Scam American companies are using to manipulate ingredient lists

jjtheblunt

@dang : the title shortener seems to have semantically goofed via syntactically having goofed

s0rce

I guess if you just look at the first ingredient but its both obvious there are multiple sources of sugar/simple carbs and that jam is typically very heavily sweetened; this is how it has a long shelf life.

happytoexplain

I have thought about this hack before while looking at ingredient lists. I don't know what the best wording would be to establish the spirit of the law, but obviously this should be banned.

cwillu

> I included 10 more popular American foods where this same “ingredients slitting” scam tactic is being used at the end of the video Rage for views.

dawnerd

Is it really a scam though? They still have to list all of the sweeteners. Not all sweeteners work the same too. And... not limited to American companies...

gruez

Deception is bad, but from a nutritional point of view this really shouldn't be an issue for informed consumers (ie. people who read the ingredient lists) given that "nutrition facts" also exists. 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless if it came from a strawberry, fruit juices, or HFCS. This is especially true in highly processed foods, where the processing eliminates any advantage that "natural" sugars have.

gumby

I remember looking at a carton of Whole Foods soy milk that prominently said “no added sugar”. I looked on the back and after water the second ingredient was “dehydrated cane juice”. The food system has been gamed forever.

thaumasiotes

There's a city-level law in Santa Cruz (California) that levies a punitive tax on beverages that contain added sugar. It's weird in a couple of ways. "All-natural juice" is exempt, and it's defined by whether the sugar is "added". So if you combine 20 gallons of orange juice and evaporate the water away until it's reached the concentration of sugar you want, that's fine; if you get one gallon of juice and add sugar until you've reached the same concentration, you're subject to the tax. Oranges contain enough sugar that this is viable for orange juice. Limes don't, so limeade is taxed very heavily while orange juice that contains the same amount of sugar is exempt. Milk products (dairy or imitation) are exempt, and they are legally defined by the first ingredient (for milk) or first two ingredients (for imitation milk). Chocolate milk isn't a sugar-added beverage, because it's a milk product. Eggnog is a milk product too. This second point seems to explain why it's important for companies to manipulate which ingredients are listed first. There's really no chance of misleading the consumer, because right above the legally-mandated and legally sensitive ingredients list you'll see the legally mandated and not legally sensitive nutrition facts, which will tell you that eggnog is about 17% sugar by weight or that, to use the example here, Smucker's strawberry jam is 60% sugar. ( https://www.smuckers.com/fruit-spreads/jam/strawberry-jam )

montag

Prefixing the title with “The” would make it a lot easier to parse.

crazygringo

It's not a scam. And added sugars are listed prominently in the nutrition facts. It's the fact that different sugars have different properties. In terms of texture, moisture, etc. And they can be used at different stages of the manufacturing process. There's nothing wrong with this. Nutrition facts clearly label the total added sugars. Plus, strawberries are often going to be listed first anyways because traditional jam is approximately a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar. So even if it were just one type of sugar, strawberries could still be listed first.

WarmWash

I think even worse than this is the disconnect between a product name and the actual composition of the product. Its most rampant with juices, where every juice is actually just apple juice (from concentrate, so mostly water anyway) with a splash of [fruit] juice thrown in (also from concentrate, so also mostly water). Maybe if you are lucky you'll catch an apple shown on the front label behind the huge passion fruit or whatever. This even extends to clothing, where stuff like "Wool Sweater" is 5% wool 15% cotton and 80% polyester. It should be a law that the primary ingredient of a product being the leading noun in the name of the product.

rafram

@WallStreetApes is not a reliable source on literally any topic in the world (maybe besides how to make money by being a right-wing Twitter content farm). This being on the front page is a discredit to HN.

whall6

How about: just eat whole foods

yummypaint

Simply adopting reasonable labeling rules proven in other countries would fix a lot of problems in general. Japan has a great system for beverages. It wouldn't hurt if we adopted their safety standards around eggs either. https://xn--btro1dr1yrpow7m.com/en/what-are-the-rules-for-ju...

xnx

Focus on the macros first. Ingredients don't tell you much.

m463

The problem I had was figuring if a product had Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. I found that if I wash my sheets with detergents with it, the first night my sheets make me feel like I'm sleeping with a sunburn. Apparently toothpaste with SLS might cause canker sores. It is deliberately hard to determine! lol, here's a website: https://namephantom.com/other-names-for-sodium-lauryl-sulfat... they use different names on purpose.

diogenescynic

There's an entire industry of this--often operating under the term 'nutraceuticals' (i.e. food additives/preservatives) and other weird stuff. My friend works for one of these companies and was telling me to NEVER eat the Chinese sausages from Costco because they use a bunch of weird anti-fungal ingredients that they just label 'natural flavoring'. This is going on with literally everything sold at the grocery store. You can't even buy just Italian pasta and assume it's safe--Italians use Canadian wheat for most pasta which uses glyphosate. If you want glyphosate free products, you have to actually buy specialty Italian pastas that use Italian wheat. It's insane how hard it is to just eat non-processed foods.

gchamonlive

Thanks for reminding me not to buy American anymore https://xd1.dev/2025/09/not-buying-american-anymore

hereme888

Most people make money ultimately by lying and deceiving/manipulating. Either works for a company whose income is based on the practice, or directly participates in them. Of course at the expense of others. In this case, our health. Is your resume any more truthful than these ingredient labels?

spullara

for the no added sugar or whatever, just look at the calories. they generally tell you the story.