My wife's standard approach to any cake or confectionary recipe is to immediately half the listed quantity of sugar. Apparently this is common amongst pastry-chefs in catering and doesn't appear to affect the final result other than being a bit paler after cooking.
We even made half-sugar doughnuts recently which were still delicious ( no topping or filling needed ).
So I reckon Nestle will just produce a slightly less bulky confectionery, for the same price of course.
Me and my girlfriend (we both really, really like cooking) do that with a lot of recipes that involve sugar. It does affect the texture, but I think it often improves the taste.
There are things that ought to be sugary (like thick syrups used for preserving), but most pastries, jams, jellies and deserts in general need surprisingly less sugar than recent cookbooks would imply. Adding just enough sugar to take the edge off of bitterness or sourness ends up being more rewarding than cramming everything full of sugar to the point where all you feel is something odd next to the sweetness.
There are safety concerns when changing any recipe that will be preserved. The sugar in jams and jellies also acts as a preservative after they are opened.
After opening ought not be an issue because presumably refrigeration is used and the product is consumed before spoilage occurs.
If I understand correctly high sugar contect uncreases the shelf life. Though with in-container pasteurisation and modern preservatives I'm not sure high sugar content is necessary.
We too almost always reduce the sugar in recipes, and also find it usually improves flavor. Though the article says Nestle has made a "scientific breakthrough" so that you get the same level of sweetness with less sugar--so their products may remain overly-sweep goop.
Probably healthier at least, unless their re-engineered sugar has weird side effects like Olestra does. I'll take high sugar over "anal leakage" any day:
That's probably okay; the few who really want non-nutritive oils could still buy them. But the volume might be low enough to force them off supermarket shelves and into specialty stores.
You can preserve in a very light syrup.
For example they sell imported cherries and sour cherries in ethnic stores which have very little sugar in the syrup and they taste great!
100% agree, a great example of this would be with chocolate chip cookies. If you halve the brown sugar, white sugar, and reduce the chocolate chips by 75%, you end up with a much better tasting cookie. I can't go back to eating full sugar cookies, they're just too sweet.
I have a Taiwanese friend who says that she always halves the amount of sugar in any western recipe she makes so that it's palatable, since she hasn't grown up eating the over-sweetened garbage food that a lot of Western kids grew up with.
Anyone making food from 'recipes' in the West is likely not eating 'garbage'.
Though we do eat 'too much sugar' - the 'garbage' I suggest is really over-processed, too much hydrogenated oil etc. etc..
Anyone that made their diet out of things 'they cooked themselves' could very well use the recipes as they are and do pretty well. Most dinner dishes do not even call for sugar. Mostly only cakes and what-not. Maybe muffins are a culprit? :)
I wish Americans would stop assuming their issues are universal to the West. Excessive sugar in recipes is a specifically American problem. I grew up in Europe, and the difference is huge.
Thanks! I was wondering the whole thread whats going on. I dislike american food for exact that reason (and over use of fats). Not because i think its unhealthy but because growing up in central europe i am simply not used t these fatty suggary treads.
On the other hand when I was in Japan I found that all their takes on 'western' baking was ridiculously sweet. As in it tasted like they'd used twice the sugar they where supposed to.
Also sugar, like salt and chili are all ingredients where you can adjust how much you need if you don't do it too often.
I.e. if you don't eat a lot of sugar it doesn't take a lot of sugar for you to feel satisfied by the sweetness, and vice versa if you eat a lot you need more and more (which is a huge problem with sugar in alot of food today)
I think it's also one of those things where the less sugar you eat the more pronounced it tasted.
Anecdotally, everything in Champaign IL tastes way sweeter after vacationing back home in Palo Alto where we rarely consume corn syrup or excess sweeteners
When I bake at home I do the same thing. I'm still a bit hit or miss with regard to having things come out with the same texture/feel (how they rise or not, etc.) My basic question is how to compensate for the proportions new proportions.
But overall, the taste is much more palatable because there is much less sugar-shock.
My wife used to work in the hottest pastrie place in our city. The stuff there was totally amazing. It tasted great but not too sweet and it even felt so "light" that you'd always thing "why not have a second, third or fourth piece?"
When she quit she stole the recipes so that we could make this awesome stuff at home. Besides some really cool secret ingredients the only difference between home recipes and "best cake in town" was that the used AT LEAST twice the amount of sugar, eggs and cream than I've ever seen in any recipe.
Edit: As others mentioned. There seems to be a huge difference between Europe and USA. So these are European recipes. ;)
I do this for hot chocolate: double the cocoa powder and half the sugar from what it says on the box. Whisk with whole milk, and enjoy an incredibly rich chocolate flavor.
There's a difference between 'instant hot chocolate' powder (which is sweetened), and 'cocoa powder' (typically unsweetened, and quite bitter unless sugar is added).
In general, I'd recommend against cutting the butter; not only is it delicious, but it also provides a nice dose of cholesterol - gotta keep those androgens high[1]. I'd argue that butter is the only healthy component of mac and cheese, so most people (excepting those with particular dietary needs) might as well keep it in and enjoy increased muscle mass[2] and a leaner body composition[3].
You're conflating dietary and blood cholesterol, which are completely different things. Eating lots of cholesterol does not give you high blood cholesterol.
I use 25% more butter plus cream instead of milk + fine shredded cheese, heat just enough to melt the butter and beat up with a whisk before mixing up with the noodles.
Had to Google 'sticks of butter', crazy Americans ;)
I also don't understand what Kraft is doing you telling you how to make macaroni cheese... What's in a 'Kraft mac and cheese' box that it still requires making, and yet is also some kind of recipe kit?
> Had to Google 'sticks of butter', crazy Americans ;)
Where are you from? sticks of butter are a commonly understood quantity in Australia. Usually that's a safe bet that in other commonwealth countries it's the same.
I'm in Australia and I don't think I've ever heard of it (except maybe glossing over American recipes online). I've always measured butter in grams. The packaging often has markers so you can roughly estimate to the nearest 50g but that is it as far as I know. If anything I might have assumed it was something approximating these 50g slices.
I just don't understand the value in that... Swap the "dry cheese flavouring" for a bit of cornflour (or plain) and real cheese, and you have better fresher macaroni cheese with no difficulty increase; probably cheaper too.
You're not wrong, but the idea is that it has a longer shelf life, and perhaps more consistency in flavor.
Many American staples are throwbacks to the depression era, where buying a flat of Campbell's soup was a safer bet than buying a bunch of tomatoes and cream. Since then, marketers have capitalized on that sense of consistency, as well as feelings of nostalgia, to ingrain that sort of food into the American psyche.
'Better' is debatable. If you make it well, it can be quite good. Add extra milk, butter, (and salt if needed). Strain and add these before the noodles are soft, and keep it on the stove until it reduces and softens. It's a completely different experience.
