Yes.
You may be right on both counts.
Where? I just searched the thread and while several posters discussed OJ, the closest I came to saying anything positive was that it was below several other purportedly healthy foods.
And without belaboring the point, I haven’t disagreed. I’m not clear why this is being presented as some kind of devastating counterargument.
Because some people answered your question, and your reaction was to accuse them of trying to turn this into health food war.
Per this site, Comparing Coke to OJ, Coke has 29G of sugar and a ND rating (higher is better ) of 1.1. No vitamins.
OJ has 21 g of sugar and a ND rating of 3.1. And that’s not fresh stuff with pulp in it, which is a decent source of fiber. Oj also has micronutrients besides the Vit C.
Peanut butter is a great source of both protein(8 g per 32g serving) and fiber (3 g), OK in iron & calcium. Too high in fat. With a ND rating of 2.3
Nutella has very little fiber or protein, and very little vitamins, and is way too high in sugar and fat. It has a ND rating of 1.3. In other words, about the same as Coke. It does have some iron & calcium.
This means that yes, OJ has too much sugar but it better for you than Coke. Peanut Butter is way better for you than Nutella.
Some people have answered one way, and some have answered the other way, and because I haven’t slunk off in shame you’ve got your panties in a big tight bunch. You’ll just have to forgive me if some people defending Nutella or its packaging doesn’t make it a settled issue - not for me or a half dozen other participants.
You haven’t posted a word except to tell me I’m wrong, and to cite the count of FDA regulations. Forgive me again if I fail to quail before your devastating arguments.
You’re going off the rails here. Some posters weren’t trying to deliver a crushing blow, or trying to get you to slink off in shame. They were answering your question and furthering the discussion, at which point you started getting defensive, questioning their motives, and accusing them of starting a health food war. Nobody is asking you to “quail” in front of their OJ argument. Take a step back.
Yeah, I’ve completely lost the plot here as to what, exactly, we’re supposed to be arguing about or against or whatever.
My answer to the OP title is “No, not by a longshot.” Does it not being the worst example make it right? No. Do I personally think it’s particularly deceptive? No. There’s nothing objectionable to me in the ads I’ve seen. The OP obviously feels differently. That’s fine.
Take a pill yourself. I by and large haven’t entered the “health food” portion of the argument except to push it aside as being irrelevant to my question. Go back and read the thread - it’s others who are pushing and shoving over the relative merits of OJ, waffles, syrup etc.
You still haven’t contributed anything to the thread but calling me wrong and your FDA regs count - but you still seem to think you’ve made some sweeping counterargument. You want to keep wailing about health food issues, be my guest - it’s not my discussion.
That’s because you asked for the relative merits of deceptive foods.
Wrong again. I’ve contributed quite a bit, most of which you’ve ignored. Keep saying it, though.
That makes at least two of us; over half the thread is about side issues not raised by the main discussion.
I’ve said all I had to say, and more again; I’m done. I’ll be happy to answer any specific question that isn’t already answered in the prior posts, but I don’t think that leaves much.
And I accept all of that, from you and the few others who responded - and from the few who were more in agreement with me. It’s not a settled issue or an absolute, but all of the questions I had are sufficiently answered. Thanks to those who contributed without making it a pissing match over misattributions.
So it seems to me that this is more a rant against advertising in general.
But here’s the big point. The “usual’ serving size of Coke is 32-44 oz , packing some 100- 140g of sugar, whilst the usual serving of OJ is 4-8 oz. with 10- 21g of sugar at the high end.
A 64oz Double Gulp has nearly 200 grams of sugar. This is not the biggest sized soft drink available.
A small 4oz glass of OJ for breakfast is 1/20th that, sugar-wise.
Oh and many “energy” drinks have up to half again the sugar in either Coke or OJ.
For certain values of “rant” and substituting “marketing” for “advertising,” I’ll accept the gist as correct.
Nutella struck me as a particularly egregious example worth tossing out for discussion, but I didn’t start the thread with any intent to lead into the larger topic. I’d rather not continue the latter discussion in this compromised thread.
Usual for whom? Come on, if there is a de facto standard for Coke, it’s 12 oz cans.
OK, then that explains our philosophical differences.
Is the usual serving of OJ really only 4-8 ounces?
My fiancé often drinks 16 ounces or more with breakfast and most bottled orange juice is at least 12 ounces since it needs to fit in soda vending machines. The only time I know anyone to do 8 ounces or less are people are on diets or people getting little cartons of orange juice with their fast food breakfasts.
To reduce the tangential nature of this post, on the subject of Nutella: anything that sugary in flavor is clearly not that good for you. Doesn’t stop me from eating it, but it literally tastes like the inside of Ferrero Rocher, and that shouldn’t be too difficult for consumers to realize. The advertising does try to play up the “healthiness” though.
Butter is butter. Syrup is syrup. “Chocolate hazelnut spread”, on the other hand, is actually sugar/palm oil spread with small amounts of hazelnuts and cocoa.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t eat sugar/palm oil spread on your toast if you want to. And I agree that ultimately individuals are responsible for reading nutrition labels to find out what’s actually in whatever they’re eating.
