I just got back from a trip to Europe, where one of the things you don’t see on the labels of candy bars and sodas is High Fructose Corn Syrup. I don’t think the sweetener’s technically banned there, but it’s very rare. So it’s no surprise that folks like the Corn Refiners Association, a trade group lobbying for HFCS, are waging a big battle to maintain its market position here in the US. We’ve written about their legal squabbles before.
And I’ve noticed that over the past few years, they’ve enlisted Adweek in helping them make their case. I get emails like this one, pushing a “webinar” to disseminate new research:
What does this say about Adweek that they’re taking sides in this issue? Even if they’re simply attaching the magazine’s name to it, is this another case of business journalism becoming biased? Or is this the future of legitimizing “branded content”? Would you accept the information you’d hear at this webinar–which indicates that consumers don’t distinguish between sweeteners very much–at face value because a magazine is attached to it?
