Sneaky sugar

THE DEVIL WE SHOULD KNOW BETTER

Gruen (a television program about advertising and spin), last night had a feature on sugar - the evils of - and how the sugar industry is circumnavigating the bad hype. So I was interested to see as I entered Aldi this morning, a special on Expressi coffee syrups. Now Expressi as you probably know is the Aldi coffee capsule system - and pretty good coffee it makes too - though in a not very eco friendly way I guess. So what were coffee syrups? Was it just a coffee flavoured syrup you used to flavour stuff? No it turns out it's really sugar in a more expensive and disguised way. You add it to your coffee. As the Gruen panel pointed out last night we used to put sugar, sometimes quite a lot, into our sugar and tea. I did too, but as the evils of sugar became known - and they have been known for decades now, and as coffee became a much trendier drink, sugar was used less and less. Obviously some people still do sugar their drinks - or use artificial sweeteners - but generally speaking I think it is used less. We prefer the true coffee taste unadulterated by sugar. A bit like smoking which has declined too in response to all the negative publicity. Which must have been a bit of a blow for the sugar industry. So sugar has morphed into syrup and has added flavouring to make it more exotic. And you can use it in milk shakes too as the advertising says. Expensive too - $2.99 for a small bottle on a special, so presumably more normally, whereas sugar is a ridiculous $1.00 a kilo. When you think about it, that is so cheap that you wonder the sugar industry is making any money at all.

I have spoken about the need for sweetness before so I shall say no more on that, but the coffee syrup and the Gruen program did highlight to me the endless resourcefulness of companies to market their goods in a way that suits the current thinking.

Witness the other recent development in selling sugar - the exotic sugars - now available in your supermarket aisle.

Marketed under the label of Sugars of the World, it is really, I think a CSR product (proudly sourced and endorsed by CSR). The website features phrases such as 'hand sourced', 'traditionally farmed', 'exotic locations' and has little videos about the production together with what to do with them all. It is very upmarket and the product itself is no doubt pretty expensive. And not very Australian for an Australian company. Even the caster sugar is French (and therefore better) and "has a well developed sweetness, with a light yet hedonistic note on the palate". Now how pretentious is that?! Obviously aligning themselves with the fine food and wine scene - things like wine and chocolate. And CSR are not the only company involved in this - there are other smaller - more boutique - companies jumping on the bandwagon.

So sugar is not dead yet, even though we have been aware of its dangers for a very long time. All very interesting and entertaining but beware.

And I have to say this project has made my visits to the supermarket even more interesting than they were before. You notice things you might not have previously.

Another time I might write about why all yoghurt drinks seem to come from Korea. Why Korea?