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Comment by marky1991 | Hacker News Reader

marky1991

How is this a 'hack'? It's listing ingredients in order of quantity. The nutrition facts already tell you total amount of sugar per serving separately, that's not what the ingredient list is for to begin with. Also, I don't have much sympathy for someone surprised that jelly contains a lot of sugar: A) Have you tasted it B) Do you have any idea what jelly is or why it exists C) Have you ever made it?

Jelly inherently, as a direct consequence of its very reason for existing, contains a lot of sugar, duh.

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> Jelly inherently, as a direct consequence of its very reason for existing, contains a lot of sugar, duh.

If a typical jelly recipe calls for pounds of fruit and a few cups of sugar wouldn't be normal to expect fruit to be the first ingredient? If a company is using more added sugars than fruit that should be obvious without having to look at the nutrition facts

For the product in question, they aren't using more added sugars than fruit.

As you can read on the label:

    Ingredients: Strawberries, High Fructose Corn syrup, Corn syrup, Sugar, Fruit Pectin, Citric Acid.

    Serving Size              20g

    Total Sugars              12g
       Total Added Sugars      9g

Each tablespoon of jam contains 10-11 grams of fruit and 9-10 grams of added sugar. The jam is 60% sugar overall because there is sugar in the fruit too.

And that's weighted by share of the output. If you're measuring the input, this recipe is going to take a lot more "fruit" than "sugar", because part of making jam is boiling away a bunch of the water that occurs in fruit, whereas all of the added sugar is retained. (Corn syrup, however, seems to be about 2/3 water, which will make that comparison look worse.)

Typical jelly & jamrecipes call for close to 1:1 fruit to sugar. E.g. ¹Ball mason jars strawberry jam recipe calls for 7 cups sugar to 5 cups strawberries. Martha Stewart calls for 3/4 cup sugar for every cup of juice² in making jelly. The Joy of Cooking (44th printing 1988)notes that "Store-bought jellies, according to law, must have at least 45% fruit and 55% sugar". Etc.

¹https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=classic-strawberry-ja...

²https://www.marthastewart.com/1127955/basic-jelly-recipe

³ ISBN 0-02-604570-2, Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer & Becker, page 832

You can make jam with a lot less sugar. I make my own strawberry confiture at home and use about 5% sugar, plus pectine and sweet lemon juice.

There's no way that would be legal to sell. The whole point of the sugar in jam is preservation - you may get away with it for a while in a home canning scenario, but really a jam with 5% sugar is not shelf stable, and needs to be stored under refrigeration (commercial low sugar jams have to add an additional preservative like potassium sorbate instead).

It doesn't matter it's not legal to sell. I keep it in my basement which is cold (around 15 C) all year round, without problems.

The Joy of Cooking's recipes do this, but the total sugar content ends up the same because they boil down the juice into a thick syrup first. The sugar just comes from the same fruit as what's being preserved, instead of cane or beets.

In some jurisdiction, you cannot call that a jam, because you added foreign pectin. A jam must only use the fruit's natural pectin, plus sugar to activate the pectin.

Irrelevant.

It depends on the type of fruit though, since there are some fruits that won't set properly with the low-sugar pectin. (This only applies to home canning though, since the industrial manufacturers should have access to other thickeners.)

It does come out a bit less viscous than industrial jams, although enough that it can stay on top of a slice of bread, but it's much healthier and, more importantly, it tastes so much better. Works with berries pretty well.

> It does come out a bit less viscous than industrial jams, although enough that it can stay on top of a slice of bread

It really depends on the fruit though—most of the time it works great, but there have been a few fruits that wouldn't set at all (closer to a syrup than a jam) with a low-sugar recipe, but set perfectly when I added more sugar.

> and, more importantly, it tastes so much better.

Agreed 100%.

This was my impression. I also find most juices can be diluted at least 25 % and its still incredibly drinkable, you just get more bang for the buck

You can make quick mocktails with a fruit juice as base (or a mini can of Coke, 200ml): 1 part fruit juice, 1 part fizzy water, a little tonic water, a few dashes of your favorite bitter (Angostura, orange, cardamon, etc...) and a slice of lemon or lime.

And I can make a bowl of cereal with a teaspoon of milk.

Pity you think that.

I think my comment was a touch deeper than you caught. Jam doesn’t have a strictly required amount of sugar, it’s not defined as having X amount, so saying “you can make it with less” is two people talking about how much milk makes a bowl of cereal. Both are correct, it’s jam either way and it’s a bowl of cereal either way. Think about it.

You're right, good point.

The hack is to use several different ingredients of the same type where they would have used just one, and doing it just so they can have the ingredient they want listed first as first.

Because the intent is to mislead while staying within the letter of the rules. I don't think it's complicated.

If it is done with intent to mislead consumers, then it is a hack.

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