This should make it all better.
The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten its image with a new name: corn sugar.
The Corn Refiners Association applied Tuesday to the federal government for permission to use the name on food labels. The group hopes a new name will ease confusion about the sweetener, which is used in soft drinks, bread, cereal and other products.
Americans’ consumption of corn syrup has fallen to a 20-year low on consumer concerns that it is more harmful or more likely to cause obesity than ordinary sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence.
However, some scientists have linked consumption of full-calorie soda – the vast majority of which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup – to obesity.
[…]
There’s a new online marketing campaign at and on television. Two new commercials try to alleviate shopper confusion, showing people who say they now understand that “whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar.”
HFCS is to corn as crack is to cocaine.
Wow. I just goggled ‘cane sugar’ and came across this About.com article with the following tag line at the end:
Remember, your body doesn’t care what the label says, it’s all just “sugar”!
I guess the marketing started early.
#25
I fail to see how this is a “lefty” issue. If anything the Right has shown a similar lack of understanding of what per reviewed science is. Global Warmining Denialism and Intelligent Design are two such examples.
This campaign against high fructose corn syrup is probably much ado about nothing. maybe real sugar is better, with its sucrose, but fructose is just fruit sugar.
Real science doesn’t have “consensus”. Do a little digging and you’ll find there isn’t even consensus on general relativity.
As far as HFCS goes, replace it in your diet with more meat. Better all around.
High fructose corn syrup should be avoided, and replaced by cane sugar (sucrose) in most foods, as less sugar is needed.
Compare a bottle of Mexican Coke (sucrose) to US Coke (corn syrup) and you can tell the difference.
Use that corn instead to make burgers and beefsteak…moooo.
I think what happened was that we use to grow our own sugar cane in the US, until the unfair labor practices came under scrutiny. And the workers could no longer be imported laborers from Haiti. The price if domestic cane sugar went up, and importing it wasn’t cheap either. So that’s when and why HFCS was invented.
I’ve got a bottle of Corn Syrup. The same bottle I’ve had for at least 30 years. I’ve tried to find ways to use it up. Like making my own “wet walnuts” topping. Put still, a half bottle remains. Before I gave up drinking sodas. I’ll bet I consumed several bottles worth of Corn Syrup, as its substitute for sugar.
And if you don’t think corn is fattening. What do you think farmers feed cows and pigs, to fatten them up for market? Whole wheat bread? So what do you suppose a syrup refined from tons of corn, is likely to do to you? The new name eliminates the term “syrup” as well as “high fructose”. And misidentifies the same product as “Corn Sugar”, which is a half falsehood. Corn is involved, but it’s not sugar, in the same sense that Cane Sugar is.
Fructose itself isn’t bad. In fact you use to be able to buy it in packets. It was used by diabetics, in place of cane sugar. But the HFCS makers probably diverted all the fructose supplies to their operations. And it eliminated Monstanto’s competition with their nutrasweet product. So now diabetics are stuck with either that, saccharine, or the new kid on the block Stevia. Which comes from the leaves of another plant, grown elsewhere than in the US, to avoid domestic labor costs.
Does anyone else remember Olestra, and how that fat substitute went over with the public when they found out it caused diarrhea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra
HFCS interferes with the signal that tells us our stomachs are full. Why else would there be a tiny amount (less than 1%) in otherwise sugar sweetened M&Ms for example. Companies know that if you use HFCS your product won’t be as filling to the consumer and they might have more than they otherwise would.
Highly refined flours are addictive to humans which all the companies know. Salt is used to improve apparent flavor instead of more or better ingredients. Food manufacturers know food science. The consumers need to be aware as well. It isn’t really hard to avoid crappy ingredients since everything is labeled. At first it adds some time to your grocery shopping but the more good foods you identify the less time you will spend looking at labels.
Re: fructose
Normally fructose comes to us from eating fruit which like all plants have the hard cell walls which can be hard for our bodies to break down so the sugar won’t hit our bloodstream all at once and some not at all. Sugar beets is what much of europe uses. They could certainly grow here in corn country.
CORN SYRUP is made from 80% genetically modified corn! It is bad for you in every way!
I’m think the word “High” had become a negative as far as food is concerned. They should gave changed HFCS to Fructose Unlimited Corn Syrup, or FUCS. Although now the acronym is a problem.