Our Egg Nog Is Made Exactly Like It Was In 1898! With HFCS!
Reader Sarah got a laugh from her egg nog this morning. The package says the ingredients are all natural, just "exactly" like when "Grandfather started our dairy business in 1898."
Then she looked at the ingredients...
Sarah says:
I found this quite funny this morning when I decided to read the label on the bottle of egg nog my husband purchased last night. The label reads ...."Our splendid Bareman's American Traditional Recipe Egg Nog is made from all natural ingredients, including eggs and fresh cream. Just exactly like it was made, when Grandfather started our dairy business in 1898." The funny part is when you flip to the opposite side the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup! Last time i checked high fructose corn syrup was not a natural ingredient and not used in 1898!
There has actually been some debate about whether or not you can call HFCS "natural" — in fact there was even a lawsuit about the issue. Capri Sun was calling itself "all natural," and the CSPI found that idea sort of laughable so they sued and Kraft agreed to change the label. In any case, Wikipedia says that HFCS, which requires quite a bit of technology to produce, didn't start making its way into foods until the 60s — making it unlikely that this egg nog is in fact, "just exactly like it was made" in 1898.
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Comments:
Grampa's time machine!!! It really works! It really works! Now, where did I park that darn DeLorean???
Reminds me of Dr. Pepper's "23 original flavors". I didn't know HCFS was one of Dr. Pepper's original 23 flavors...
I just checked the nog in our fridge, which came from the local dairy where we get all our milk and eggs. Whole milk, cream, dry nonfat milk powder, sugar, egg yolks, whey, nutmeg and a thickener. And it comes in a reusable glass bottle! The only egg nog I've had that's better is the one my uncle makes himself.
I wonder if Gramps was using spray dried egg yolks, artificial flavors and guar gum back in 1898 too.
Is she going to write a letter to the company asking for an explanation? I would like to see an update.
Michael Pollan says that if your Grandma wouldn't recognize the ingredients, don't eat it.
On a similar note, if a tomato has been sprayed with pesticides, I think the tomato should have a label listing that as an ingredient.
All-natural, and organic should mean the same thing.
Whole Wheat bread shouldn't be allowed to say all-natural if the crops were sprayed with chemicals. Those chemicals are in the food. It is an ingredient.
>Last time i checked high fructose corn syrup was not a natural ingredient and not used in 1898!
It's about as natural as any other sugar...
Really? Is sugar really that much more expensive?
Never mind the HFCS, what really makes the authenticity suspect is the lack of alcohol. What kind of old-timey egg nog recipe from 1898 doesn't contain a slug of bourbon or brandy?
@DeanOfAllTrades: "High-fructose corn syrup, derived from corn, is more economical because the American and Canadian prices of sugar are twice the global price of sugar and the price of #2 corn is artificially low due to both government subsidies and dumping on the market as farmers produce more corn annually." ~Wikipedia
@DeanOfAllTrades: Problem with sugar is that it's taxed because it's mostly imported. And very highly taxed.
Corn on the other hand is grown locally and even subsidized by the US govt. via farm subsidy's. Hence your taxes already paid for part of the corn.
That's why corn is so cheap.
@Preyfar: That's surely right, but there is still one Dr. Pepper bottler that still uses the original recepie, with cane sugar.
@concordia: I watched those and they actually made me kind of angry. So, I soothed myself down by watching spoofs of the HFCS commercials on YouTube. Those are great.
I got a real kick out of this article. All-natural my foot.
IMHO most things considered "natural" aren't.
In reality almost anything you buy is "processed", depending on your definition of "processed". There's no such thing as natural milk, cheese, or bread since they all have vitamins and minerals added (in many cases mandated by law). Anything pasteurized isn't really natural either.
It all depends on your definition. Most people don't consider animals whom are descents of those treated with hormones to be organic meat... even if it's 2 or 3 generations. But they can often be sold as such.
Maybe this brand of eggnog was ahead of its time with its HFCS. And maybe this eggnog producer is the originator of HFCS?
or maybe just maybe they own a delorean with a flux capacitor and all that time machine bull on it and they where able to go back in time to give the recipe for HFCS to their grandpa?
