Blogger Coerces Bud And Miller To Finally Unveil Ingredients
Have you ever wondered what's in your beer besides malt, hops, and barley? Even though most packaged food and drink products provide extensive ingredient lists on their packaging, blogger Vani Hari, also known as the "Food Babe, noticed that most beer companies were surprisingly silent on the nutrition facts front. That's when she decided to start an online petition which gathered over 44,000 signatures, and got the attention of Anheuser-Busch, who then promised to start listing ingredients for their top brands, including Budweiser and Beck's. MillerCoors has also started posting the ingredients in their products.
"When I discovered that beer labels had basically no information about the ingredients, I was stunned," Hari told The Daily Meal. "People all over the world have been blindly drinking beer for years. It was the one thing in my fridge I knew nothing about, so I started to research. I thought asking the two largest manufacturers (Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors) in the United States could lead to eventual transparency within the entire industry."
If you're looking for surprise ingredients in these popular beers, you will be disappointed. MillersCoors listed the ingredients for most of its beers on its Facebook page as "water, barley malt, corn, yeast and hops," while Budweiser has said that the primary ingredients in its beers are "water, barley malt, rice, yeast and hops."
If you're not familiar with Food Babe, she's also the blogger who pushed Subway to remove the "yoga mat" material from its breads.
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Joanna Fantozzi is an Associate Editor with The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @JoannaFantozzi