DISPATCHES FROM INTERBEV 2012, LAS VEGAS

Big beverage players were ‘stuck behind the 8 ball’ on HFCS – Consultant

This content item was originally published on www.beveragedaily.com, a William Reed online publication.

By Ben Bouckley

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Fructose corn syrup High fructose corn High-fructose corn syrup

Picture Copyright: SmSm/Flickr
Picture Copyright: SmSm/Flickr
Martin Concannon, founder and MD of Kentucky-based consultancy, Lafayette Associates, tells BeverageDaily.com how the media firestorm that followed High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) in recent years was in part whipped-up by social media following a 2004 commentary published in the AJCN.

Concannon discussed issues stemming from an address at InterBev given by KDPaine & Partners, which (in research supported by the Corn Refiners Association/CRA) analyzed 272,360 social media posts on high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from Q1 2012.

“What is those hundreds of comments and ReTweets weren’t, in fact, from real people. Or if they are real, their motivations are not what you think they are?”​ Katie Delahaye Paine and Heather Fysh said.

Paine and Fysh found that (1) a small number of ‘users’ (mainly robots, pay-per-click sites, content farms) created a disproportionate amount of content – more than a third of posts are created by 10% of posters, while (2) ‘one-shot posters’ unengaged with content created the majority of posts.

Social media heat, but not light…

As a ‘hot’ social media topic HFCS has attracted extensive mainstream media coverage in recent year, following the 2004 Popkin study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) that hypothesized a link between rising US obesity rates and HFCS in particular.

But Concannon said P2P created a disproportionate ‘negative buzz’ for HFCS, which led to major brands such as Capri Sun changing formulations to cut it out, before eventually switching back more recently.

Concannon told BeverageDaily.com: “Social media really provided quite a lot of heat, but really, not a lot of light, about the science that was pretty quickly refuted, while what was left was really more of a publicity driven controversy about the healthiness of HFCS.”

“In hindsight, we can see (looking at data from Nielsen and elsewhere) that switching away from HFCS was not really a strategy that worked anywhere. You don’t see the performance on the shelf justifying having made a switch to begin with,"​ he added.

Related news

Show more

Related products

show more

Oat Beta-glucan – Clean Label Texturizer

Oat Beta-glucan – Clean Label Texturizer

Content provided by Lantmännen Biorefineries AB | 21-Nov-2023 | White Paper

In today's health-conscious world, consumers seek transparent labels and natural ingredients.

Tagatose—a sweet way to reduce calories.

Tagatose—a sweet way to reduce calories.

Content provided by ASR Group | 18-Oct-2023 | Application Note

Introducing Tagatose - an excellent alternative to high potency sweeteners and sugar alcohols. Tagatose is a rare sugar that’s 90% as sweet as sucrose...

Related suppliers

Follow us

Products

View more

Webinars