Most people seem to mix that crap in cold and end up with dry, pasty mush.
I don't think the amount of butter matters at all here... You're still eating Kraft mac n' cheese, which is 100% processed... You'd be better off just eating the stick of butter on its own.
It's more likely that a greater amount of people use the recipe as-is, instead of halving. My guess is the recipes aren't playing reverse-psychology with cooks.
Back in 2008 Hershey's had to stop using the term milk chocolate it had to use "chocolate candy" because they started using cheaper ingredients. I guess they'll change again to this weird sugar to save on the formerly cheap ingredients.
I used to like Lindt and was disappointed to see they use palm oil in their chocolate instead of cocoa butter. Even worse is palm oil plantations are made by cutting down forests and displacing endangered animal species.
Cocoa butter gives a distinct mouthfeel because it has a sharply-defined melting point. If you want that mouthfeel, you need cocoa butter.
Lindt might not want that mouthfeel. That is a legit choice, not just to be cheap.
Other legit choices include suet, ghee, lard, and even corn oil. It all depends on the mouthfeel you want. Skipping the oil/fat entirely is also an option; wilder choices for holding candy together include: pectin, agar, egg white...
Heh, kinda like kraft singles being so named because they are no longer allowed to call themselves cheese.
My grandmother, who grew up during the depression, occasionally complained about the decline in the quality of sweets and chocolates. I used to think she was exaggerating a bit, but seeing the decline in quality in my time, going from bad to worse, it's easy to see what she was talking about.
Anyways, I just wanted to say that it has been a shame to see large companies move away from making proper chocolate bars just to maintain their bottom line, and I can only expect that this latest maneuver is in the same spirit.
Yeah germany should work :) Really each one really worth it, i am from austria originally and i cant eat anything than swiss chocolate anymore after a few years there.
A 40% reduction of an ingredient doesn't mean that somehow there's a void in anyone's product (they could reduce the product size also, but that's a separate matter). It just means that the other ingredients together will represent a higher proportion of the final product in relation to the reduced ingredient.
Think of it this way: 1% milk has some of the milk fat removed/reduced, but that doesn't mean any other ingredient has to replace what is taken out (again, some may choose to add other things, but that's a separate choice), and your milk carton doesn't have to get any smaller. It just means your same milk carton has a higher percentage of the other components of milk.
To be clear, the article states: "this can be done without affecting the taste... Its scientists altered the structure of sugar so that it dissolves more quickly. This fools the taste buds, with the effect of raising the sweetness."
The way I read that, it seems to support the idea that nothing else has to replace the reduced sugar. But practically speaking, yes - if the other ingredients are costlier than the reduced sugar (as a higher percentage of the final product), then there's a good chance some other fillers could be added to maintain product weight and size.
Sugar, in addition to being a sweetener, is also (like salt) a flavor enhancer, bringing out flavor of other ingredients. I suspect that boosting sweetness this way will not similar boost the flavor enhancing properties of sugar to the same extent (I'm not sure of the chemical basis of the effect, but my intuition would be that this would actually reduce it.) So it shold impact the taste of the final product, although maybe not in a way that would be noticeable in most mass-market confections where the only taste that really comes through is overwhelming sweetness, with the rest of the distinctions being more textural than taste.
OTOH, sugar (including the particular form as well as the amount) has a pretty significant effect on texture, too, so I'may skeptical about that being unaffected, as well.
If I'm not mistaken, 1% in milk refers to the butter fat content, but if a chocolate is 60% sugar, isn't that by weight? Like if a bar is 100 grams, 60 grams is sugar? If that is how it works, you'll notice the missing sugar, I think.
If they're claiming a 40% reduction in sugar (by weight or by volume - the same principle applies) without affecting taste, then no, apparently you wouldn't notice the missing sugar. They're saying that an altered structure of the sugar itself makes it taste sweeter, so less sugar ends up tasting the same[1].
I am skeptical that it wouldn't affect other desirable properties of the chocolate, but I guess only time will tell whether or not their claim is actually true.
[1] There have been other similar breakthroughs in altering the structure of ingredients to allow for reductions without significantly affecting taste/texture. One notable example is low-temperature extrusion ("slow churned") ice cream.
You may not notice the taste difference, but what I think other posters are saying is that the change in mass will be noticeable?
Let's say that we've got a 100 gram candy bar, and 60 grams of that candy bar is sugar. Now, reduce the amount sugar in the candy bar by 40%, bringing it down to 36 grams of sugar. Wouldn't the 24 gram loss of sugar mean a 24 gram loss of mass in the candy bar? And wouldn't that decrease in mass of candy bar be noticeable?
> Wouldn't the 24 gram loss of sugar mean a 24 gram loss of mass in the candy bar?
No. That's what I'm trying to explain. Let's assume they're going to make the candy bar the same size regardless of ingredients. If sugar represents a smaller portion of those ingredients, it just means there will be more of the other ingredients relative to the sugar. You're really just adjusting a ratio of sugar to other ingredients.
Don't think of it in terms of a candy bar; instead, think of a giant vat filled with the melted chocolate that will eventually be turned into candy bars. By not adding as much of one ingredient, you're just raising the proportion of other ingredients to the total weight. Those other ingredients may be heavier or lighter than the absent ingredient, but it most likely won't just be air replacing it (they could add more air, but that's probably not necessary).
Even if the final product does end up being a bit lighter, I bet most people wouldn't care (and more people would appreciate the lower sugar content).
... and you're not thinking of it like a global conglomerate board member "we've cut weights as much as we can; but we think that we can pack in some filler material or cut weight further if we sell it as 'sugar reduction' - personally I'm going to use the money to buy a second floating palace, my other one doesn't match my third wife's new tiara".
Or, they could sell the product and let people choose how much to eat for themselves? If they want to do something moralistic they could quit promoting baby formula to nursing mothers, or stop buying chocolate from places that use child slaves, or go Fairtrade on cocoa and sugar.
Except that most people have repeatedly shown they're not capable of making sensible choices. Although that's possibly a secondary/tertiary effect, seeing as how it's so hugely variable over different regions of the world
Air, the cheapest ingredient in food manufacturing.
Make the wafer biscuits in a Kit Kat less dense. Add more bubbles to the Aero. Change the shape of bars so that they appear bigger. Add puffed rice or pieces of biscuit to pad out solid chocolate. It's part of the standard marketing repertoire.
Of course, cocoa would affect the taste, a lot of people don't like dark chocolate. They're talking about another sugar that would dissolve faster in the mouth. Should be interesting at least.
Most chocolate isn't anywhere near what you would consider to be dark chocolate. Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bars are something like 45% cocoa solids where as real dark chocolate is usually north of 70%.
To say that a lot of people don't like dark chocolate is very open to interpretation and I wouldn't at all be surprised if candy makers relied on that fact to support their dilution of products.
