Nothing Artificial, no gimmicks

Audrae Erickson's Corn Refiners Association (CRA) and Richard Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) contend that when a company advertises that their product has "no high fructose corn syrup," it's really just a gimmick.  CRA/CCF even assert that consumers are being misled into believing that products advertised in this way are healthier for them than products that are not advertised in this manner.  Just to give an example, see CCF's "A Not-So-Sweet Marketing Gimmick."  Here's an excerpt from that article:

We noted a few months back that some companies (like Starbucks) that market their goods as free of high fructose corn syrup are just jumping on a health-fad bandwagon. New products replacing high fructose corn syrup with table sugar are nutritionally the same as before. Why? Because high fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as table sugar.

Well, ok fine: maybe the number of calories are the same (whether the item in question has HFCS or sugar.) But maybe, just maybe, consumers want to know that what they're eating involves no genetically modified enzymes (glucose isomerase, one of the key ingredients in HFCS).  Maybe folks like me, who have fructose malabsorption, won't get sick from a product as long as it doesn't have HFCS in it (or too much fructose of any variety.)  Maybe people want items that have ingredients they understand and ingredients that won't survive a nuclear holocaust.  Maybe people just want the freedom to choose what they eat.  Wait, isn't this allegedly Non-Profit organization actually called the Center for Consumer Freedom??  What's wrong with this picture??

Anyway, CRA/CCF meet Flippin' Pizza.

What I find interesting about this flier I found in my mailbox is as follows:

(1). This is NOT an example of a company that replaced the sugar in their product with HFCS.  In fact, they pride themselves on neither having HFCS NOR added sugars. 
(2).  A small pizza chain (with a handful of locations in the greater DC metropolitan area, and then a few restaurants in California) advertises their product by alerting consumers that they will get a high-quality, hand-tossed pizza, New York style, with nothing artificial, which means (according to the flier)

• No added oil
• No added sugar
• No high fructose corn syrup

What CCF terms the "health-fad bandwagon" works! People WANT ingredients they understand.  They want fresh ingredients rather than a massive list of undecipherable chemically/enzymatically altered multisyllabic terms designating materials that will outlive the average centenarian.

So, if a company like Flippin' Pizza uses their advertising budget in order to let customers know that their pizza was not only voted "best" but also has ingredients pizza should have, then good for them!  Why should pizza have added sugar? HFCS? added oil?  Why is that needed?  It's not.  So, Flippin' Pizza can not only win "best" pizza, but also do so without overloading its products with insane amounts of crap.   


Disclaimer: Just to be clear-- i have no connection to this or any other food manufacturer or restaurant.