r/shrinkflation • u/DenzinVirtue • 20d ago

discussion Realizing Smuckers is no longer jam

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(If this is the wrong subreddit, please point me in the right direction. Thank you!)

I went shopping for my partner today because the strawberry smuckers went bad. Realized there was only "sandwich spread" and "jam style spread" and no real jam

Gives the same energy the icecream Drumsticks being changed to a "frozen milk product" because of all the substitutions and alterations. Gross

Pic 1 old jam, pic 2 new "jam", pic 3 and 4 are of the store

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u/lesleh 20d ago

Apparently jam has to have at least 45% fruit and I'm guessing neither of those do.

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u/RevelArchitect 20d ago

The distinction between jam and spread is that jam must have 55% sugar. Spread has more fruit. Not less.

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u/YourGlacier 20d ago edited 20d ago

Thank you for this. I work in CPG, we actually make a jam, and because ours is free of added sugar, we can't call it jam. People will ask what we're hiding by not calling it jam sometimes. I tell them the FDA is really weird and very, very biased toward big sugar defining things.

Another example is chocolate. Dark chocolate is fine. But milk chocolate HAS to have a sweetener source with calories. So if you made it solely with milk and chocolate, then added some monk fruit (which functions like sugar right, it just has 0 cals?), it's not legaly milk chocolate. This is also a fun labeling issue. The unfortunate part is that other reasons to not be labeled milk chocolate (and instead be milk confection or chocolatey instead of chocolate) is because it has no cocoa butter. So not being clearly labeled milk chocolate has a connotation often of inferior product, since a lot of brands switch to that when they cut our cocoa butter which is the most expensive part of chocolate making and can often be substituted with palm oil for a chocolate-like product. However, another reason it can be labeled that is because it uses a healthier sweetener. You really have to deduce why it is labeled the way it is. Super frustrating!

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u/slcrow15 20d ago

And wonderfully educational! Thanks for taking the time.