It all started at the Super Bowl, where a Bud Light commercial roasted Miller Lite and Coors Light for using corn syrup in their beer. In the one-minute clip, a king and his buds travel across land and sea to deliver a shipment of corn syrup to the Coors Light castle.
“Well, well, well,” says the Coors king as they arrive. “Looks like the corn syrup has come home to be brewed. To be clear, we brew Coors Light with corn syrup!”
Not subtle, but funny.
Now parent company MillerCoors can take the joke no longer. On Thursday it sued Anheuser-Busch for the ad because it claims it doesn’t have corn syrup in its beer. Yes, it brews with corn syrup, but the syrup ferments out to become alcohol before the product hits the shelves.
Long before MillerCoors reached its tipping point, Bud’s ad had already ticked off the corn lobby. After it first aired, the National Corn Growers Association tweeted that “America’s corn farmers are disappointed” in the company.
The ad campaign is supposed to scare us all from drinking MillerCoors’ cheap booze because “corn syrup” sounds eerily similar to the bogeyman “high fructose corn syrup.” But corn syrup is 100 percent glucose — the same unsweet sugar in your bread, your pasta, and your blood. Anheuser-Busch capitalizes on our national fear of the high fructose syrup by acting like its beer is healthier than Miller and Coors because it brews with rice. But this is not the case.
Christopher Hamilton, a beer brewer and professor of chemistry at Hillsdale College, told me when the ad first came out that there’s not much health difference between rice and corn.
“For health, there really is not a big difference,” he said. “Corn syrup ferments almost completely and becomes alcohol. So alcohol- and calorie-wise, it would be the same as using rice or corn sugar.”
Corn syrup is a common brewing ingredient in cheap beers — as is rice. To brew beer with corn and rice is inexpensive and not particularly unhealthy. So it looks like Miller and Bud are in the same boat. And even though health consciousness is part of Bud’s new image, a 12-oz. Bud Light is still a bit heavier on calories (at 110) than Coors (102) or Miller (96).
To be fair, Miller started the war in 2016 when it advertised that it had fewer carbs and “more taste” than Bud Light. But now may not be the time for quarreling. Both companies are struggling as beer sales drop and craft beer grows in popularity. Adam Collins, MillerCoors’ vice president of communications, said the companies had been considering an advertising alliance to fight against those bearded hipsters and their IPAs. No more.
“Our view is it made no sense to waste time or money on an industry health campaign when the industry leader was denigrating an ingredient that is widely used across the industry, including Anheuser-Busch,” he said. Anheuser-Busch’s Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer and Stella Artois Cidre both list corn syrup as an active ingredient.
It’s too bad that Miller and Bud are too busy fighting each other to make a better product. When there are so many local beers on the market, why settle for either?
