Don't be fooled by a pretty label!

I have gotten pretty darn good at spotting foods that contain HFCS and those that don't.  But...sometimes even I am fooled.  A couple of weekends ago my family and I were dining at a favorite restaurant of ours.  My husband bought a root beer. 

Henry Weinhard's Root Beer - Gourmet Soda, Draught-Style Head

We could have a whole separate discussion about the negatives of sodas in general.  But, I'll be the first to admit that I like a good soda.  Once upon a time I loved Coke.  Not so much anymore.  Cokes taste too sickly sweet to me now, and I almost always regret it when I order one.  But, there are cane sugar based specialty sodas out there that do float my boat (Virgil's Real Cola, for example).   I rarely buy sodas, but I do occasionally like to indulge in a soda as a special treat. 

But I digress.  My husband bought a root beer.  It was a nice looking root beer with a fancy label.  A label that screamed cane sugar and not HFCS to me.   I liked it so much (a rarity with root beer) that I traded my iced tea for his soda.  As always, I flipped the bottle to look at the ingredients.  I can't help it.  It's what I do.  You can guess what's next, right?  Take a look at the ingredients:

In case you can't quite read that, the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup.  Curses!

So, lesson learned.  Don't be fooled by pretty labels.  Looks can be very deceiving!