Manufactures have been altering their chocolate formulas for decades to reduce costs. Hershey once removed cocoa butter from a number of products, replacing it with oils, which under governing laws required that they re-brand the products from "milk chocolate" to "chocolate candy".
Companies even have different formulations base on the country and their general preferences. Nutella sold in the USA is very different in taste and texture from Nutella sold in Italy. Candy sold in the UK cannot have artificial anything so all products there are very different from the USA as well.
A lot of the oils used to replace cocoa butter and milk fats have a putrid bile like flavor and so manufacturers bump up the sugar content to compensate which radically changes the flavor profile. These changes have been introduced to markets gradually over time so the market grows accustom to the changes. That's why you hear about people from Europe describing US chocolate as rancid.
Dark chocolate is pretty in fashion, at least in Europe and in Switzerland generally. There are hole series of products that range from 70% to 99%. Its insane.
What is "insane" about quality chocolate? Below 60% cocoa chocolate has either too much sugar for normal tastes or funny ingredients, 60 or 70% cocoa dark chocolate is sweet, 85% cocoa dark chocolate is mainstream, 99 or 100% is really bitter, covering a range of different tastes.
The important chocolate quality axes are choice of cocoa varieties and quality of processing; the industrial-tasting 99% Lindt tablets in the photo have nothing in common with their Amedei or Bonnat counterparts.
I think they were using the word "insane" as an intensifier.
I agree with you, though- really good dark chocolate is the way to go. I work near Theo Chocolate in Seattle and the smell is just... unbelievably wonderful, especially in the mornings.
True enough, but most milk chocolate products would have to add a lot of cocoa before they were considered dark chocolate. Just 20% is fairly typical here in the UK, which results in something far too sweet and barely recognisable as chocolate.
But I'm one of those freaks that actually likes dark chocolate up to 85%.
I'll eat pretty much any dark chocolate. The best place to find inexpensive, yet good, dark chocolate in the United States is ALDI. Another great thing about their dark chocolate is that it doesn't contain any dairy. One of my friends was on an extremely limited diet for a while doctors tried to figure out what was causing a mysterious allergic reaction. That meant no dairy. She missed chocolate so much she nearly cried when I gave her the first chocolate she could eat in several months.
> The best place to find inexpensive, yet good, dark chocolate in the United States is ALDI. Another great thing about their dark chocolate is that it doesn't contain any dairy.
Yep, they're selling the same thing in Germany, it's great. Super cheap and vegan, contains lots of cocoa butter instead of milk.
The 99% lindt is one of my favourite chocolates. The whole process of enjoying dark chocolate is different than regular milk chocolate. I noticed that people who like milk chocolate usually consume large quantities. On the other hand dark chocolate lovers eat chocolate slowly allowing it to melt in the mouth.
Funnily enough this so-called "Choccolate Meditation" is the first meditation in the book on mindfulness for meditation, it's a fun place to start. Anecdotally I've never met a hectic stressed person who liked nearly-black bitter dark choccolate :)
> On the other hand dark chocolate lovers eat chocolate slowly allowing it to melt in the mouth.
In fairness there's no other way to enjoy really dark chocolate, masticating a piece (let alone multiple) yields no taste and a completely dry and powdery mouth, it's not enjoyable.
I've been on keto (less than 20g of sugar a day) for a few months, and can now appreciate chocolate with 95%+ cocoa. It's crazy how much frequent sugar consumption affects your taste buds.
Chocolate already contains soy lecithin as an emulsifying agent. It's usually a very small amount of the total, so I'm not sure swapping out 40% of the sugar content (i.e., a much more significant amount of the total) with it would really work.
Switching to isomalt will drop ~50% in the caloric content, but change mouth feel and water retention a lot. A different confection will be the result.
Yep. Adding another lower/zero-calorific sugar but with a positive heat of dissolution (to counter the negative one of isomalt) can really help here.
Similarly, you can choose sugar pairs to promote or suppress crystallisation, as the recipe style requires. This is done by selecting sugars with similar or dissimilar molecular geometry and charge distribution.
Why not erythritol? Isomalt can cause some pretty severe gut issues (to which I can personally attest, unfortunately!). It's also still quite calorific (that is, it is metabolised) - erythritol isn't. I can eat it in high quantities to seemingly zero consequence. It's also got an entertaining mouthfeel, where it cools the mouth; so does isomalt, incidentally, but it's not nearly as noticeable.
I have done quite a bit of cooking with erythritol, simply swapping sugar out for it, and it usually works great. Erythritol is only about 70% as sweet, so it can sometimes be necessary to adjust for that, but really, most things are already overly sugary, so it's usually unnecessary.
They've gotten away with shrinking products for years. When cost increase they make the product cheaper, aka smaller, instead of increasing prices. That's why the giant sized candy bar at the checkout line seems like a normal size from 10 years ago. I don't see how this will be much different.
Uhm, nothing? Sugar dissolved in solution takes hardly any additional volume. It depends on the exact chemistry involved, but probably what you end up with is the same volume product with "healthier"-looking nutrition facts and significantly less mass.
Who cares, you can get proper 100% chocolate (organic, fair trade, blah...) easily from Zotter, if you want it. It doesn't really matter what Nestle comes up with next, people who eat that stuff don't care about such details.
In the US, I would argue that it is significantly easier to get Nestle chocolate than Zotter chocolate at grocery stores. The amount that the average person cares about the sugar content does not outweigh the extra effort required to acquire Zotter chocolate... Nestle is ubiquitous.
there are many great places to buy the world's chocolates from (my favorite is chocosphere) however for many it is what they will see in the check out lane or quickie mart that matters.
if they can still get their fix without all the excess calories; sugar isn't the worst thing; then please, encourage it more.
now just slip some fiber in there to make people feel full
Totally agree. I don't see the point in cutting sugar from this stuff or soft drinks like Coke and Pepsi. People drinking this stuff have already made up their mind that they don't care about healthy eating.
Also, people who consume the more "healthier" versions of soft drinks like Diet Coke or Coke Zero, they tend to over do it because they think they're it's affecting them less.
I've always thought as long as you're gonna be bad then do it right.
No point in consuming a neutered version of something bad when you've made up your mind to be bad.
I disagree, you're painting people with too broad a brush. Many of my colleagues drink a Coke once or twice a week when we go out to lunch as a team, and they aren't drinking two just because they now order a Zero instead. This is a real reduction in sugar consumption.
Similarly, people also drive more recklessly when using seatbelts, but they still save lives.
Please provide ANY proof that Coke Zero or Diet Coke is bad in any way. Post a study.
Why is healthier in quotes? Why do you believe artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and splenda have negative health impacts? Gut feeling? Please post a peer reviewed study done on humans.