But I do think it’s reasonable to complain that Nutella is using a fair bit of misdirection in marketing their wares. They’re essentially selling canned cake frosting while encouraging consumers to think of it as a tasty nut butter, and charging nut-butter prices for it to boot.
If they described it by the ingredients it’s actually mostly composed of, consumers would be much less enthusiastic about it.
I have to agree…I first saw commercials for Nutella when I was about 7 and they definitely gave me the impression they were healthy. I remember trying to convince my mom to buy it for me because “it’s healthy!!!” (And tasted heavenly, of course.) Good thing my mom had the sense to know they were really full of sugar.
Okay, so I was just a kid, but still, all of this marketing hype (not just Nutella but other food products as well) certainly influences me. I mean, even though I now know Nutella is unhealthy, whenever I see it on the shelf I definitely feel less guilty buying it than if I bought, for example, chocolate syrup. I think it’s just been “conditioned” into me, so that even though I know about the nutrition facts, subconsciously I choose to ignore it. And I would probably buy it instead of peanut butter even though I know it’s worse for me (just because it tastes so much better)–but again, I’ve been conditioned not to “feel guilty” about doing so.
Same with the OJ and granola bar thing–logically when I’m eating a chocolate-coated granola bar (that really is pretty much 50% chocolate) I know it can’t be good for me. But yes, the marketing people have gotten to me so I feel very little guilt eating a box of those things (versus if I ate a chocolate bar). I’m sure lots of people feel the same way…subconsciously, the successful marketing by these companies have become so ingrained in my brain that it automatically affects my feelings of “guilt” when making purchases at the grocery store, despite my conscious brain logically knowing better.
Probably a big part of it is that I’m too busy/lazy to cook for myself at this point in my life. It’s easier to buy these processed foods and just not think about all the health impacts because that would be altogether too depressing. And I’m lucky now because I’m still young, so I don’t really gain weight even with eating junk food. Under these circumstances, it’s often easy to ignore nutritional facts when I’m preoccupied with work/life etc. And when I don’t pay that much attention to the foods I eat (even though I know I should) my mind subconsciously picks the “relatively healthy” foods–which of course, are not that healthy at all, but due to years of misleading advertising, has certainly influenced me to some extent.
And on that note, anyone have a list of processed foods that are relatively healthy so my lazy self can start eating a bit healthier…?
FWIW – I grew up with Nutella in Spain (well, the local version which was marketed under the name “Nocilla”). I still remember the jingle. Translated from Spanish it was: “milk, cocoa, hazelnut and sugar – Nocilla” (and when they said “sugar” you could see a fuckton of sugar going into the pot). The marketing angle was basically this: “if your kids are active, running the whole day, spending a lot of energy – give them Nocilla on toast, it will give them a bunch of ready-to-use energy”. I don’t remember it being ever portrayed as some kind of healthy stuff to take every morning – it was basically presented as nitrous for your kid, who is spending the whole day running out in the street with his friends, spending lots of energy.
(As an aside, oh, how I long for those days when you could be 9 years old and play in the streets with your buddies, running all over the place snif).
Anyway – at least in my experience, I never took Nutella (ok, the Spanish equivalent) as being something intended for daily consumption. More like a “booster” for kids who are energetic and spend energy like crazy.
Also I find it extremely tasty, but that can be the nostalgia speaking 
I recently tried Nutella (OK, the store brand equivalent) for the first time. Why did I do that, after nearly 50 years of existing without it?
Well… once upon a time I used to use peanut butter as a snack. Just a spoonful once in awhile instead of a candy bar or whatever. Some years ago I became allergic to peanuts so I started trying other nut butters, which were usually much more expensive but mostly nuts, more so than the peanut butter I used to eat.
For some reason, the last couple months or so I haven’t been able to find either almond or cashew butter in the stores I frequent. They have this very repulsive looking “soy-nut spread” that purports to imitate peanut butter. I long ago stopped eating foods that pretend to be something else (I’m looking at you, “vegetarian” meats like “burgers” and “hot dogs” and, Og help us, “tofurky”), as they usually do a poor job of it, not to mention the stuff had an even worse nutritional profile than Nutella, if you can believe it (yes, I read labels). They had someone’s concoction of “almond butter” that likewise was mostly fat and sugar, also purporting to be a peanut-butter substitute.
Well, the faux-Nutella at least didn’t pretend to be something else, and had marginally better profile than authentic Nutella (not that that says much, it’s a low bar). I figured meh, I’ll try it. I’ll get a small jar for the occasional snack. There are worse things I could be eating, like an equivalent amount of gummie bears which really have no nutritionally value to anyone except the calorie-deprived, being pretty much entirely sugar.
Yeah, it’s sugar frosting, choco-hazelnut flavor.
Nothing wrong with sugar frosting but yes, the ads are deceptive.
I don’t think I’ll finish the jar, actually.
The other downside is that, unlike a real nut-butter, I can’t share it with my parrots, who really, really, really like the whole communal eating and food sharing thing. The coca would be Very Bad for them.
>sigh< I really wish it was easier to find genuine nut butters. Or even nut butter spreads that don’t have chocolate in them. Or peanuts.