PepsiCo is hopping on the ye olde bandwagon and going back to the days when soda was sweetened with sugar, and free of artificial sweeteners or high-fructose corn syrup. Dubbing its new craft soda Caleb’s Kola, Pepsi says the drink is made with cane sugar, “a special blend of spices” and a kola nut extract. [More]
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Descendants Of Women Who Appeared As Aunt Jemima Suing For $2B, Share Of Brand’s Revenue
By 10.7.14
Descendants and heirs of women who were reportedly the inspiration and faces of the Aunt Jemima pancake mixes and syrups over the years are suing Quaker Oats, the current owner of the brand, saying they deserve $2 billion and a share in any future money made from sales of the breakfast brand. [More]
Pepsi To Start Selling Naturally Sweetened Soda — But Only On Amazon
By 10.1.14
Latching onto a double dose consumer trends, Pepsi will start selling naturally sweetened sodas, free of the artificial kind many people are eschewing these days, but the only way to buy the drinks is going to be online in an exclusive deal with Amazon. [More]
Lay’s Confirms Those Bright Green Chips Are Meant To Look Like That
By 9.30.14
Imagine you open up a bag of Lay’s Barbecue potato chips and, among the expected rust-colored discs of fried tubers you find a pair of bright green chips that look like some sort of St. Patrick’s Day gimmick. Turns out these chips are supposed to look like that; they just shouldn’t have ended up in your bag. [More]
Coca-Cola, Pepsi And Dr Pepper Create Unholy Alliance To Cut Consumers’ Sugary Drink Calories
By 9.23.14
The crusade to end – or at the very least reduce – consumers’ love affair with sugary soft drinks received a huge boost Tuesday from the very companies that make the libations. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group pledged today to substantially cut their contributions to the calories Americans consume. [More]
How Does This Energy Drink Have More Sugar Than It Does Carbs? (Hint: It Doesn’t)
By 6.17.14
There’s a reason that “Sugars” is a subcategory under “Total Carbohydrate” on nutrition labels, as all sugars are carbohydrates but not all carbs are sugars. So how can this Amp Energy drink have nearly twice as much sugar as it does carbohydrates? Good question. [More]
Diet Sodas Better For Weight Loss Than Water, Concludes Study Paid For By Soda Industry
By 5.27.14
There’s a widely held belief among fitness and health experts that people who truly want to lose weight and keep it off should replace diet sodas and other artificially sweetened beverages with nature’s no-calorie drink: water. You know who stands to lose a lot of money from people believing that? The same industry that funded a new study that concluded that diet drinks are better for weight loss than water. [More]
Coke, Pepsi Now Removing Brominated Vegetable Oil From All Drinks (Yes, Even Mountain Dew)
By 5.6.14
Yesterday, Coca-Cola made news when it confirmed that it was phasing out the use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a food additive that is banned in other parts of the world, in Powerade. Last night, both Coke and Pepsi announced they would be getting rid of the controversial ingredient in all remaining drinks — including Mountain Dew. [More]
The Consumerist Quiz: Can You Match Popular Food Brands With Their Corporate Parents?
March 21, 2014
How closely do you pay attention to the companies that make the products you and your family eat every day? Many of the most popular brands of packaged food and beverage items in the U.S. are owned by the same few dozen multinational companies, some of whom own several competing brands. It’s time to test your knowledge of which big companies are filling your pantry. [More]
Have Fun Breaking Down This Year’s Worst Company In America Bracket
March 18, 2014
The above bracket will be updated at the end of each day of WCIA competition to reflect that day’s results.
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After going through all of your nominations, then having y’all rank the contenders and eliminate the chaff from the wheat, we’re proud to present the first round match-ups for this year’s Worst Company in America tournament! [More]
Here Are Your Worst Company Contenders For 2014 — Help Us Seed The Brackets!
March 17, 2014
After sorting through a mountain of nomination e-mails, we’ve whittled down the field of competitors for this year’s Worst Company In America tournament to 40 bad businesses. Here’s your chance to have your say on how these players will square off in the bracket, and which bubble teams will get left out in the cold. [More]
Doritos & 7-Eleven Team Create Unholy Snack Food Alliance With Something Called Doritos Loaded
By 2.11.14
Remember that scene at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey where the apes/proto-humans realize that blunt objects like bones can be used as weapons and tools, thus setting off the next stage in societal development? This is kind of like that, but in Dorito form. [More]
Pepsi Decides To Discontinue “Natural” Gatorade Because, Come On, Really?
By 1.16.14
Back when I was growing up on my grandparents’ farm out on the prairie, whenever I was exhausted from a long day of playing professional sports I simply went to the Gatorade well and pulled up a bucketful of natural Gatorade. Nothing like it! Straight from the earth! That’s not true, but there was a “natural” line of Gatorade that PepsiCo has now decided just isn’t working. [More]
Mountain Dew Cheetos Are Now A Reality…In Japan
By 1.6.14
Strange and magical things come out of Frito-Lay Japan. Things that we in Frito-Lay’s home country never get to see. The latest bit of corporate synergy/snack food horror to hit shelves across the Pacific? Mountain Dew flavored Cheetos. [More]
FDA Gives OK To New Coca-Cola-Backed Sweetener That Claims To Taste More Like Sugar
By 12.30.13
Because we all want sweet things but don’t want to accept that eating too many sweet things can make us fat, the world’s largest producer of stevia says it has gotten the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration to start using a new version of the sweetener that it developed with the folks at Coca-Cola. [More]
The Thought Of Dorito-Covered Hot Wings Convinces Buffalo Wild Wings To Switch From Coke To Pepsi
By 12.12.13
Restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings is ditching Coca-Cola as its soft drink supplier and switching to Pepsi. But what’s most fascinating about this change is how the folks at PepsiCo convinced BWW to jump ship. [More]
PepsiCo Thinks Its Drinks Aren’t Smelly Enough, Wants To Add Scent Capsules
By 9.17.13
Have you ever cracked open a bottle of Tropicana orange juice and thought to yourself, “I would drink so much more of this juice if it smelled even more orange-y”? Probably not, but the folks at PepsiCo are seeking to patent technology that would arouse the customer’s sense of smell from the moment the container is opened. [More]