I'm curious. What is your position on climate change, vaccines or GMOs? Do you follow scientific consensus by looking for peer reviewed studies, or wing it either way based on your gut feel and facebook memes?
There's lots more, but your ability to google is every bit as good as mine.
Folks skeptical of artificial sweeteners are not anti-science morons. Man-made climate change is real, vaccines are one of the great accomplishments of civilization, and the science is promising but not fully settled on GMOs.
Consuming artificial sweeteners is almost certainly healthier than consuming the sugar they replace, but that doesn't actually make them _healthy_.
If milk chocolate is 50% sugar, and they cut sugar by 50% and replace it with cocoa, then wouldn't that make it 25% sugar and 75% cocoa? That sounds like not even remotely what people want.
Other attempts at changing products "without any affect to the taste" have very much ruined their taste for me. If they do that to KitKat, I might have to take a day/week off work for mourning. I'm hoping since this is just a different sugar structure, I'll be ok.
Maybe around October next year I'll buy a spare freezer and start stocking up.
Kraft actually succeed in (stealthily) removing artificial colors from Mac and cheese and keeping the bright orange hue that we all love. Didn't change the taste. I say stealthily because they didn't announce the change until a year later and nobody seemed to notice for a year.
Just found a nutritional chart that says a 41g piece of Nestlé milk chocolate (probably worst case scenario) contains 27g of carbs.
Now, a volume of liquids and solids when mixed together do not necessarily add up to the same volume of the originals. For instance mixing a fluid ounce of alcohol and water won't result in 2 ounces of combined fluid.
So while they're talking about taking ~13g of sugar out of each serving (32% of the weight), that does not mean they need exactly 32% filler to make up the difference. Could be a lot less than that.
Several chocolate products in the UK seem already to have done the foam trick (add air), particular ones like Thorntons (individual chocolate box chocolates). You can only do that so much though. They used to be one of my favourites but now they're more like mousse than anything, the mouth feel is very poor and the flavour is greatly reduced - adding air with individual wrapped chocolates works commercially because they don't have a weight marked on them.
Cadbury, trimmed bars using carefully designed shapes (rounding off corners, adding curled edges) that seem as big; also adding cheap filler like popcorn or puffed rice.
And it has gotten worse lately. Many manufactures are doing half sugar and half artificial sweetener. And they never label it as such leading me to take a sip and promptly throw the rest away.
The sugar alcohols (like xylitol/erythritol/sorbitol/whatever-tol) are pretty darn close. Their problem is not so much taste as gastrointestinal upset though.
Yup, it's so superior that it seems ludicrous that others are considered comparable. The taste of it isn't quite like sugar, but it's close, and it's WAY better than any of the non-polyalcohol-sugar artificial sweeteners... and, IMO, is better tasting than isomalt, which comes second in tastiness to me, sorbitol 3rd place... I don't much like xylitol.
While it is technically a natural sugar alcohol, and can be refined from birch trees, most of the xylitol used in food products now is full synthetic or fermented with yeasts.
It is sweet. It is artificial (sometimes).
It may also draw additional water into your colon and have a "cool" mouth-feel, and it does add calories. Erythritol may be preferable for those reasons, even though it is less sweet. A common non-sugar sweetener mix is erythritol and stevia, which can, when proportioned correctly, add the same sweetness as an equal mass of refined sucrose.
Splenda is a totally different chemical compound, though, with a chlorine atom. The article makes it sound like it's still sugar but with a different physical arrangement of molecules.
Could it be air? Like, they physically structured the sugar granules to have tiny air pockets inside them? It doesn't necessarily have to be restructured at the molecular level...
This is the most plausible hypothesis I've heard since it's already been done with ice cream, and people actually enjoy and prefer the experience of it(despite the obvious downside of getting less Stuff).
The sugar in chocolate is dissolved, right? So there aren't any granules in the final product. They already mix air into most cheap chocolate-like candy products.
No, not fully dissolved. The sugar grain size is what determines smooth vs gritty mouth feel. There are micrographs on the harvard wiki, and in my video, linked from another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13087023
There are porous aggregate sugar grains already in use. It's not that they're full of air, just smaller than usual particles (so they dissolve faster) roughly clumped into normal sized agglomerations.
I guess I'm more cynical and skeptical of businesses which only have financial incentives in mind to do "good" things like this, but no ethical incentives.
Hershey has already done this quite a few times with their chocolate bars. They just get thinner and the texture gets waxier, I assume for structural integrity.
I'm shocked that this is the only mention of wax in the entire thread.
Last Hershey bar I tasted reminded me of those old novelty wax lips they used to give kids around Halloween. It's already to the point where you can actually taste the wax if you know the flavor.
I'm sure it'll be something along the lines of, "Hey, we're using 40% less sugar... we will be adding in some things like cane-juice crystals, corn syrup solids, and refiner's syrup to compensate." Don't you feel better already?
In the UK, concentrated grape juice is often added to products marketed for small kids and babies. Presumably a lot of parent read that and think 'oh, fruit, that's good for you!', not realising that this is essentially pure sugar.
This patent is actually really interesting. Up until now, most exogenous enzyme treatments in food production have been catabolic. This anabolic idea is something I haven't thought would be possible. Table 7 is really the tell-all. Starting with 270g sucrose, the sucrose is converted into Fructose and higher sugars. Only 180g of the sucrose is accounted fo rin that table, meaning the other 90g of sucrose is made into something even higher than they show in the table.
It's not like we understand the 'side effects' of most things we eat. Any plant or fruit or fermented product you eat is made up of thousands of compounds, almost none of which have been tested for their effects in isolation.
(But, you know, I'm pretty confident candy bars are bad for you. This change will not make them any better.)
You should definitely boycott Nestle. They are for example aggressively pushing baby milk replacements for newborns in developing countries: more info here:http://www.babymilkaction.org/nestlefree#evidence
"Nestlé promotes its baby milk around the world with the claim such as it is the ‘natural start’, ‘gentle start’ and ‘protects’ babies. In truth, babies fed on formula are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and, in conditions of poverty, more likely to die. Nestlé has promised to drop the ‘natural start’ claim by mid-2015 following pressure from the campaign, but not the others."
Also, they have been calling for privatization and taking away water as a basic human right, instead wanting to sell people water in bottles.
The best part about a Nestle boycott is it is great for you healthwise. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that most of the food products made by such an evil company are basically poison.
It's all junk food designed to take advantage of human cravings in order to maximize profits.
You would be hard pressed to find a _single_ healthy product outside of their water brands, which are of course insanely marked up versions of literally the most abundant natural resource on the planet.
Eh don't feel so bad, in my other anti-nestle comment in this thread I actually contradicted my own statement above entirely...
That is, water as a global resource is incredibly abundant, _clean available water_ not so much... Which of course Nestle profits off of in horrific ways.
