They're After Me, Dad! They're After Me!

I had a dream last night where I was being pursued by a demon that looked a lot like the ghost from The Grudge crossed with the girl from The Ring. Weird thing was, she was a corn demon. Somehow I knew this, and I remember an image of corn in the dream, so yeah. And to fend her off, I was throwing Pepperidge Farm cookies at her to defend myself. I kicked myself awake when the demon tried to bite my feet.

Now be Freud for a second and analyze my dream.

I'm DREAMING about high fructose corn syrup! I can't escape it!

All that's left now is to dream about hydrogen atoms trying to steal my vegetable oil, and the ghosts of murdered orangutans hanging from the palm trees that are, for some reason, in my back yard.

Industry Renames HFCS

Apparently, instead of, ohhh I dunno', NOT using high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) anymore, they're going to take a page from the American automakers playbook and simply rename the offending ingredient! The new name? Corn sugar.

You can practically smell the Calvin Klein aftershave coming off the MBA that thought up this brilliant plan. Everything about it is retarded. First, technically, it's correct. But they'd still have to call it high fructose corn sugar, because HFCS is not simply corn sugar. That would be corn syrup, which no one has an issue with.

First off, saying that there is no evidence that HFCS is linked with health problems is a total lie. There is conflicting evidence, but that is far from no evidence. We have a variety of studies showing that there may be a link between HFCS consumption and lower-quality blood chemistry and weight gain. The fact that there may be any link at all shows that, if alternatives exist, we shouldn't eat it.

Just stop using it! Use ordinary corn syrup. Use sugar. Use molasses. As a manufacturer, I understand that you have to think about your bottom line. I also understand that government subsidies, tariffs, and other regulatory muckings-about have made sugar more expensive than it should be (GO-GO Gadget government intervention!). But think about your demographic groups.

People who are very concerned about HFCS will appreciate, and also be willing to pay the small premium for, your use sugar. For example, if you have to raise the price of Chips Ahoy by $0.50, that is a significant percentage increase, but it's not large in practical terms. The people who cannot afford that increase or are unwilling to pay are very unlikely to be the demographic that cares or is even aware of the controversy.

Split your demographics. Make Chips Ahoy Natural for the markets that care and continue to make the ordinary Chips Ahoy for other markets. Don't try this semantic dodge, it will just piss people off.

Goodbye High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hello Corn Sugar (Signed, Corn Industry) (Huffington Post)

PureVia is PureCrap

I've seen this ad poking around for the artificial sweetener du jour, PureVia. Also known as Reb A, this chemical is in a sense natural. It is extracted from a plant with water, and the resulting slurry is about 50% Reb A. The sweetener is extracted through crystallization and "other" techniques.

Still, I love the marketing direction. "It's NATURAL." Same tack that Splenda took. "It tastes like sugar because it's made from sugar." Fuck you, it tastes like sugar. All of the marketing dollars in the world, and whether it's made from sugar or extracted from a plant, it all tastes like ass. Aspartame, Saccharin, Splenda, and now PureVia all taste the same. They're chemically different, and made differently, but they all taste the same. It's absurd to say they taste like sugar, because if that was the case we'd have a free lunch. Coca-Cola would stop using sugar, cakes would have one-half the calories, the sun would always shine and eternal happiness would descend upon the globe.

But we don't have that. We have a bunch of molecules that have the same, nasty, aspartamey aftertaste. I tried the new Tropicana Trop 50 low-calorie OJ. It said naturally sweetened. Silly me. I assumed that meant, I dunno, fruit juice... from fruit. Poured a glass, and there it was, nastiness. Pure, unadulterated nastiness. The most disgusting orange juice I've ever had the displeasure of drinking. At the time, I was unaware of Reb A, and stupidly thinking that there was no artificial sweetener in it, its presence on the ingredient list was written off with my original hypothesis of the drinks genesis.

Namely, I figured that they reduced the calories by removing some of the sugar, and using some chemical to reduce the bitter and sour flavors in the remaining solution. Thus resulting in a low-calorie drink that simply tasted like watered-down OJ. No such luck. I'm not kidding when I say that simply watering down your own OJ to create a low-calorie drink would taste significantly better. It's annoying that they can say naturally sweetened with Reb A, since it really is a plant extract, because now they basically use that as a lie, attempting to pass off stuff that tastes like ass as stuff that does not taste like ass.

There's no free lunch, people. If you don't want the calories of soda, drink water. And if you have diabetes... I feel so, so bad for you.

Oh, and if you want to hear how fucking natural Splenda is, read the way it's "made from sugar."

It is manufactured by the selective chlorination of sucrose (table sugar), which converts three of the hydroxyl groups to chlorides. The selective chlorination is achieved by selective protection of the primary alcohol groups followed by acetylation and then deprotection of the primary alcohol groups. The partially acetylated sugar is then chlorinated with a chlorinating agent such as phosphorus oxychloride, followed by deprotection of the ester to give sucralose.

It's interesting that Splenda, even though it's made from sugar, doesn't allow manufacturers to claim "natural sweetener" like Reb A. Oh yeah. Splenda really is JUST LIKE SUGAR. Just like I'm the queen of England.

UPDATE: I have found what might be the most authoritative overview of Reb-A derived sweeteners Truvia and PureVia.

Truvia and PureVia Part 1– A Window to the Past or the Future?
Truvia and PureVia Part 2- The Science Behind the Sweeteners
Truvia and PureVia Part -: The Controversy of Stevia

What struck me about the whole mess is the intense focus of the marketing on how natural this garbage is. Look at the logos, BOTH of them implement a leaf image in the same damned way. Both are "light" and "earthy." Or look at the company that's "making" PureVia, The Whole Earth Sweetener Company. The company was built from the ground up to be Earthy and organic. It's a freaking shell company built solely to market PureVia. From their website's About Us section, "Our job is to grow and produce 100% naturally sweetened products." And by that, they mean shill 100% Reb-A crap.

Oooooooooh, this chaps my ass so much. The marketers have been waiting for years, foaming at the mouth, to be able to market this swill as natural. Scientific studies about the sweetener are of poor quality and most were funded by the sweetener companies in hope of pushing it through to the public. Even worse, some of the reports were published in Elsevier journals! I seriously doubt there's anything dangerous about the shit, but it's still shit. And both PureVia and Truvia, which are loaded with chemicals other than Reb-A, are barely natural. How dare they call this natural, and wrap it up in graphics of leaves, Earth, and happy little organic yuppies.

As the Nutrition Wonderland story explains, the clusterfuck with the FDA and the "research" being funded by all of the companies making the product, we have Truvia and PureVia because of a huge financial push by the companies we should least trust. I'm no conspiracy theorist and I seriously doubt this stuff is incredibly dangerous, but the fact of the matter is that this is NOT natural and still tastes terrible. Saying that a product is "NATURALLY SWEETENED!" with Reb-A borders on being a lie. It is technically true, and I suppose if you are worried about possible negative effects from other sweeteners, and you are incredibly gullible, then the marketing might work on you. It does not work on me. All it does is piss me off. I don't need their natural sweetener, because I've already found a better one. It's called sugar, and I think it's swell.

Everything Here Is FRESH. I Will Do Well, Here

If you ever wanted an illustration of the difference between fresh, home-grown food and what you get at the store, this is it. I understand that the color of the yolk is primarily due to what the chicken eats, but eggs with orange yolks do not show up at the local market. This is the result of free-roaming chickens eating whatever they damn well please... including lots and lots of corn and sunflower seeds from my squirrel feed bag. It's such visible differences between stores and home-grown that makes me want my own farm so terribly, horribly badly.