A Matter of Taste

Anyone who knows Jason knows that he can be very opinionated. And he’s not afraid to voice his opinions on a given topic….sometimes at great length. Recently, he’s been opining on the evils of high fructose corn syrup. He’s concerned about its health effects of course but also has a strong dislike for the corn lobby as a whole. After listening to him go on and on about his concerns for the umpteenth time one morning over breakfast, I finally told him to put up or shut up. You see Jason is the resident pancake-maker in our little family (generally making them for us to eat one breakfast a week) and loves nothing more than dousing his hot-off-the-griddle pancakes with good ol’ Aunt Jemima Pancake Syrup. Let’s take a look at the ingredients, shall we?

 As you probably could have guessed the stuff is pretty much entirely high-fructose corn syrup!  No maple syrup (or even maple flavoring for that matter) in sight….no wonder they have to sell it as “pancake syrup.”  Which is why I told him that if he really thought HFCS was evil then maybe he should stop his blatant consumption of it. To show my support, I even bought him his very own bottle of pure Vermont maple syrup for Valentine’s Day (so romantic, I know).

Well apparently he actually listened and now he’s on a roll, determined to rid his life of as much high-fructose corn syrup as is possible. Next on his hit list---ginger ale.  We generally limit our soda intake to the occasional restaurant, but Jason likes to stock our fridge with those mini cans of ginger ale (a work week treat when water for dinner just won’t do). Of course as with most sodas, the typical ginger ale is chock full of the dreaded HFCS. However, a number of companies are starting to make sodas with cane sugar as well and Jason decided to make it his mission to find an “all natural” ginger ale. After a quick trip to the local Whole Foods (our usual grocery store left us empty-handed), we came home with a six-pack of their 365 ginger ale and the idea to do our own version of the Pepsi Challenge: a blind taste test pitting the traditional HFCS ginger ale (In this case Seagram’s Ginger Ale) versus a cane sugar version.

The verdict? We could definitely tell the difference between the two. Not so much on a sweetness level (we both thought they were equally sweet), but more on a ginger-flavored level. The Seagram’s brand was a bit “softer” (for lack of a better description) than the 365 brand which had a bit more zing. And while we may prefer that softer bite now, it’s probably because that is what we are used to tasting.  Honestly, we drink the stuff so infrequently that the hardest thing about making the switch will likely be saying goodbye to the mini cans (we're partial to the portion control). Now if I could just find an all natural, zero calorie drink (other than water, of course)....