The brand name for Acesulfame Potassium is Sweet One.
Misleading labelling really pisses me off.
I was at the store the other day and decided to pick up some half & half. Land O’ Lakes had two kinds on the shelf (not counting the fat-free abomination): Half & Half, and Traditional Half & Half.
Wondering what the difference could possibly be between the two, I grabbed a carton of each and read the labels. First I expected the fat content to differ. Nope. Calcium? Nope. Then I looked at the ingredients.
Half & Half: Milk and Cream.
Traditional Half & Half: Milk, Cream, and SIX OTHER INGREDIENTS. What in the hell?
Mmmm. Potassium Benzoate. Just like Mom used to make!
The ice cream brand Breyers used to make a big deal about the pure ingredients used in their ice cream. They had a great ad campaign with little kids trying to pronounce the chemical additives on the labels of other ice creams, and successfully saying “milk, cream, sugar” on theirs.
Then they came out with “Homestyle” ice cream. “Homestyle” contained all that other crap that makes ice cream taste like gelatinous crap. Now, granted, it’s my own fault for not reading the label when confronted with new packaging, but for a brand that always prided itself on simple, natural ice cream to pack all that shit in with a misleading name like “Homestyle” is just dishonest.
I’ve been a vigillant label reader for years, ever since I figured out that even a trace of aspartame gives me migraines. Splenda doesn’t do that to me, but I don’t like the taste.
What I find frustrating is that it’s starting to seem to me like artificial sweeteners are in the majority of products on my grocery store shelves. I’m tired of having to go out of my way to make sure I get real good ol’ high fructose corn syrup. I can no longer chew gum, and breathmints are a mine field. Also it makes me feel like a pain in the neck at my in-laws when I have to ask about any food I eat because they forget to mention that, “you’d never know that strawberry pie is sugar free!” Yes, in about 15 minutes when the throbbing starts I will.
The labels that really piss me off are the canned tomato ones.
For some reason, if there is anything different, the difference is noted in tiny letters just below the pronouncement of DICED TOMATOES that you can’t see at first glance. I’ve taken to looking at each one carefully now because several times I’ve ended up with Italian Seasoned tomatoes when I just want plain ones. I add my own seasoning tyvm, and since they are never clear exactly WHAT those spices are and my Mom is allergic to one of the spices in what is commonly considered Italian… I’d rather not make my Mom sick by accident.
I look very closely at any and all tomatoes I buy now.
The cocktail thing on cranberry juice drives me nuts too. I don’t want cocktail, I want cranberry juice! I love to drink it by myself or mix with orange juice and drink it that way. If I wanted the other juices in it (apple and grape juice!?) I’d mix it myself. Even more confusing, the big brand here that is labeled cocktail has these ingredients
While most other brands of cocktails have the same as the blends from the brand above… apple and grape juice mixed with the cranberry.
I happen to like raw cranberries and unsweetened cranberry juice. I can’t stand sweetened cranberry juice.
I have actually seen little cups of something called “fat-free half &half”.
OK, one half was probably skim milk, but the label didn’t specify what the other half was.
And put my wife and I down as artificial sweetener haters. What is truly nasty is engineered fruit juice that’s had all the fruit sugar taken out and replaced with
some artificial yuck. There was more of this crap around a few years back when Atkins was big.
A samples pusher at the grocery store gave us samples of Frankenjuice and simply called it juice. It tasted nasty from the get-go. We read the coupon the pusher handed us , found out what the stuff really was, and threw coupon and Frankenjuice into the nearest garbage can.
I do realize that NO ADDED SUGAR on the label doesn’t mean “no added SWEETENER.” But realistically, looking at something like fruit juice that doesn’t need any added sweetener, that’s what I think. “Oh good. Unsweetened. Just what I wanted.”
I really do not want to stand in the aisles and read every ingredient, particularly when, as in the case I mentioned, the item in question came from A HEALTH FOOD STORE.
And what is it with the tomato sauce, anyway? There was a brand–I think Hunt’s–that I bought for YEARS on the basis of “no added sugar!” only to find out that now they are adding Splenda…to the tomato sauce!
Tomato sauce does not need sweetener. Come on.
Depends what you do with it. My spaghetti recipe calls for a pinch or so of sugar and I read somewhere (here on the Dope iirc) that they get bitter or something if cooked too long. Yeah, great cite I know. 
That is weird though. Let the people add sweetener to the tomatoes if they need to!
You know how eight-year-olds shovel sugar onto their Rice Krispies?
My mother used to do that to spaghetti.
My mother used to add just a pinch or so of sugar to her tomato-based sauces; all I remember is that my dad had some issue with the acidity or something like that otherwise. It might have had something to do with heartburn too.
Decades later, I’m married and my husband complains he doesn’t like a particular tomato-based sauce, he says it tastes harsh and acidic. (And this coming from a guy who’s half-Italian in heritage.) Childhood memory triggered, I add some sugar. Voila, he likes it!
But yes, please, let us sweeten our own food to taste!
It’s been a bad year for canned tomato products that way. You can usually count on the pricey brands to use only ripe tomatoes, but now it seems that they all have a pH in the same range as neat sulphuric acid. I add a pinch of sodium bicarbonate to take the edge off. I shouldn’t have to, and most years I don’t.
Perhaps the growers had a cold snap around harvest time?
Have you ever had Japanese spaghetti sauce? It’s one of the foods that they’ve absorbed and put their own spin on (Americans, of course, never do this!!!).
Sweet. Really, really, really sweet. Like you know how sweet the sauce on Chef Boyardee is? Maybe a little sweeter. Yeah.
I think it would be more appropriate if the box bore a big red label
WARNING: LARK’S VOMIT