In recent years, sugar-free food as a kind of food with health halo, its national acceptance is getting higher and higher. In addition to people with diabetes and high blood sugar, many healthy people now begin to consciously reduce their sugar intake and choose low-sugar or sugar-free foods for health purposes.

Yuanqi Forest, founded in 2016, has quickly seized the market and become a domestic online celebrity beverage brand with the promotion of "sugar-free, non-carbonated drinks" and multi-channel and all-media marketing.

However, in the past two days, things have happened at the Yuanqi forest stall, and they have been on the top of the hot search.

Yuanqi Forest apologizes for 0 Sugar propaganda

On the evening of April 11, Yuanqi Forest issued a notice on its official Weibo Corp, saying: we did not make clear the difference between 0 sugar and 0 sugar in the product logo and promotion of Yuanqi forest milk tea, which is easy to lead to misunderstanding.

Through recent efforts, we have made the following modifications and upgrades to milk tea: most Yuanqi forest milk tea produced since February 4 and all Yuanqi forest milk tea produced since March 18, the packaging has changed from "0 sucrose and low fat" to "low sugar and low fat". All Yuanqi forest milk tea produced since March 20 no longer contains crystalline fructose in its raw materials.

Netizen: forget about cheating money, but also cheating me to gain weight.

In this regard, Chinanews.com commented that "milk tea control" is afraid of getting fat, but more afraid of buying fat and deceptive products. It is clearly written on the list of ingredients, but the propaganda is playing word games.

Not every consumer will take a closer look at the list of ingredients, but consumers can see the correct attitude of an enterprise. If you want to be a new domestic brand trusted by consumers, the products should be clean and things should be frank.

Triple in a yearThe latest valuation is $6 billion!

On April 9, Yuanqi Forest announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, with a post-investment valuation of $6 billion (about 40 billion yuan). This is the sixth round of financing and the second round of strategic financing of Yuanqi Forest since the Angel Round in 2018.

In this round of financing, there are new shareholders Warbug Pincus, L Catterton and Temasek, as well as old shareholders Sequoia Capital China, Banyan Capital and Longhu Capital. Among them, Warbug Pincus is the largest new investor.

As the star project of the consumer goods track, Yuanqi Forest financing is making rapid progress. Last year, the last round of financing under way at Yuanqi Forest was valued at about $2 billion. After the completion of this round of financing, Yuanqi Forest has been valued at US $6 billion. This means that the valuation of Yuanqi Forest has risen about threefold in less than a year.

The surge in valuations is directly related to the growth of Yuanqi Forest over the past year. It is reported that Yuanqi Forest achieved sales of nearly 2.9 billion yuan in 2020, of which soda bubble water series products accounted for about 70% of the contribution.

Official data show that during the period of June 18, 2019, Yuanqi Forest sold 2.26 million bottles of drinks in Tmall, winning the first place in sales and sales of Tmall drinks, with a total sales of 3.23 million bottles and total sales exceeding 15 million yuan. In May 2020, monthly sales reached 260 million yuan, exceeding the whole of 2018. In the first five months of 2020, a total of 190 million bottles were sold, with total sales reaching 660 million yuan.

The concept of sugar-free food originated in foreign markets. The so-called sugar-free can be understood as replacing simple sugars (sucrose, fructose and maltose, etc.) that are prone to tooth decay, obesity and hyperglycemia with polyglycosols such as xylitol and functional oligosaccharides, which are not easily absorbed by the human body. Its function is to make food not only taste like sugar, but also without the high energy of simple sugar, which is more beneficial to health.

For example, in 2005, Coca-Cola Company launched Coke Zero in the United States. In recent years, this trend has begun to prevail in China, and many people who are keen to lose weight even regard "zero sugar" drinks as a kind of "gospel".

After sugar-free food entered the domestic market, it soon had a place. In fact, it is not difficult to understand its popularity. With the improvement of living standards, there are more and more obese and diabetic patients worldwide, and they have a rigid demand for sugar-free food. More and more people think that it is healthier to choose sugar-free foods for themselves and their family and friends.

But is the "zero sugar" drink really free to drink?

Experts point out that sugar substitutes such as aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame are much sweeter than sucrose, but their calories are 0. Sugar substitutes such as xylitol and erythritol also have considerable sweetness and produce very low calories.

Although sweeteners provide a variety of options for people who lose weight, this does not mean that people who lose weight can indulge in sugar-free drinks. Drinking too much is not only not conducive to weight loss, but may also cause discomfort such as abdominal distension and flatulence.

Liu Jia, an attending physician and doctor of the Clinical Nutrition Department of the third affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, said that people who lose weight can drink sugar-free zero-calorie drinks because they are zero calories. However, if you eat too much sugar-free or sugar-substituted food, there will be reactive hunger, resulting in an open appetite, so it is necessary to control your intake, otherwise it will cause obesity. In addition, some sugar-free drinks contain large amounts of phosphoric acid, which will affect the body's absorption of elements such as calcium, iron and zinc, and increase the risk of osteoporosis.

It should also be noted that different zero-sugar products should specifically analyze their effects and harm, such as sugar-free cola contains caffeine, insomnia is not recommended to drink, sugar-free candy also has some damage to teeth.

On the one hand, long-term consumption of sugar-free drinks may increase demand for other high-calorie sweet foods.

On the other hand, sugar-free drinks have a light taste and give people the feeling of low calories, which can easily lead to increased intake of other foods.

Zhu Yi, an associate professor at the School of Food at China Agricultural University, pointed out that taking too much substitute sugar will disrupt the intestinal flora, thus affecting metabolism, and will also give the brain the wrong command to eat real sugar, and then insulin secretes blood sugar. In the long run, the insulin will be out of balance, but will become fat, and it is more likely to cause symptoms such as diarrhea and abdominal distension.

In addition, some new tea drinks that claim to be sugar-free, in which cream ingredients, pearls and other ingredients also contain sugar, which is still calorie after digestion and absorption. Therefore, tea without sugar does not mean low calories, and excessive consumption still carries the risk of obesity.