The best part is not having to taste their chocolate. Their US chocolate is easily the worst excuse for chocolate I've ever eaten. (I'm not exaggerating.)
Sometimes you can tell the company spirit by simply being interviewed there. I once was there and the process and people doing my review were awful and look at everything in terms of measurement. "So Joe, from 1-10, how good of a husband are you?". Then a friend of mine told me that people who answer high score to that question were ignore right off the bat, since they looking for someone 8am-8pm. As she said, "so many times I was told by my manager if you have life and family, don't work here".
You are describing a hiring process that very possibly breaks federal law, given the EEOC describes it as "evidence of intent to discriminate". If you experienced this, talk to a lawyer instead of / in addition to HN.
Our organizations and commercial environment select for bad behavior. There's nothing uniquely evil about Nestle.
The real evil are the organizations and structures that nurture this type of behavior. This type of behavior is nurtured, otherwise it wouldn't exist. These issues affect all organizations, including countries.
We are losing at fighting the symptoms: bad behaviors. We need to figure out how to fix the root cause.
Yeah, and very little has changed since then. If I remember correctly, Nestle's response to the baby milk controversy is held up as a example of how companies can tackle PR issues by involving themselves heavily in setting rules for their own industry, simultaneously making sure that the new rules don't actually obstruct them whilst looking like they're doing something about the problem. This is often seen as a positive example to imitate by utter scumbags.
free app idea, called dirt, which bring up controversy about companies, so when you buy something, at least you can see where your dollar/peso/yen/euro is going.
Various plug in options would be cool too, if you are browsing online, it finds dirt for you based on all the ads you get.
*edit - wow since the 80's? Still they dont change their business tactics, what a shame, they had 30 years to stop this crap.
That's actually a kinder description of the baby formula thing than I'd heard. At some point in the '80s, at least, they were giving out a couple months' worth of formula to new third-world mothers, knowing that their natural lactation would stop in that time and they'd be forced to buy more at full price or let the baby starve.
In switzerland we dont even have a good bunch of these products, chocolate and candies from them are way to boring for the average consumption and well some of the other products are used by some. I think its funny that nestle is basically one of the biggest income sources even thought most people in the country where it comes from avoid it anyway because of the usually low quality.
Sure, but is that a right thing to outlaw ? I don't think so. We should have access to basic needs like water, food and healthcare. We can do that, it's only the greed of corporations, nations and ultimately greedy people that limits that.
That's so Joe Schmo doesn't sue the company across the street from drilling into an oil reserve that happens to extend under his property. You can't really extract underground resources while respecting above-ground property lines, especially when you're talking about liquids or gasses.
It's not like they can demolish your house and build a pump there just because you don't own what's under it.
I can follow that list no problem except for nespresso. The quality bang for the buck you get with those is so much better than the garbage that passes for coffee in a k-cup.
No, it's not. If you actually do the math, the Nespresso coffee pods are so expensive per cup as compared to buying ground or whole espresso beans in tins, that a Nespresso machine with pods vs a proper Rancilio Silvia with Illy espresso breaks even in a little more than 12 months. Even though the Rancilio is $650+.
Also, the Nespresso pods are pretty bad on the environment, since they're made from aluminium (energy intensive process) but can't be recycled since they're full of spent coffee.
Most of what I'm paying for is the convenience. I have a machine in my office that I can hit a button on and get a shot out very quickly. I have a similar Jura machine at home that starts with beans and pulls a shot. The Nespresso shots are almost always better.
Yeah, you don't want an "automatic" machine that does grinding, tamping and pulling the shot. It just doesn't work well, they don't make good espresso IMO. Even the ones I've used at various work locations, that cost thousands of dollars, are pretty bad.
What you need is a manual (aka semi-automatic) machine, and a proper grinder (I have the Ascaso I2 and like it a lot) or even just pre-ground Illy, it's not that bad. Learning how to grind, tamp etc. takes about a month. From then it's pure espresso magic.
For extra hipster points, buy a really manual machine, aka lever machine:
As someone that works in the coffee industry I've been excited to see some of the startups coming out now that could compete against companies like Nespresso using real coffee while still preserving convenience, automation and ease of use. You should check out Spinn. I haven't tried it but it looks promising and might potentially perform better than other so called automated espresso machines.
Interesting machine. I may give one a try. Unfortunately the pre-order function on the site is broken if you are blocking google analytics, but that is workable.
Then you are using the wrong coffe, your machine is badly configured (most are), was never really cleaned internally (most arent) or are just way to used to the artificial taste.
I don't think anyone thinks its economical long-term over beans/maker, just that it is cheaper than going to a store to get coffee. The convenience of having a serviceable cup of espresso in less than 30 seconds (no warm up time!) all for under a dollar makes it worth it.
As for the environment, they do have a recycling program for Nespresso pods with drop-off stations in a bunch of places. It is Nestle though so they might just be taking the recycled pods and putting them in the trash.
You COULD of course just get real coffee. You could buy the highest quality of coffee beans from a local roaster who imports the stuff himself from a farmer in Ethiopia and it would still be cheaper than Nespresso. It would be way tastier but you'd need to grind the coffee and use something like an AeroPress to make it.
AeroPress does not produce Espresso coffee, which the Nespresso machine does.
You COULD grind your beans, brew the coffee yourself, clean up the mess you made and then clean the machine up. Or just pop a pod in and drink your coffee.
I couldn't live without my Nespresso machine because it's an amazing compromise between ease of use, reliability and quality. It's 'good enough' compared to 'proper' coffee while being a million times easier and consistent.
The coffee snobs (I say that with a lot of love) are out in full effect in your replies, but I'm with you. I did the whole Chemex, Aeropress, weight scale, burr grinder, Japanese tea kettle, etc etc and my Nespresso machine is by far and away the easiest way to get delicious coffee. My wife also adores their Aeroccino for perfect lattes every time.
As far as recycling, Nespresso provides free, self-addressed bags that you drop in the mail with your spent pods and they handle it for you.
Correct me if I am wrong, but none of those other devices sound like an espresso machine, so to comparing the product produced by them with the product of a pod device produces is apples to oranges.
Perhaps I am a bit particular, but I've never produced a coffee that I was happy with using non-espresso devices. Perhaps you are the same? Maybe you could give a proper espresso machine a go?
That said, I have to say that I am surprised about the quality of the espresso shot produced by these pod devices, but I still think that you get a better result by grinding yourself with a half decent espresso machine, all without being so wasteful and being able to support local roasters. Once you take those positives, and your new found smugness/feeling of superiority the choice is easy! :-)
You're correct it's not a straight comparison, I was looking at it more from the generic "black liquid with caffeine" point of view.
I've been lucky enough to use La Marzocco espresso machines at work for many years and they absolutely make better espresso than my Nespresso machine. The problem is that machine was $15k and my Nespresso was $100. I understand there are more consumer-grade espresso machines, but those still cost $1000+ and don't necessarily make espresso better than the Nespresso.
