese, just like we have in the U-S.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Interview: ‘Bottlemania’

  • Author Elizabeth Royte encourages people to buy reusable water bottles instead of disposable. Just make sure your water bottle doesn't have BPA in it like this one! (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

We buy a lot of bottled water.
Globally, sales are more than 60-billion
dollars a year. Elizabeth Royte just wrote
a new book about the whole bottled water
phenomenon. It’s called ‘Bottlemania’.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham
asked her how we got to where we’re carrying
a plastic bottle of water with us at all times:

Transcript

We buy a lot of bottled water.
Globally, sales are more than 60-billion
dollars a year. Elizabeth Royte just wrote
a new book about the whole bottled water
phenomenon. It’s called ‘Bottlemania’.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham
asked her how we got to where we’re carrying
a plastic bottle of water with us at all times:

Elizabeth Royte: “Because of hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising telling us that
bottled water is pure and natural, will make us look better, and make us more attractive to the
opposite sex. If you’re smart, you’ll drink bottled water.”

Lester Graham: (laughs) “Okay, so at $1.39 a pint, it sounds like I’m paying for a lot of advertising
and not much water.”

Royte: (laughs) “Yeah. You’re paying for advertising, you’re paying for lawyers, you’re paying for
PR flacks, you’re paying for the right to extract water from communities where many people might
not. So there’s a lot of legal battles going on over it, so some of your money may be going toward
that. You’ll be doing your pocketbook and the environment a big favor by just getting a good
refillable, reusable, washable bottle and filling it up with good old tap water.”

Graham: “A lot of bottled water comes from public water supplies. Dasani and Aquafina, from
Coke and Pepsi, come from public water supplies, and, as you say in ‘Bottlemania’, ‘they filter the
bejesus out of it’. Other water comes from natural springs, or glaciers, or pure mountain rivers –
doesn’t that make it better?”

Royte: “Well, you’ve hit on it, because that’s what they’re trading on and sometimes they charge a
bit more from that. They do say it is a natural product – it’s coming from the Earth. Those other
brands, Aquafina and Dasani, do start from municipal water supplies, they’re very filtered. And if
you don’t want to have minerals in your water, then you should aim for one of those. Or, get a
reverse-osmosis filter and install it under your sink and you’ll get the same thing, more or less.”

Graham: “Okay, so I’ve been buying bottled water by the case, let’s say. You want me to stop
buying bottled water because there’s fuel used in it, there’s petroleum used in the plastic, I’m
paying more than I should have to for water. What should I do?”

Royte: “You shouldn’t buy bottled water for bad reasons. You should educate yourself. You
should find out what’s going on upstream, what’s going on in your watershed, what sort of industry,
agriculture, development. Read your consumer confidence report. Know the utility is found in the
water, then go a step further, and order up some of your own tests so you can find out what’s in the
pipes in your house. Because the utility is responsible for the quality of the water only until it gets
to your service lines.”

Graham: “But that’s a lot of work. It’s easier to buy a bottle of water.”

Royte: (laughs) “It’s easier in the short run, but it’s going to hurt you financially in the long run, and
its contributing to climate change. That’s the carbon footprint of the transportation, the making the
bottles, the landfills, the incinerator, the litter – it goes on and on and on. It is a little bit of money
up front. But it’s only up front. You’ll get that reusable bottle, you might have to get a filter, but
again, you’re going to save money buying this filter and maintaining it over relying only on bottled
water.”

Graham: “So, let’s say you go to lunch or go to meet someone for coffee and your friend comes in
with a plastic bottle of water they bought at a local store. Do you resist the urge to say, ‘hey, do
you know?’ or do you go ahead and let them have it. Let me hear your elevator speech to your
friend.”

Royte: (laughs) “I don’t have friends like that.” (laughs) “All my friends have refillable, reusable
bottles.” (laughs) “No, yeah, I sometimes do resist the urge. I do see people in their cars with
these bottles and I don’t say anything because I want to keep them as friends. But I try to model
good behavior, and they see me filling up my bottle, and I hope some of that rubs off on them.”

Elizabeth Royte is the
author of ‘Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale
And Why We Bought It’. She spoke with Lester Graham.

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Interview: ‘The Better World Shopping Guide’

  • (Photo provided by Dr. Ellis Jones)

A lot of people want to know what
they can do to be more environmentally friendly.
Ellis Jones says you make a vote on environmental
issues every time you pull out your wallet.
Jones is a sociologist at the University of
California Davis. And he’s written a pocket-sized
booklet called ‘The Better World Shopping Guide’
that grades companies that make the things we buy.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked to
him about the guide:

Transcript

A lot of people want to know what
they can do to be more environmentally friendly.
Ellis Jones says you make a vote on environmental
issues every time you pull out your wallet.
Jones is a sociologist at the University of
California Davis. And he’s written a pocket-sized
booklet called ‘The Better World Shopping Guide’
that grades companies that make the things we buy.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked to
him about the guide:

Ellis Jones: “I think that people will use this guide to make sure that the companies that
are doing good work get their dollars. And the companies that are not doing good work,
they don’t get their dollars until they improve.”

Lester Graham: “I chose three topics. One of them is gasoline. No one gets an A+? But
you did give an A to Sunoco and you gave an F to Exxon-Mobile. Can you tell me really
quickly what went into those grades?”

Jones: “It includes everything from how polluting their petroleum refineries are, what
their human rights records are when they deal with communities abroad, how they deal
with consumers, what their advertising is like and how they do or don’t ‘greenwash’ – to
really give a sense of, you know, the difference between the good guys and the bad guys
in gasoline.”

Graham: “I also looked at bread, and you gave an A+ to local bakeries.”

Jones: “Supporting a local bakery is really about as good as it gets. Far above and
beyond what you can get supporting even the most organic bread company.”

Graham: “The third thing I looked at was water, because bottled water is such an issue
these days. The A+ was given to tap water, which, in most communities, is as good as
anything you can buy in a bottle.”

Jones: “The most powerful difference a consumer can make is actually avoiding the
product all together. So, anything to really minimize the impact because this industry
itself is inherently problematic.”

Graham: “Just casually flipping through looking at who rated an F in your guide, often it
seemed like it was the most recognizable name. Kraft, Nabisco, Libby’s. Those kinds of
companies. Why is it these really large corporations tended to do so poorly in your
guide?”

Jones: “Well, you know, I think this really points out a kind of inherent problem within
our current economic system. And that is that the way to get ahead in the system is to
grow larger, to gobble up smaller companies, to basically out-compete the other
companies around you by cutting costs wherever you can by using larger economies of
scale. And the process that gets lost in the system is the impact on the people and the
planet.”

Graham: “I’m wondering how this changes your view of things when you go shopping
now.”

Jones: “Well, let me tell you, I really have put in as much research as a human being can
into this. And I am still filled with questions. These questions are out there and we need
to keep companies accountable and the government accountable to be able to provide us
with good data so we can make smart decisions as consumers.

Graham: “So your guide doesn’t let us off the hook, we still have to do some of our own
homework.”

Jones: (laughs) “Exactly. We have to actually make do with the information that we
have now, make the best choices available, and then as new information comes in, then
we’re responsible to make even better choices. But in that process we have to build in
quite a bit of forgiveness, because one thing this book is not about being perfect or pure
in the world. It really is about trying to make the best choice at any given time in any
given place.”

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