38 points bilsbie 1 hour ago 43 comments
jjtheblunt 1 hour ago | parent
dang 59 minutes ago | parent
(Submitted title was "scam American companies are using to manipulate ingredient gets listed 1st". Software rewrote it to "Scam American companies are using to manipulate ingredient gets listed first". I've since changed it.)
jjtheblunt 28 minutes ago | parent
s0rce 1 hour ago | parent
autoexec 1 hour ago | parent
marky1991 57 minutes ago | parent
For example, the very first recipe for strawberry jelly from some horrible spam recipe site:
2 cups (16 ounces) pure strawberry juice (I used 3 1/2 pounds ripe, fresh strawberries to get this amount of juice) 3 1/3 cups (666 grams) granulated sugar
It's literally more sugar than strawberry juice.
cryptonector 47 minutes ago | parent
happytoexplain 1 hour ago | parent
altairprime 1 hour ago | parent
> You must mention the quantity (by percentage) of any ingredients that: appear in the name of the product (example: ‘apple pie') [; or] are emphasised on the labelling in words, pictures or graphics (example: ‘with walnuts')[; or] are essential to characterise the food and to distinguish it from other foods[.]
— EU food labeling rules, https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/product-rules-complian...
marky1991 1 hour ago | parent
Jelly inherently, as a direct consequence of its very reason for existing, contains a lot of sugar, duh.
tintor 1 hour ago | parent
autoexec 56 minutes ago | parent
If a typical jelly recipe calls for pounds of fruit and a few cups of sugar wouldn't be normal to expect fruit to be the first ingredient? If a company is using more added sugars than fruit that should be obvious without having to look at the nutrition facts
thaumasiotes 46 minutes ago | parent
As you can read on the label:
Ingredients: Strawberries, High Fructose Corn syrup, Corn syrup, Sugar, Fruit Pectin, Citric Acid.
Serving Size 20g
Total Sugars 12g
Total Added Sugars 9g
Each tablespoon of jam contains 10-11 grams of fruit and 9-10 grams of added sugar. The jam is 60% sugar overall because there is sugar in the fruit too.And that's weighted by share of the output. If you're measuring the input, this recipe is going to take a lot more "fruit" than "sugar", because part of making jam is boiling away a bunch of the water that occurs in fruit, whereas all of the added sugar is retained. (Corn syrup, however, seems to be about 2/3 water, which will make that comparison look worse.)
cryptonector 49 minutes ago | parent
happytoexplain 42 minutes ago | parent
tintor 1 hour ago | parent
gruez 56 minutes ago | parent
StevenWaterman 54 minutes ago | parent
autoexec 50 minutes ago | parent
JumpCrisscross 50 minutes ago | parent
“Natural flavors.”
I doubt you can’t reverse engineer those fractions from a product and ingredient list anyway.
nvme0n1p1 47 minutes ago | parent
I'd rather know what I'm eating and not have greedy CEOs pinching their pennies of profit like they're guarding the Krabby Patty formula, because they're scared someone else will learn the generational secret of how to make (checks notes) strawberry jelly. Trust me, the economy will survive if Smuckers tells you how much sugar you're eating.
thaumasiotes 52 minutes ago | parent
autoexec 16 minutes ago | parent
Sugar content doesn't tell you anything about berry content. It's not unreasonable for someone to want look at the list of ingredients and know if what they are buying is mostly fruit or mostly HFCS. Or even just mostly sugars that didn't come from the berries.
owlbite 1 hour ago | parent
cwillu 1 hour ago | parent
Rage for views.
altairprime 59 minutes ago | parent
Given how often HN trends to the frontpage “rage for views” posts that link to GitHub issues where the submitter dislikes the current outcome, this three-word argument against the post is uniquely unpersuasive here. This US foods practice is a worthwhile topic to rage about given the severity of public health impact of the mislabeling alone, and it’s an easily-solved problem when regulators aren’t captured.
dawnerd 58 minutes ago | parent
gruez 57 minutes ago | parent
OutOfHere 35 minutes ago | parent
From a biological pov, that is wrong on so many levels. It is why labels now have Added Sugars listed separately. Sugars as whole fruit aren't unhealthy in moderation, whereas HFCS is one if the unhealthiest added sugars. There is no way to equate them except in pure chemistry with no relation to biology.
gumby 56 minutes ago | parent
I looked on the back and after water the second ingredient was “dehydrated cane juice”.
The food system has been gamed forever.
thaumasiotes 54 minutes ago | parent
"All-natural juice" is exempt, and it's defined by whether the sugar is "added". So if you combine 20 gallons of orange juice and evaporate the water away until it's reached the concentration of sugar you want, that's fine; if you get one gallon of juice and add sugar until you've reached the same concentration, you're subject to the tax. Oranges contain enough sugar that this is viable for orange juice. Limes don't, so limeade is taxed very heavily while orange juice that contains the same amount of sugar is exempt.
Milk products (dairy or imitation) are exempt, and they are legally defined by the first ingredient (for milk) or first two ingredients (for imitation milk). Chocolate milk isn't a sugar-added beverage, because it's a milk product. Eggnog is a milk product too.
This second point seems to explain why it's important for companies to manipulate which ingredients are listed first.
There's really no chance of misleading the consumer, because right above the legally-mandated and legally sensitive ingredients list you'll see the legally mandated and not legally sensitive nutrition facts, which will tell you that eggnog is about 17% sugar by weight or that, to use the example here, Smucker's strawberry jam is 60% sugar. ( https://www.smuckers.com/fruit-spreads/jam/strawberry-jam )
montag 53 minutes ago | parent
ant6n 49 minutes ago | parent
inanutshellus 33 minutes ago | parent
> Scam American companies
... why would I do that?
> Scam American companies are using
... so fake companies?
> Scam American companies are using to manipulate ingredient lists
... What?
(reads post)
Oh. "Food companies are splitting up ingredients to manipulate you"
(as a tangent: There's zero percent chance this is only "American" companies. Useless addon word.)
crazygringo 53 minutes ago | parent
It's the fact that different sugars have different properties. In terms of texture, moisture, etc. And they can be used at different stages of the manufacturing process.
There's nothing wrong with this. Nutrition facts clearly label the total added sugars.
Plus, strawberries are often going to be listed first anyways because traditional jam is approximately a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar. So even if it were just one type of sugar, strawberries could still be listed first.
inanutshellus 38 minutes ago | parent
How does one reward the "good guys" when one can't tell the difference between a gamed metric and an honest one?
WarmWash 51 minutes ago | parent
Its most rampant with juices, where every juice is actually just apple juice (from concentrate, so mostly water anyway) with a splash of [fruit] juice thrown in (also from concentrate, so also mostly water). Maybe if you are lucky you'll catch an apple shown on the front label behind the huge passion fruit or whatever.
This even extends to clothing, where stuff like "Wool Sweater" is 5% wool 15% cotton and 80% polyester.
It should be a law that the primary ingredient of a product being the leading noun in the name of the product.
card_zero 36 minutes ago | parent
WarmWash 5 minutes ago | parent
I suppose to be fair, whole pressed juices are incredibly expensive. But I think they should be forced to be more upfront about what these "juices" actually are - mostly apple juice powder with a few other fruit powders sprinkled in and then mixed with water to the desired sweetness level.
rafram 50 minutes ago | parent
whall6 49 minutes ago | parent
yummypaint 40 minutes ago | parent
xnx 1 minute ago | parent