So, the other day at the market, I decided to break out of my diet cola rut. I saw a bottle of Diet Orange Crush in the impulse cooler by the checkstand and added it to my cart.
I’ve always liked orange soda, but not so much its diet variant. Still, every few years I try it yet again to see if they’ve improved it. This recent bottle of Diet Orange Crush was amazing. It tasted almost non-diet. I couldn’t believe it.
I looked at the side panel to check the ingredients. Had they dropped the aspartame (a.k.a. NutraSweet) for sucralose or acesulfame K or some other sweetener. My jaw dropped. They were still using aspartame, but they’d added High Fructose Corn Syrup. Let me rephrase that in case it slipped by you. DIET Orange Crush now has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it.
I immediately looked at the calories. It had gone from zero per serving to 15 per serving (4 grams of carbs) with 2.5 servings in the bottle. If you’re doing the “induction phase” of Atkins that 10 grams of carbs represents between 1/2 and 2/3 of your daily carb allowance from one bottle of “diet” soda.
Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s still about 1/5th of the calories in a 20 ounce bottle of regular soda, but it’s massively more than the calories in your average diet soda. When you get a diet soda, you expect it to be “zero” calories (which really means less than 5 calories per serving because of FDA rounding allowances). You don’t expect it to have high fructose corn syrup.
This isn’t that half-calorie Coca Cola or the half-calorie Gatorade that advertise themselves as being half the calories. This is “DIET” soda. It’s not supposed to have nearly 40 calories, or 10 grams of carbs a bottle, or high fructose corn syrup.
It tasted darn good, though.
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I agree that this is a misleading product label. I wrote to the company, letting them know that because it’s industry standard that “diet” sodas have no sugar added, it was irresponsible and dangerous to label this product as “diet”. I suggested that they put a large label on the front saying “contains added sugar”. Otherwise, it constitutes what I understand that the FDA calls “misbranding”. This is how they responded (below). I find this disgusting. An on-the-run shopper for a diabetic-prone family may reasonably believe this product to be sugar-free.
——-response from DPSG———–
April 27, 2009
Dear Mr. —–:
Thank you for contacting us about Crush Diet Orange. Your comments and inquiries are appreciated because they provide valuable feedback about our brands.
“Diet” is a term used to indicate that the product is useful in helping to maintain or reduce body weight. A diet product may contain a small amount of high fructose corn syrup or some sort of a sweetener and still be considered a “diet” product. We would always advise to read the labels before consuming.
Our Company has been making great brands that make a splash for more than 100 years. We are proud of our family of products and are committed to providing a wide range of choices for all individuals.
Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We hope that you will continue to purchase and enjoy our products.
Sincerely,
Consumer Relations
“We hope that you will continue to purchase and enjoy our products.” – Yeah, if I feel you’ve lied to me, and you try to lawyer your way out of it when I call shennanigans on you, what do you think the odds of me buying *any* of your products ever again is? For any of you angry enough to boycott all Crush products and those made by their parent company, Crush is produced by the Doctor Pepper Snapple Group, which makes a wide variety of beverages, including Dr. Pepper, Crush, Snapple, Hawaiian Punch, A&W Root Beer, Mott’s juices, Nantucket Nectars, Hires, RC Cola and Diet Rite, Canada Dry, Schweppes, Sunkist, and Welch’s.