A new GAME for High Fructose Corn Syrup

The name change is requested because HFCS is now seen as poison.  Funny thing, you look it up on the Mayo Clinic web page and they say its ok.... no conclusive evidence....

And, you can wonder where the NYT stands on this since they post an advertisement from the Corn Refiners Association - labeled as Sweet Surprise - that is telling everybody HFCS is just fine for your health, even though so many Americans are heading towards heaven via Obesity, Diabetes, and Heart Disease - sped along by drinking and eating so much stuff that contains HFCS.


September 14, 2010, 11:44 am

A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup

By TARA PARKER-POPE - New York Times

...Would high-fructose corn syrup, by any other name, have sweeter appeal?
The Corn Refiners Association, which represents firms that make the syrup, has been trying to improve the image of the much maligned sweetener with ad campaigns promoting it as a natural ingredient made from corn. Now, the group has petitioned the United States Food and Drug Administration to start calling the ingredient “corn sugar,” arguing that a name change is the only way to clear up consumer confusion about the product...more

and a few responses to this article:

Calling HFCS “corn sugar” will be misleading. Sugar in sugar cane and beets are in their natural sugar form (which is sucrose — a disaccharide of fructose and glucose) and needs to be extracted, concentrated and dried — no chemical or biochemical chages are necessary. HFCS on the other hand is obtained by enzymatically transforming corn starch into monosaccahrides of glucose and fructose. Sugar is naturally 50% fructose and 50% glucose. HFCS can have differnt percentages of fructose and glucose by differnt blending. The two common are HFCS -55 (55% Fructose) and HFCS- 42 and a less common third one HFCS-90. How will these be distinguished by the term “corn sugar”. Although no studies have identified any health negatives of HFCS over sugar, more research is needed to say they are the same.

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The reason that Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, says these things is because she is paid a lot of money to do so. Doesn’t she make an enormous salary at that job?

A lot of people would say those things too, if you paid them that much money.

But beyond this obvious fact, I’m disappointed that Tara Parker-Pope didn’t write about the other legitimate scientific and medical issues regarding High Fructose Corn Syrup. George Jackson, (comment #3) mentions some of these and there are more.

For instance, High Fructose Corn Syrup puts greater stress on the pancreas than regular sugars. Many scientists feel this could be a contributing factor to the explosion of Type 2 diabetes we’ve seen over the past thirty years.

I would urge Ms. Parker-Pope to do more research in the area of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Look at more than the simple fact that it appears to be chemically the same as sugar. Corn industry critics should be given the same amount of space in the next piece, as the corporate lackeys were given in this one.

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hi-Tang Ho et al. found that soft drinks sweetened with HFCS are up to 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds, such as methylglyoxal, than a diet soft drink control, and claimed that sucrose does not have the same tendency to produce these compounds. Carbonyl compounds are elevated in people with diabetes and are blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage.
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the over saturation of genetically altered corn into this country’s food chain, and the government’s historic subsidation of it all is a great big elephant in the room
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