I now they do that, but I figure the environmental footprint of that is probably much worse that peeling off the foil, dumping the coffee and recycling the aluminum is pretty high.
I've done grind and aero. It's not espresso. It makes a good cup of regular coffee if that's what you're after, but if I'm going manual like that I prefer my french press.
Agreed. Had the same aeropress for 4 years. Very easy to clean. The filters are very cheap, you'd normally expect to be gouged on these by some bean counter scumbag.
Here here. I really don't get the fascination with aeropress on HN. Perhaps I am not yet at the ultimate level of coffee snobbery, but whenever I have had aeropress coffee i am always disappointed with it. Espresso all the way.
I secretly suspect that it is because the aeropress users have never owned/used an decent espresso machine, but I could be easily missing the nuances of alternative coffee extraction techniques.
I love espresso, but simply will not spend the money to make it properly at home. When at home, grinding my own beans and a small drip coffee maker works well and is cheap.
So I'm with you. If I'm going to spend any real effort or money I'll finally break down and buy an actual espresso machine.
It's not a snob issue. It's just that if you prefer an espresso-based drink, that is what you prefer. If I preferred a drip-based drink I would have many cheaper options.
Then don't pretend you stand on any moral high ground if you cannot be bothered to endure the difference between espresso and drip to support a larger cause. Your original claim that you in some way support a boycott on Nestle is bullshit. You just coincidentally don't like their other products.
No, I just coincidentally have an option on their other products. Nobody else makes a decent instant espresso option. Even the alternative pods that you can get for the nespresso machine are garbage as I have tried many of them.
You have and option: drip. You choose to believe that option is not a sufficient substitute. And by all accounts, the difference between the two offers such a small change in personal utility that your participation in this boycott amounts to nothing. Your original claim to support the boycott is a straight up lie, and not even close to being true.
And that's fine. You can support Nestle. No one is making you act one way or the other. Just don't lie to yourself about where you stand on moral issues like this one.
Jesus, get off your high horse and then realize that if you think drip and espresso are interchangeable you just have no clue what you're talking about.
:D Yeah companies like these strive on the fact that they have the power to purchase many, many companies and conquer markets from many directions.
Sadly for example the popular Finnish Penguin icecream was bought by Nestle, but they didn't of course change the name, so many people maybe still believe that it's still being owned by Finnish companies. The product didn't change, so that's good, but now the money is going to a multinational company instead of a local one.
So yeah, it's kinda difficult to avoid all of these.
What math? The math of nespresso vs k-cup? I know it's more expensive, but you can't do espresso with keurig. If you're talking about the math of DIY you are not taking into consideration the math of labor and time.
Most full automatic machines are faster than a espresso machine. You you just fill it like twice a week and not every single time. IMO the time point does not count.
Disclaimer: I dont know what a keurig is. I only drink espresso and i like them as good as possible
I have a full automatic at home. Another one for the office would cost me about $1000. I got the one I have used. It takes up a lot of space. The nespresso was about $70 and is tiny. I recycle the pods.
Sorry for beeing picky on this. Ive worked a while with coffee machines while getting my IT edu.
A 70$ nespresso machine is a mess. Realistically you would replace that yearly because it gets to a health hazard soon. (Mold and crisp plastic) a good one with basic standards will cost you more like $250.
A ok fullautomate can be bought from like $500.
About the recylcling ether you make art out of them or that really does not mean that much. Painted plastic coated aluminium does not really recycle very well.
When people brought in nespresso machines (of all price ranges except the >$500 ones from proper brands) we would show them the internals and scratch a little mold from here and there. It was seriously the most easy way to sell them a proper machine.
They're not hard to clean at all and it is recommended that you do so just like it is on all of the full autos I've used. I don't have to worry about the people that think that you never have to run a maintenance cycle on the machine to clean it. Also, the mold problem is because most people leave the machine loaded after use. If you merely open the loader and leave it open it releases the just-used pod and dries out on its own.
This is a great point. If the glycemic index has drastically increased, then this could actually be worse for your blood sugar levels than the original quantity of 'actual' sugar.
Unless you have diabetes markers, glycemic index is almost entirely irrelevant, it's like people that avoid gluten/lactose who aren't intolerant. Studies that made links to glycemic load to overall health have largely since been found invalid.
Thank you for that link. That study period of 5 weeks is not nearly enough to evaluate high versus low glycemic index diets upon metabolic syndrome. All the study showed was no acute impacts (good to know, but not conclusive enough for prescriptive direction). After finding that out from the study linked to, I tried to find a study that tracked glycemic index in meals of participants over 1-5 years, but couldn't come up with any, so if you know of any to link to, I would really appreciate it.
It's still valuable to know. I am a diabetic, and so are a lot of other people. I would choose lower-sugar chocolate if it were available (I don't eat anything but plain dark chocolate now but I do miss Kit-Kats), but if it were actually worse for my glycemic control than the regular Kit-Kat bar, I'm not doing myself any favors.
The only way would be to test as glycemic index (but especially glycemic response) varies wildly based on what is packed along with the ride (in some ironic cases fats and proteins raise glycemic response and in others lowers it).
Also in practice individuals glycemic response is more complicated than most might think and often times the index number has little correlation (you have to remember the index number is done for a fasted individual... most people eat multiple things during a meal).
Finally dissolving fast does not mean it necessarily will absorb or produce a great response. After all sugar alcohols and glycerin readily dissolve quickly in water but have little impact on insulin (albeit perhaps on sensitivity but that is another complicated story).
My bigger concern isn't the insulin but the fact that sugar actually has an affect on the brain similar to drugs. New sugars could have a greater addictive impact.
Touche. Yes I perhaps should have said sugar alcohols such as glycerine. I'm not sure why I said "and" probably because I think of glycerine is not as sweet I was thinking of maltitol. For example calling glycerine a sugar alcohol is sort of akin to calling cholesterol a steroid or certain vegetables a fruits. It might actually be the pedantic case but I just don't think of glycerine like that.
Always remember that technically correct is the best kind of correct. And repeat it frequently, so that others don't forget. And to imply that you are very frequently technically correct. And to backhandedly excuse yourself for injecting barely-relevant-but-indisputably-true facts into other people's conversations.~
You can also call it glycerol, if that helps. It helps me to not hear the alt-rock song by Bush every time I'm thinking of the chemical.
Glycerol may not taste as sweet as maltitol or sorbitol, but it won't make your bowels explode as violently, either. And it makes your low-sugar baking feel less dry.
> The new faster dissolving sugar will enable Nestlé to significantly reduce the total sugar in its confectionery products, while maintaining great taste.
I suspect GI not much. Sugar is dissolving fast - in any case - that by the time it hits the gut it is ready to be absorbed (once it has been split into glucose-fructose).
