False information from company - Advertising Standards?

[Deleted User]

Not the biggest deal in the world, but something that irritates me and I'm wondering if Advertising Standards would be interested.

In summary, several months ago I emailed Silver Spoon to ask how much Aspartame was in their Half Spoon sugar. The label states that there is 98.9% sugar, with the remaining 1.1% being Aspartame and Acesulfame-K, but does not state the amounts of each.

First off I got a brush off, like they didn't know what I was talking about. I emailed back and received the information that 'half' of the product is sugar, and then 1/3 Aspartame and 1/3 Acesulfame-K. Laughable on so many levels, not least that 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/3 is more than one!

Again I emailed and this time received the response that Half Spoon was 0.5g per 2g serving, which is 25%! Clearly ludicrous when we know the actual figure is less than 1.1%. The person also stated that, and I wrote, 'a leading brand diet cola contains around 14g of aspartame per can.' Again, nonsense, being that the actual figure is 50 times smaller.

When I wrote back explaining how these figures are wrong, I simply received an email saying, 'The figures are correct.'

So basically I think it's crazy that a company can repeatedly issue wildly inaccurate figures then refuse to acknowledge they are wrong and essentially refuse to provide the customer with an accurate list of ingredients.

My question is, is this the kind of thing Advertising Standards would be interested in?

user1977

Whatever they tell you in your correspondence with them isn't "advertising" so I doubt the ASA is relevant. Do you think the information on the labelling is incorrect or less than they are legally required to state? If so then I suspect that's a Trading Standards matter.

RefluentBeans

If you feel the advertising is misleading then yes. I don’t think that this is in the remit of the ASA - as they deal with adverts. This is more likely a food standards agency issue, especially as from your emails there appears to be a confusion about what the product actually contains. 

But I also think it can be a bit unfair to expect that knowledge to be provided to you from the supplier. They’re providing the information that is required to you. You want to know how much aspartame is in the product? Well as you’ve done the maths - per 100g, 98.9g is sugar so 1.1g is split between aspartame and acesulfame-K. Want to the exact amounts of the ingredients - well the manufacturer hasn’t got to provide that information. In the same way Coke hasn’t got to provide you the amount of each ingredient in its recipe. 

The likelihood is that there is less than 1% aspartame in the product. But some bags that may be closer to 0.75% and in others it may be closer to 1%. I would expect that there is a target amount of each compound, and they quality control to ensure it’s within tolerances to avoid the outliers. 

I think the complaint would probably not result in anything other than a PR statement line being produced saying ‘we have less than 1.5g mix of sweeteners in our product; meaning you have to use half the amount of the product as it’s sweeter than conventional sugar’. This I feel is just poor customer service training over anything nefarious. 

DullGreyGuy

Exact recipe and mechanism of manufacture is going to be a trade secret and not one they are just going to tell anyone that emails/phones so that they can go off and make their own. They no doubt will claim they spent a lot of R&D on finding the best ratios etc.

This sounds like a typical customer service issue... staff aren't given the information and so rather than saying "I dont know" or "I cannot tell you that" they try and work it out for themselves and clearly are getting it very wrong. In insurance its the same too, someone phones up to ask why their premiums have gone up, agents cannot see why but to be helpful try to work it out with the caller but all they are doing is guessing or applying their own logic. 

Private customer comms are not in the remit of the ASA. You could try Trading Standards or Food Standards Agency but neither are really going to be interested in my opinion. Alternatively, pay for a lab to test it to work it out

tightauldgit

Yeah I don't think things said in email count as advertising for ASA purposes so it's more about food labelling which I think is Trading Standards, however you will find that they've complied with the legal requirements (a company like SS is too big not to have). 

From memory there's no requirement to label with the % of ingredients other than meat so as long as the ingredient is listed and any allergens shown I think it's probably legally OK. 

Did a little bit of digging and the label says 0.8% protein - which I think is the aspartame content because I think aspartame is a protein and acesulfame isn't. Could be wrong on that but looks to be the case. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Buy sugar that doesn't contain aspartame, problem solved  

PHK

Also be aware that percentages will be different when talking about weight and volume. 

Ectophile

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

Buy sugar that doesn't contain aspartame, problem solved  

The whole point of Half Spoon is that the 1.1% of sweetener doubles the sweetness of the overall product, so you only need to use half as much of it.  Given how bad refined sugar is, I think that's probably a good thing.

HillStreetBlues

Ectophile said:

The whole point of Half Spoon is that the 1.1% of sweetener doubles the sweetness of the overall product, so you only need to use half as much of it.  Given how bad refined sugar is, I think that's probably a good thing.

Not with some of the stuff coming out about some sweeteners, better the devil you know.

tightauldgit

HillStreetBlues said:

Ectophile said:

The whole point of Half Spoon is that the 1.1% of sweetener doubles the sweetness of the overall product, so you only need to use half as much of it.  Given how bad refined sugar is, I think that's probably a good thing.

Not with some of the stuff coming out about some sweeteners, better the devil you know.

Most of the stuff coming out about sweeteners is overblown by the usual suspects in the press. As far as I can tell there's nothing more dangerous about aspartame than bacon, red meat or going for a walk in a city centre. Sweeteners are also some of the most heavily tested and research chemicals on Earth. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Ectophile said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

Buy sugar that doesn't contain aspartame, problem solved  

The whole point of Half Spoon is that the 1.1% of sweetener doubles the sweetness of the overall product, so you only need to use half as much of it.  Given how bad refined sugar is, I think that's probably a good thing.

I kind of get the point the point of sweeteners in certain foods and drinks but when it comes to a bag of sugar just use half the amount, your body will quickly adjust and you'll not notice the reduced level of sweetness after a short time.

As it's MSE a 1kg bag of Silver Spoon Half Spoon sugar appears to be about twice the price of regular sugar so by using half the amount of regular sugar it's 75% cheaper   

Added sugar isn't good for you but neither is sweetener, forgetting the recent news on whether it causes cancer, it's more a question of how the brain reacts to sweetness and wider health implications of this.

If you are generally a healthy person you likely have nothing to worry about from consuming a bit of sweetener but equally if you are a healthy person you don't have any need to substitute refined sugar for sweetener. If you are concerned for your health replacing sugar with sweetener isn't the answer, cutting out the volume of sugar is.