OK – I admit I drink this even though it has Splenda in it; the Splenda aftertaste? Still not used to it. But the Energy part of OceanSpray’s Cranergy drink – love it. I was actually disturbed though when I bought the drink the first time, tasted the aftertaste and thought, this HAS to be diet and looked at the bottle and saw no DIET label. I did at that point see the Splenda label and was shocked that it didn’t have to have the word “Diet” on the label when it clearly contained a sugar substitute.

Old Cranergy bottle on the left and new Cran-Energy bottle on the right

Obviously that would be the best way to be forewarned that it may not taste exactly yummy, and then we can make our decisions from there. Luckily the Splenda label was on the front, if we noticed it, so we could also decide if we’d prefer not to ingest artificial that may or may not have been tested long enough to prove they are completely safe. See this article on Sugar substitutes and the potential danger of Splenda

But last month, the old bottles of Cranergy started to disappear off the grocery shelves, replaced by more traditional bottles (looking more like OceanSpray’s other juice drinks), and we have an interesting mystery – the Splenda label has disappeared.  The product name is slightly different, Cran-Energy instead of Cranergy, the ingredients and nutritional information are exactly the same.

But now, the bottle looks more like every other non-diet /non-Splenda juice drink and you’d have to recognize that the “sucralose” listed in the ingredients is an artificial sweetener. It looks to me like they decided the best way to boost sales of the drink was to disguise it, hiding in plain sight and see if they can trick people into thinking it a regular juice drink.  Shame on OceanSpray; why don’t you just offer us an energy drink with some sugar in it and give us an easily identifiable diet option if we want it???

Splenda symbol clearly seen on the left front of the old bottle - nowhere to be seen on the new bottle