I wonder if the glucose-fructose split is happening already earlier in the mouth possibly the sweets could taste sweeter (fructose tastes sweeter than sugar). That would be equivalent to turning sugar into HFCS with 50% fructose in the mouth - may taste slightly sweeter.
In the end what could matter if this is an indication that Nestle has set course on lowering sugar content in food. Iff
As far as I'm concerned most large-scale commercial chocolates like KitKat could do with 40% less sugar, period. Making it just as sweet with less sugar still makes it just as sweet.
Pretty clever way of reducing the amount, by increasing the rate by which it dissolves. Sounds like a win for both the business side(cheaper costs), and consumer(less sugar consumption).
DouxMatok uses a different principle for the same result, of covering a particle with sugar molecules in a way that increases the sugar surface and thus increase sweetness by 30%-100%.
Nestle and Hershey have already turned their products into nothing but shit, so to keep trying to push the envelope sounds exactly like how cable thought they could jam more commercials into the programming and nobody would notice. These stupid MBAs all get their educations from the same few idiots, I guess. Pretty sad that business circa 2016 is just "another pickle from the jar" tricks instead of adding real value into products.
I disagree that there is no value added here. Sugar consumption has a public health impact comparable to smoking, alcohol, and air pollution. Even as an individual I seek out things with the least amount of sugar possible.
Just ask anyone who switched from regular soda to diet how much value they found by fooling their taste buds.
My initial reaction was "Great!", then i shared this with my partner and her response was
"Fuck nestle. They are just saying what people want to hear"
Thinking more critically, I share her concern. The way they've been buying water away from local towns makes me think they just need a positive PR spin to distract us from the real issues.
I don't get this outrage over Nestle bottle water. The amount of water that is bottled for human consumption must be minuscule compared with many other usages like household, agricultural and industrial.
Furthermore, it is not like the water is wasted. It is actual consumed by humans who live not too far from the place where the water was bottled.
At the risk of continuing off-topic, the "outrage" over Nestle bottled water in this case was due to Nestle starting to draw large amounts of water at about 1/100th the residential water cost from an region under mandatory water restrictions due to drought. Blame Nestle and/or the local government, but it does seem short-sighted and suboptimal.
In general, though, bottled water isn't consumed close to its generation point: it's packaged in plastic bottles and trucked away. There's an environmental cost. And many of the bottles that are consumed locally contain the same water people could have gotten straight from the tap, so the environmental cost is lower but more pointless.
There is no drought in Southern Ontario. They are drawing well water, not residential water. A farmer could draw that much water and pay absolutely nothing.
I agree they should pay the full price, and that bottled water is wasteful, but 4 million litres per day is not a large amount. It's equivalent to the daily consumption of around 8000 people.
Or equivalent to the water needed to irrigate a laughably small farm.
I'm not saying Nestle isn't evil, but yeah, in terms of water scarcity, they're inconsequential.
The real problem for water scarcity, is not overpriced-as-fuck water. It will always be a tiny slice of water use, because it is overpriced as fuck. The problem is water being given away for free or nearly-free for nonessential low-value uses.
The consensus solution among water management professionals is full water pricing.
> in southern Ontario, bottled water giant Nestlé continues to extract four million litres of groundwater every day
Wow! That's like, four billion millilitres! Let's use the smallest unit of measurement we can for maximum outrage.
That's like, almost two entire olympic swimming po.. oh.
Nestle has tapped into the water supply in developing markets like Pakistan. As a result the water table is lowered (and quality of water drops) so people in the area cannot get access to clean water from local wells, and are forced to purchase Nestle "pure life" water at an insane markup.
Scroll down to page 25 and look for:
"9. Human Rights Concerns about Nestlé’s ‘Pure Life’"
Nestle is not the sole water extractor that is causing this issue, but their business model (extract local water, bottle, mark-up, sell) is unconscionable in _this_ context. They aren't adding value, they are simply taking advantage of a developing country's weak regulatory framework.
Their business model (for this particular product) would not be immoral in an environment where access to local water was abundant.
Nestlé to mulch only organic, non-GMO babies from 2015
VEVEY, Suisse, Thursday (NTN) — Nestlé will be removing all artificial flavours and colours, like Red 40, Yellow 5 and Screaming Agony 666, from its chocolate candy products by the end of 2015, replacing them with the delicious tears of malnourished infants.
“Nestlé is the world’s leading nutrition, health and — hold on, is this right? — wellness company, or the first world’s at least,” said Doreen Ida, Nestlé USA Confections & Snacks president.
Consumers have long surveyed as wanting food not to contain artificial colours, flavours, genetic modifications, DNA, microwaves, wifi, chemicals or atoms, apparently preferring to eat alchemical workings using only the four humours.
“We have consulted with Food Babe on a new process, using only pure, wholesome, organic and sustainably-farmed pain and suffering, guaranteed to be from poor people in a country that isn’t yours. We know you are fully willing to make sacrifices to improve your lifestyle, as long as those sacrifices are of other people halfway around the world.”
The nourishing tears of children dying in pain are the vital ingredient in the new process, preferably those gathered from tainted formula induced dysentery. “Obviously too foolish and dissolute to use safe Nestlé privatised water!” All babies are certified to have grown up in an environment with minimal quantities of artificial chemicals, electromagnetic radiation or modern allopathic medicines.
“We never compromise on taste. Maintaining the great taste and appearance consumers expect from the chocolate brands they know and love is our number-one priority. It is technically true that a mountain of suffering goes into every bite, but we’d never let that compete with your convenience. Nestlé: Good Food, Good Life. Yours, Anyway.”
Does anybody care what a company this size says anymore? What relation does PR spin like this even have to reality? They'll do whatever they need to do to make money and say whatever half-truths make them sound good. This is a non-story.
The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service recently released its biannual report on sugar, "Sugar: World Markets and Trade".
> Global production for 2016/17 is up 5 million metric tons (raw value) to 171 million as gains in Brazil and the European Union and most of the top 25 producers more than offset declines in India and Thailand. Global raw sugar
monthly average prices, after falling for over a year and bottoming at less than 11 cents per pound in August 2015, have been trending higher to near 23 cents in October 2016. Despite high prices, consumption is forecast at a record 174 million tons, drawing stocks down to the lowest level since 2010/11. The global sugar deficit narrows from 6.7 million tons in 2015/16 to a forecast 2.6 million.
That the price of sugar has doubled over the past year amid shrinking stocks probably explains why Nestle is interested in cutting their use of the ingredient.
There isn't any technical information in the article, but what does "a way to structure sugar differently" mean? Do they mean change it from being sucrose to some other compound?
News articles are saying that the sugar will be "hollow", so there's as much sugar particles that will reach your tongue but they will dissolve very quickly and be less dense.
