Whole Foods and other food retailers for wealthy elites have been charged with being deceptive, because they add sugar to products but call it 'evaporated cane juice' instead of what it really is - refined sugar. They have gotten a legal group to split hairs, arguing that while plain old added sugar and evaporated cane juice are from crushed cane stalks, because the manufacturing process is slightly different, it is not just regular added sugar, despite what every chemist in the world knows.
Regular sugar and "evaporated cane juice" are made by heating the liquid into concentrated syrup, but refined sugar goes through repeated cycles of filtration and crystallization while evaporated cane juice is only refined once. For that minor nuance, lawyers argue it is "more natural" than other sugar and so their clients should not sued for deceptive marketing.
Good luck arguing that evaporated cane juice is more natural than high fructose corn syrup using subjective criteria like that.
The FDA warned companies about this deception in 2009 and naturally, pardon the pun, lawsuits followed. So now companies have their own lawyers to try and create lots of different types of sugar, even though chemically they are identical. California’s Unfair Competition and False Advertising Laws forbid creating phrases that mislead consumers and urging them to pay a premium for products they incorrectly believe to be healthier than products containing refined sugar.
Sugar is still sugar. In 2011, FDA affirmed that and told the offending companies to start calling it sugar. After all, “turbinado sugar” is still sugar, as is “muscovado sugar” and both those have slightly difference processes as well. Only organic food groups think they are above the law when it comes to honesty.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRe...