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“Corn Sugar”

// September 16th, 2010 // Blog

The Corn Refiners Association already had some bs High Fructose Corn Syrup commercials kicked off the air, but now they’re trying to spread their bs again by attempting to have HFCS renamed “Corn Sugar.” (I guess they forgot that the name corn sugar is already taken.)

“Consumers need to know what is in their foods and where their foods come from and we want to be clear with them,” said CRA president Audrae Erickson. “The term ‘corn sugar’ succinctly and accurately describes what this natural ingredient is and where it comes from – corn.”

It is true that HFCS is made of what is technically sugars, but when you hear the word “sugar,” what do you think of? Most likely sucrose (table sugar, granulated sugar). When a recipe says to add sugar, it’s talking about sucrose. When someone selling you a coffee asks if you want cream and sugar, they’re talking about sucrose. And that association of the word “sugar” with something that is natural (some of the ingredients of HFCS start off natural, but HFCS does not occur in nature) and not High Fructose Corn Syrup is exactly why the CRA wants to change the name.

They aren’t trying to accurately describe what this ingredient is and where it comes from; they’re trying to remove the stigma that has led to a small decline in HFCS sales by tricking consumers into not knowing there is HFCS in things, or that HFCS is the same thing as sucrose. If they want to more accurately describe what this ingredient is and where it comes from, Corn-derived Sugars would be a better term; and if they honestly wanted to describe it, they would say “[whatever]% corn-derived alpha-amylase treated fructose/[whatever]% corn-derived alpha-amylase treated glucose (whatever the ratio is in the particular item, it varies)/Glucoamylase/Xylose isomerase mixture (or syrup); may contain small amounts of Mercury.” But of course, that doesn’t sound as natural or safe as “corn sugar.”

No matter what you call it, this stuff needs to be stopped. It is true that in studies where rats were given the same amount of HFCS and sucrose, many of the same health negatives (obesity, liver disease, etc.) occurred. This is how the CRA is able to claim that HFCS is the “same as (table) sugar.” However, there are two key differences between HFCS and sucrose; HFCS does not give you a full feeling as sucrose does (so you’re going to consume a *lot* more HFCS than you would sucrose), and HFCS is put into just about all American foods and drinks. Unless you’re drinking nothing but water and cooking everything completely from scratch, odds are you’re getting some HFCS. And since you’re not getting full from one serving of HFCS, you’ll have another.

A comparison of a graph showing “U.S. per capita caloric sweeteners estimated deliveries for domestic food and beverage use from 1966 to 2009″ and a graph showing “The rate of obesity in adults and the rate of being overweight in both children and adults in the United States from 1960 – 2004″ shows that with the introduction of HFCS into the US food supply in 1975 that an increase in US obesity mirrored the increased use of HFCS in the US food supply.

In the US, corn is easy to grow, and the price of corn is kept low through government subsidies paid to growers. There is also a system of sugar tariffs and sugar quotas, which makes it expensive to import sucrose. So it’s cheap to make crappy, tasteless food and sweeten it with HFCS. And since your body both isn’t getting the nutrients it expects to get from the food and doesn’t get a full feeling from the HFCS, you eat more, so you buy more. The HFCS-free foods are more expensive, so you don’t buy them, and your kids never learn to grow and cook their own food. Your kids will become dependent on this food-substitute that is making them unhealthy. For the majority of the US, this has already happened.