Is this soda serious?

Last week, I caught a few minutes of a news program dedicated to a Coca Cola machine that allows you mix your own flavor through the use of a touch screen (rather than the teenage tradition of just moving your cup around under each fountain nozzle). I thought the machine, called the Coca Cola Freestyle, was brand new but apparently it has been serving up empty calories and cavities since 2009.

Not to be outdone, Pepsi has kept up in the flavor game by offering their own array of unusual flavors that are sure to turn your stomach:

Ice cream flavored Pepsi is available in Russia. White yogurt flavored Pepsi is available in Japan. I can't believe people are really drinking this stuff. (See more here)

Latest HFCS... Err... "Corn Sugar"

Earlier this week, we heard from a reader in St. Thomas regarding the recent HFCS makeover aka name-change and mistakenly thought it was just another one of those cheesy commercials. It turns out this "corn sugar" re-branding effort is as big as the 1988 "canola oil is the new low eurcic acid rapeseed oil" act in advertising. ABC News just launched an eye-opening feature about renaming which even includes some thoughts from JustSaying fave: Michael Pollan. 

For a quicker read, check out Jacob Goldstein's NPR post.

(Thnx, Jonathan)

taxing soda

Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., and Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about the controversial debate of food taxes, specifically, the idea of a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, which "may be the single largest driver of the obesity epidemic."

The co-authors propose that taxing beverages containing HFCS and sugar, i.e. increasing the cost of these drinks, will decrease the demand for and the consumption of them, which encourages consumers to switch to more healthful beverages and reduce caloric intake.

I think I'm on board with this. Why shouldn't the government step in? But then again, I don't drink soda. If folks start blaming Peanut MnMs... well... that's another story.

blehh!!

With Easter just around the corner, I thought it was time to break into the bag of jelly beans that have been sitting at my desk since Jelly Belly was an official sponsor at an inaugural event I attended in January. Why would Jelly Belly sponsor an inaugural event, you ask? I'll tell you. Ronald Reagan. Huge jelly bean fan. So fond, in fact, that he is credited for the creation of the blueberry flavored bean. He wanted to serve red, white and blue ones at his own inaugural events. Go figure.

Anywho, back to the bag of beans at hand. The only word that comes to mind to describe this experience is: blehh!! (I'm borrowing it from a recent text message from my 13 year old sister)

It took a few samples before I discovered the legend on the back of the package and I'm not sure what's worse, eating a yellowish jelly bean thinking it will have some hint of lemon but instead tasting butter and salt? or knowing from the start that you are about to eat a gummy ball of HFCS that somehow tastes like buttered popcorn? Possibly one of the creepiest sensations I've ever experienced. But then again, I haven't tried peanut butter or jalapeno. I would love to meet the folks who participated in those focus groups.

I'm not convinced...

This reminds me of those pro-HFCS ads, the "sweet surprise" ones that came out a few months ago. I should mention that truvia is made from the stevia herb - which has been used as a sweetener in Paraguay for hundreds of years. The word on the street is that "the body does not metabolize the sweet glycosides from the stevia leaf or any of its processed forms - so there is no caloric intake and stevia doesn't adversely affect blood glucose levels and may be used freely by diabetics."

Campaign for High-Fructose Corn Syrup?

We all know that very little of the corn grown in this country arrives on our plates fresh picked from the stalk, right? The majority of it is (over)fed to livestock or processed into the most common ingredient on supermarket shelves: High-fructose corn syrup. And I guess people are starting to catch on that uber-processed junk food isn't good for anyone so the Corn Refiners Association has created this gem and others like it:



What's upsetting about this campaign is that it only addresses the end-user aspect of widespread HFCS use and consumption - those who have only just begun considering the immediate impact on their bodies and are blissfully unaware environmental repercussions of the soda they are drinking.

Eviana Hartman wrote a great article for Eco Wise in the Washington Post back in March explaining the energy-intensive processing, abundance of fertilizers, soil erosion, and resulting dead zones in the corn crop monoculture and production of HFCS. It's a quick read that quotes Michael Pollan and that I recommend in the face of this nonsense campaign.

Check it out here

Here is another one:


***Update***
Washington Post reporter Jennifer Huget weighs in on HFCS. Check it out here