“Food Babe” turns transparency campaign focus on Samuel Adams
I’m still in awe of everything that has happened in last 24 hours and gathering the facts and information from both companies. […] P.S. Here’s Samuel Adams’s facebook page – Ask them to come clean and stop serving #MysteryBeer!
Over 40 comments on the Samuel Adams Facebook page and counting in the past hour or so. Fortunately, this should die off fairly quickly being a Friday afternoon in June and all…
Edit: Samuel Adams already does a nice job of laying out recipe ingredients on its website.
via Facebook | Food Babe.
Need a refresher? Jay Brooks wrote up a summary of what happened leading up to this point.
Breweries: Samuel Adams
She should be referred to as the “food troll” from now on.
“Edit: Samuel Adams already does a nice job of laying out recipe ingredients on its website.”
Well, yes and no. Samuel Adams does a good job of showing things like a list of hop varieties and and a list of malt varieties, but it doesn’t really do a full ingredients list in the style of the ingredient list you’d find on a food or soda label. There’s a “special ingredients” section, but even with that there is no real warranty that the total list you’d derive from adding the three sections together is complete (What if there is something besides malts and hops that is a “non-special” ingredient?), and it doesn’t show quantities of each ingredient relative to each other.
What Samuel Adams does is great for the beer lover in the abstract, but isn’t really adequate for people with allergy or nutritional concerns, or really anyone who wants to know what they are drinking down to the last detail for whatever reasons.
I hope Sam joins AB-Inbev and Miller in publishing full ingredient lists online.
By the way, I should mention that I think the Food Babe has done a great service to the beer consumer with this campaign and I hope she keeps it up. Looking over the website she has, I think in general she is too “extreme” when it comes to food and what she requires of it, *but* I think in a vacuum a simple ingredient list is a fair thing to ask for.
Ideally, beer would have mandatory labeling the same as Coca-Cola, with an ingredient list and things like a calorie count and other nutritional information on every label. I don’t get why alcoholic beverages get a pass on this stuff. If orange juice needs an informative label, so does Budweiser. You’re still ingesting it.
I like what Sam Adams has done in that regard, it’s better than most brewers have been doing up until the last few days.
However, there is still a little wiggle room that they leave there. They list categories like hop varieties, malt varieties, yeast strains, and special ingredients. All that is great, and actually more informative to the beer enthusiast than a simple ingredients list in some respects. What is missing, though, is how much of each ingredient is in the brews relative to each other ingredient (the descending lists you see on nutrition labels for food and non-alcoholic beverage list things in order of quantity) and any sort of warranty that it is a complete list of ingredients.
For example, let’s say in addition to beer, hops, yeast, and water, there is, say, a dye, a chemical, or an ingredient like rice or corn that they don’t want to advertise. One would *think* those would go in the special ingredients section, but by not having a straight forward full list, they could be getting around listing things that they don’t want to list by saying “Well, they aren’t special, and they aren’t hops, yeast, or barley, so there was no where to put them, and we didn’t mean to imply they weren’t in there”. I doubt that’s going on, but a straight-forward ingredients list at the bottom of each page done in the style of a nutritional label would eliminate all doubt.
I’d say Sam Adams does a good job of informing people what’s in there beers in general, but there are still little issues with the way they present information that I would like to see them fix.
Sorry for the double comment. I didn’t think the first one went through, so I posted again, and now I see them both. Doh. Feel free to delete the duplicate.
When will the public (sheep) wise up and see that all the Food Babe is doing is enraging the non-scientific public in order to make big bucks. Most of her arguments are non-scientific. She has no food science background. Google Food Babe and read the articles in Forbes, The Montreal Gazette and many others that debunk her claims. Some of her ideas are totally crackpot. Her logic goes like this: There is a chemical in beer that is used in making concrete and as a solvent for cleaning cars and in paint. When broken down, it’s elements are used as rocket fuel. Of course the chemical is water. WAKE UP! DON’T BE FOOLED!
@celcus – not so fast amigo! Food Babe has done a HUGE service to the food community and the beer community as well. Don’t you care to know what’s in your food? I do. Sometimes it takes a heavy hand to get an answer out of a Corporation.
Food Babe has the attention of Corporate food, farming, etc. and I’m thrilled that she does. Why was it ok for Subway to put chemicals in the bread used in the US that were outlawed everywhere else? It wasn’t – and she called them out on it. They listened. Learn more about what she’s up to – then reconsider your comment.
And – have you seen her? She’s about the farthest thing from a troll that I’ve run into in the non-GMO, truth in labeling movement going.
VIVA FOOD BABE!
charmcitycrab I am amazed at your comments. The food babe has no qualifications whatsoever, and thus, she’s either too ignorant to know what common beer ingredients are (example: isinglass) or, much more likely, she is trying to make a buck off of fearmongering, expecting that YOU don’t know what various ingredients are, or how they’re used.
First off, if anyone has real food allergies/issues (such as Celiac) that INDIVIDUAL already knows how to avoid specific products, and knows what his or her risks are. I know first hand. I don’t need some idiotic blogger to help me avoid things that are going to make me unwell.
We can use CHEMICAL names for many common products and make them sound scary. Doing a little homework can help you recognize what’s what, and learning how products are actually made (which is not what food babe is about) can help you realize which chemicals are actually in the bottle itself.
Most brewers are proud to tell you that they use grains (barley, wheat, rye, rice, corn,) water and hops. It is our art. Learn about brewing. Many breweries will give you their recipes. Not because you are entitled, or for health reasons, but because they are happy to have you attempt it yourself and come back to recognize how good they are at what they do.
When you stop at a mom and pop bakery for a chocolate chip cookie, do you expect them to give the recipe? When you have an amazing soup or chili, do you expect them to provide the recipe?
You want to drink Sam Adams? Here’s all of their recipes: Water, barley / wheat /rye / rice(probably not) / corn(maybe) / lactose(maybe) / maltodextrine(maybe,) / fruit(maybe,) / coffee(maybe,) hops, yeast. MAYBE a fining agent like irish moss or isinglass. There’s nothing scary. It’s not even unhealthy. Crab will undoubtedly make more people sick.
Sam Adams will certainly tell you this as well. I hope they never give you their recipes. Because they shouldn’t have to. You now have a nearly complete list of the possible ingredients in their beer. And the food babe is still a troll, most likely making money off of ignorant people who are too lazy to do their own homework, on readily available information. Because if someone has a blog, they know what they’re talking about, right? I mean, she’s certified as an expert in her field, right?
Food Troll doesn’t care about science, or food. It is money that drives her brand of Yellow Blogging.
what a total farce. Stop trying to hack at Sam just because they started early, did well and grew to a popular brand. They are craft, they are a grown up brewery. Stop trying to attack them because of jealousy. Either drink the beer or don’t
the truth comes down most people dont give a dam about what they eat or drink then later they find out oops i got cancer. The best thing to do is make everything yourself , no one is going to tell youthe truth about ingredients , they are all liars.
Read “Forbes” magazine for their reviews on the Food Babe ha ha ha ha what an idiot. Sure read “lamestream” information and expect the truth. duuuuuuuh I watch da news and I am informed…WAKE-UP FOOD-BABE HATERS AND DRINK THE HFCS.
she is trying to help you avoid gmo food.. and crap.. your choice what you feed your body..