I have not read those articles, nor the patent links in other threads, but your description is consistent with "instant sugar"[1].
How can a vending machine add rapidly dissolving sugar to a cool beverage? Smaller sugar grains dissolve faster, but handling suffers as they cake and stick to surfaces. So you create aggregate grains - fine grains (dissolves fast) stuck together into larger ones (handles well). Sintered agglomerates.
The final sugar particles in chocolate seem relatively undissolved (pointy)[2], and sugar particles are often stabilized by coating with stuff, so a hypothetical PR faux "breakthrough" matching your description might be "instant sugar... now in chocolate!". And didn't Intellectual Ventures move into food industry trolling a few years ago, so there's likely a market for such. And this is Nestle.
I guess that's why we drink fizzy and creamy drinks so much!
Personally I think that the future is in manipulating the taste buds themselves. Did you ever hear about the "magic fruits" Synsepalum dulcificum? It's a fruit that has molecules that binds to the tongue. The result is that anything sour will taste like sugar. Lemons will taste like candy.
Pop a pill before drinking a bitter non-sugary drink and there you go, you are drinking sugar taste without any sugar!
I wouldn't think so. There's a noticeable difference between granulated sugar and powdered sugar to the palate. This new method claims to not affect the taste, so I would think it's something at the molecular level.
>> Its scientists altered the structure of sugar so that it dissolves more quickly.
Something tells me this is going to be like turning cocaine into crack. Apart from saving them money, I bet you find people selling their grandma's TV for a go on another KitKat.
And yes; boycott Nestle for many reasons, mostly because all of their products are terrible for you or other people.
I wonder how much of that is due to "arms race" marketing and focus groups.
The current generations... our taste buds are shot, we're accustomed to so much sugar in things and HUGE portions. You can have sugar in smaller portions (like Coke, when it came out in 1886 was sold in a 6.5 oz size), and you could probably have larger healthier portions... but the mix is pretty unhealthy.
Current generations are kind of ruined... taught to look for bigger and bigger candy bars, trained to like sweeter and sweeter things... how do we keep these toxic preferences from harming future generations? And... what can we do for ourselves? Cutting subsidies on sugar producers... seems like Step 1.
I always wondered why there's so much sugar in everything. All of my friends, relatives and people I know think that everything is too sweet - cookies, cake, soup, lemonade, ice cream, you name it. Am I weird? Do people actually like the sugar?
I just remember, one dad at a kids party once approached me and asked me "do you know why these cupcakes are so damn delicious? I've put TWICE the sugar that was on the recipe!" so yeah, I guess there are people who actually like it sweet... does anyone know of any data on this?
Eh, I remember the days when if I wanted less sugar, I'd just use less sugar, and the word "engineering" and "patenting" wouldn't be right for the food discussion.
Is this just called dark chocolate? Kidding aside, I'm hoping they don't replace it with some sort of chemical sweetener, I'm always suspicious of sugar replacements.
you realize every sweetener is a chemical, right? What if they replace sugar with sugar? There are tons of types of sugars that can replace one another. Lots of sweeteners actually come from plants and microbes.
My peeve with the book is that he (IMHO correctly) tells the reader to use weights not volumes for dry ingredients, then in the entire rest of the book seems to promote/use volume measures.
The strawberry is perhaps the best evidence that the physical layout of sugars matters tremendously. A fresh strawberry tastes incredibly sweet. But blend up a pound of those strawberries and it tastes wretched without added sugar. Since the strawberry has most of its sweetness on the outside, it tastes fine when you're biting into it directly but the blending exposes more of the tart inside.
Will it actually have an effect on weight gain and health? They've been showing for instance that things like Diet Coke actually don't help people lose weight, b/c of many other factors in the way the body responds to fake sugars.
Generally, people who switch from regular to diet soda only lose a pound or two when all things are considered. The research has shown that the big deal with switching is that you stop gaining weight. I'll refer you to Aaron Caroll's most recent explanation(rant) from YESTERDAY... https://youtu.be/znh58FZjXt0?t=663
I wouldn't be surprised if people just start eating more of this chocolate because it is perceived as less unhealthy, thus negating the health benefits.
Generally the reasons they think that these diet drinks don't help you lose weight is because they believe the artificial sweeteners used will effect you in some way that sugar doesn't cancelling out any other benefits it has.
Presumably, they won't be replacing this reduced sugar with an artificial sweetener.
I think this is a great move. I recently went on a low-sugar diet and after a while I went back to my favorite chocolate bar from Trader Joe's. I was appalled how sweet it was and I really can't eat it anymore.
I'm not sure about other brands but I just looked at the bag of Krave jerky I have in front of me and they don't use any corn syrup. Their website [1] confirms it.
Uh, what brands are you looking at? In addition to my sibling who addressed jerky, I generally buy Arnold's/Orowheat bread and it has no corn syrup whatsoever.
I checked all of the brands at the store today. Oberto, Krave, Matador, Golden Island, Jack Links, Tillamook, and World Kitchens all list sugar as the 2nd agreement.
I haven't looked at them in years, evidently they've switched from corn syrup to sugar.
>> "A patent is a double-edged sword. Although it protects what you have done it also tells your rivals about it."
Maybe this isn't all the big of a deal for what it does to chocolate but if it is used to reduce sugar in other things that are consumed in large quantities (soda?) it could mean less sugar, fewer calories, less carbs and all those good things.
> It claims this can be done without affecting the taste.
Ugh, and I was about to be excited that I'd really actually be into these chocolate bars again if they were actually less sweet. Oh well. And patenting? Screw them.
Do you have evidence that Nestlé purchases sugar that was produced through child labour? They claim to source the majority of their sugar from Brazil, Mexico and India [0] while the main instances I could find of child labour in sugar production were in the Phillipines, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
> No company sourcing cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire can guarantee they have completely removed the risk of children working on small farms in their supply chain. Nestlé is no different, but we are determined to tackle the problem.
They have been in business for years. If they wanted to stop in the past, they could, overnight. It would be expensive, but only because of their entrenched business model which they had a hand in establishing.
Even farm products from the US often times are produced with the help of children:
"US child labor laws allow child farm workers to work longer hours, at younger ages, and under more hazardous conditions than other working youths. While children in other sectors must be 12 to be employed and cannot work more than 3 hours on a school day, in agriculture, children can work at age 12 for unlimited hours before and after school."
I'm not excusing the US law, but I very much doubt that people working forced, slave or child labour have the option to put in a couple of hours work before they go to school.
NESTLE: I'm not chemist, biologist or nutritionist, but here is big chance to make something good for the world. If this patent is good for humans, and doesn't change taste much - SHARE IT! With today's social media, this would only bring more people to buy your products, than not.
My guess is it sure as hell won't be actual cocoa :/ [1]
[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9ihtAG...