Whether it’s yellow, pink or blue it won’t make a difference!
The legendary success of Bill Clinton’s first election as president was all about focus. James Carville, who kept the campaign on target, and coined the phrase “it’s about the economy, stupid” knew that the key to the election was understanding was voters wanted. And it’s the same when it comes to our foods.NutraSweet, an ingredient in many packaged foods and beverages, has decided that in order to grow their business they will now offer the products in yellow, pink and blue packages as a way of…shall we be the first to say it?...confusing consumers.
NutraSweet is aspartame, wait a minute... Equal is aspartame. And wasn’t Equal supposed to be the all successful consumer packaged product for NutraSweet? By the way, it’s the number three brand with 12% of sales, behind Splenda which has about 70% of the sales and Sweet’n Low with 13%.
It will take a lot more than just a confusing package redesign. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about adverse reactions to aspartame than on any other food ingredient in the FDA’s history. There are also over 90 registered side effects to aspartame. Perhaps the reason that Equal hasn’t sold more is that shoppers have read these reports and don’t want to consume the product.
The timing of this announcement is as odd as the ill-conceived concept. Just last week, Coca-Cola and Cargill published a series of scientific health-based studies on their sweetener, Truvia. Truvia is their brand name of Stevia, which I am a huge proponent for. Imagine no calories, great taste and a natural product.
While the FDA hasn’t yet approved it as a sweetener, health focused shoppers have been buying Stevia in packets in the dietary supplement aisles since the mid 1990s. But there is little doubt that now with Coke’s interest (and investments) that we should soon see yet another “new” Coke – this time sweetened naturally without either high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners.
And no doubt, Truvia will also enter the individual packets war, probably in a white or beige package…and no doubt will be the winner as more of us seek out less processed, less confusing and all natural foods; regardless of the package color.
What’s your favorite sweetener?
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