I’ve always had a real hard time with certain advertising phrases. Some people have a knack for reducing the English language to meaningless dribble. Take for instance the following formerly meaningful terms:

• World Famous
• Homemade
• Natural
• Best

Today I was on a quest for liquid refreshment. We’re not usually soda drinkers, but some friends had extra, so I pulled out the bottle of 7up they brought over.

News flash: 7up is “natural“.

What the crap. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to be joking me. Since when is high fructose corn syrup natural?! A few gems from wikipedia reveal how naturally fresh this drink really is.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a form of corn syrup which has undergone enzymatic processing in order to increase its fructose content.

The production process of HFCS was developed separately by Japanese and American researchers in the 1970s.

High-fructose corn syrup is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a syrup that contains fructose. First, cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called oligosaccharides. Then, an enzyme called glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains…

Okay, enough. Hm… about at the part when it starts talking about Japanese researchers is where my dreams of little boys and girls picking fresh fruit from some alpine vegetation are crushed by a bucket of enzymes in a processing facility somewhere in Tokyo.

I guess if Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is “Homemade”, then 7up is natural as pine nuts. Geez, people.