Dudes. Check your Wikipedia.
Grandfather Bareman invented HFCS. Except he called it "Grandpa Bareman's Wake Up Time Corn Mash Tonic and Pest Eradication Elixir."
He later sold the recipe for $25 to Earl P. Kooi in 1927.
@Sparkstalker: I'm pretty much the same. Cane sugar gives drinks a distinctively sweet, but crisp taste. Drinks with HFCS feel "sticky" in my mouth, and I can definitely tell the difference from the aftertastea and the way my mouth feels. It's just not natural.
@SynMonger: Yeah, I've ordered from Dublin Dr. Pepper before. Expensive, but worth it. On an unrelated note, I was rather surprised to see that SoBe Beverages have started going back to pure cane sugar again.
In 1898 it probably had cocaine in it, or at the very least a non-trivial amount of alcohol.
Devil's Advocate Warning
In the company's defense, "like" is defined by Webster's New Basic Dictionary (2007) as "similar or similarly to". "Just exactly like" could mean that it's made exactly to be similar to the original recipe.
It's all in how you word it, and in how you interpret it :-)
@Chols: Here, I'll save you the time.
"We're taking this seriously. Here is a free coupon. Thank you for your business."
@diasdiem: My dad bought some eggnog that had Rum Extract in it. When I first took a whiff I asked him if he'd added any Rum.
Now the hard part has been finding eggnog that DOESN'T have any rum extract in it. I don't want rum flavoring, I want to get drunk :p
Please stop quoting Wikipedia!
@digitalgimpus: It's sad too. I was watching the Food Network Feasting on Waves special (because Alton Brown is freakin' awesome). He went to a Caribbean island that used to produce sugar. That was all they did.. they have many, many square miles of sugar cane. But now it is too expensive to process/transport, so they have these fields overgrown with sugar cane. So basically, they are throwing away several hundreds of tons of sugar cane every year. Locals walk right past the field and take raw cane as they please.
Six months ago, my husband and I started REFUSING to buy anything with "High Fructose Corn Syrup", "Sodium Benzoate, "MSG" or "Natural Flavors" (hidden MSG) listed on the label. Consequently, we both have lost 50 pounds. You can't tell me the food corporations aren't poisoning us.
I think 7UP is still claiming that is 100% natural. A lawsuit should fix that.
What's even worse is when food companies put "HONEY" in large print on the box, and then provide mostly HFCS and other cheaper sweeteners.
There is a "Wall Of Shame" here that humiliates some of the worst offenders. Beekeepers maintain the list:
[bee-quick.com]
If you read the rest of the ingredients it even says "Natural & Artifical Flavors"
Just pulled from the 7-UP website "Ingredients:
Filtered carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, natural citric acid, natural flavors, natural potassium citrate."
A complaint was filed a while back and they did remove the 100% tag until the FDA stepped up and said it was OK to cal HFCS natural.
@Ailu: I only lost 5 lbs doing that, but I do weights with my exercise... I lost more % body fat than anything else. (I'd rather lose that then pounds anyway.)
@concordia: Yay! let's convince parents that feeding our children hfcs is awesome for them and watch the child obesity rate go up more than it already is
how sad
@SynMonger: As far as I know, Canada uses cane sugar in their soda drinks. When we go up to Canada, I am always being asked to bring soda back to them because it doesn't contain HFCS.
@SynMonger: Wow, I live just north of there! sounds like an afternoon trip! Thanks for the heads up.
@BustangBetty: As a proud canadian, I can confirm your suspicions. I have noticed a huge difference in how stuff tastes since coming to the U.S. (aka HFCS land).
They're technically not lying...I'm sure this egg nog IS made with at least SOME "all natural ingredients". It never says made with ONLY "all natural ingredients"...
@Daemon_of_Waffle: Fructose is a naturally-occurring sugar found in fruits. The reason HFCS is considered unnatural is because of its refining process, which really is not any more artificial than the production of refined sugar. HFCS is about 55% fructose and 45% glucose.
Perhaps they mean made by the same impoverished workforce.