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High Fructose Corn Syrup To Get a Makeover
An anonymous reader writes "With its sweetener linked to obesity, some cancers and diabetes, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) doesn't want you to think 'fructose' when you see high fructose corn syrup in your soda, ketchup or pickles. Instead, the AP reports, the CRA submitted an application to the FDA, hoping to change the name of their top-selling product to 'corn sugar.'"
...and won't be the last. "Confectioners' glaze" (common candy coating) sounds so much better than "lac bug secretion". "Gelatin" sounds so much better than "pig skin extract". "Carmine" (used for red coloring) sounds better than "cochineal insect secretion".
No, its sugar lobbyists as much, if not more, than corn lobbyists. The US has import tariffs on foreign cane sugar to prop up the price of the domestic stuff, which makes it too expensive to use in wide-scale production here. That's why foreign versions of Coke and Pepsi products are made with real sugar, where as we get the cheap corn shit.
I was a lobbyist myself for a non-profit social organization in a past career. I was at a luncheon fundraiser in DC for a congressman from a midwestern, corn-raising state and was seated across from a sugar lobbyist, and in between a guy from Raytheon and a guy from Microsoft. The sugar lobbyist was the biggest asshole of the three, too.
Kinda off topic, but is anyone else enjoying the "real-sugar" sodas that are in supermarkets? Man so delicious, I stocked up on it. I wish this was sold all the time.
Very much on-topic. I grew up on Coca Cola as a kid long before the switch to corn syrup, and I don't care what anyone says, high-fructose corn syrup is not the same as cane sugar. There was nothing quite like a tall glass bottle of Coke, ice-cold, on a hot summer's day. So yes, I have tried the "real-sugar" sodas (just for old time's sake) and yeah, it was good. Sad to say, thanks to the switch to corn-based sweetener, Coca Cola hasn't been "it" for some time now.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Per Amazon:
Corn Sugar is the common name for dextrose.
and per Wise Geek
Corn sugar is a natural sweetener that is made utilizing starch that is extracted from kernels of corn. The extracted cornstarch is then refined to create a solid sugar or to make another popular sweetening agent known as corn syrup...
The process for making corn sugar begins with the removal of starchy elements from the corn. The extracted elements are actually glucose, although the refining process will transform them into another form of sugar known as dextrose. With the production of syrup, the corn sugar becomes a high fructose corn syrup...
It sounds like "corn sugar" is already used to refer to a separate product. If they don't want to continue using "HFCS," then come up with another word, the same way they did with "Tilapia."
But I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, are they trying to give ammunition to the healthier foods? First, the other projects can continue to claim that they don't contain HFCS, and they can also make fun of the other brands for trying to hide what's in their foods.
I mean, it's going to be like a fucking field day for the health foods.
coding is life
When HFCS is produced, enzymes are used to break down starch into glucose and fructose. After the process, the enzymes are removed. Problem is, they don't get out all the enzymes. Therefore, when you suck down that giant sized cola at your local chain franchise joint on hamburger row, not only does the HFCS go straight into your bloodstream without needing to be broken down by your body's natural sucrose enzymes, the leftover enzymes combine with the extra large order of fries you just wolfed down, combining with your own natural enzymes to break the potato starch down quicker, therefore even more glucose and fructose goes into your bloodstream very quickly, causing one hell of a blood sugar spike, to where your pancreas can't put out enough insulin to get rid of the overload of glucose (and your liver is totally occupied with the overload of fructose so it can't process the cholesterol from the burger) and blammo, type II diabetes.
I don't know, but maybe it was made by Altria Group.
(Hint to editors: Altria Group changed their name because of the negative connotations of their previous name, Philip Morris.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Funny thing is, back in the day they would have preferred "high fructose corn syrup" over "corn sugar" because the stigma carried by the word "sugar."
The stigma was so bad that the famous cereal Sugar Pops dropped the word from its name and was renamed to the Corn Pops that we enjoyed with our Thundercats and G.I. Joe. Another example is Sugar Smacks, which was renamed to Honey Smacks.
Also: Kentucky Fried Chicken successfully pushed to be known as just "KFC" because of the stigma surrounding the word "fried."
Cane sugar is 50% fructose, in exactly the same way that baking soda (NaHCO3) is 50% lye (NaOH).
PROTIP: if you want to retry this troll, replace "sugar" with "honey". Honey is ~40% fructose, ~30% glucose. Bonus credit if you start calling honey "medium fructose bee syrup".
HTH.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Cane sugar has essentially no free-form fructose. Refined cane sugar is nearly pure sucrose, a disaccharide. Admittedly, it is composed glucose and fructose structures, they are chemically bonded and is not metabolised the same way as either one of the monosaccharides (glucose and fructose).
HFCS is an engineered product that takes regular corn syrup (essential pure glucose) and turns it into a mixture of free form glucose and fructose in order to produce a substance that tastes the same (sweetness-wise) as table/cane sugar.
"Corn Sugar" would actually be distinctly incorrect if used to refer to HFCS, as that term is already used to refer to crystalline glucose (Commonly known in the food world as dextrose).
My college biochemistry texts caught on fire while I was reading this thread... yours is the only even nearly-correct post.
Fructose is just fruit sugar, or half of a sucrose (table sugar) molecule. Fructose takes an extra step to get broken down down to glucose so is not as efficiently used by the body, but this is nothing different from the fructose half of sucrose.
If you think fructose is bad, stop eating fruit, cuz it's the sugar you'll find therein. You could just as well call it "fruit sugar" as "corn sugar" -- both are correct.
Honey is chemically indistinguisable from HFCS-55. In fact HFCS is sometimes used to illegally "stretch" honey, and the only way to tell HFCS from honey is by the pollen-protein contaminants found in honey. Amazingly, the people who are first to condemn HFCS are usually also the first to tout honey as a "natural replacement" for sugar... when in fact it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. (Where DID you think the bees got the sugars in honey, anyway??)
HFCS is only "high fructose" in comparsion to regular corn syrup.
HFCS use in foods has been declining, yet obesity continues to rise ... kinda kills that as a direct correlation, eh?
Most of the other, uh, fructose-cake arguments are so biochemically nonsensical that I don't even know where to start.
My own objection to HFCS is that food doesn't taste quite right when fructose is used as a substitute for sucrose, and this irritates my supertaster senses. However, corn syrup is perfectly good for use in certain candies, where its flavour is expected.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Whole Wheat Bread will raise your blood sugar but lesser & slower than White Bread or HFCS or regular sugar because of
the difference between complex & simple carbohydrates.
Eating an Orange will raise your sugar less than drinking Orange Juice because the Orange has more fibre in it.
Consuming any carb will raise your blood sugar, but complex carbs & carbs with fibre are a little better.
On another note, I'm from Europe and find the US debate over HFCS somewhat fascinating. Here, the "health food" industry will sell you fructose telling people that it is a "more natural and healthy" sweetener. My conclusion is nonetheless that if you want to eat something sweet and stay healthy, eat fruit or something such - don't screw around with candy.
If you only focus on the biochemistry part of the process, you are missing out on the biological ones. The fact that two molecules can be nearly indistinguishable from a chemistry point of view does not mean that their biological impact can not be radically different. For a simple example:
Lactic acid comes is present in two stereo-isomer configurations. Chemically, they are identical during an oxidation process. However, the body metabolizes both differently.
That extra step that you mention to break down Fructose can have an impact on where in the body the molecule is being processed. Also, don't forget that before the fructose and glucose enter the metabolic cycle, a large number of processes have already taken place in the body, and those processes might have a different effect on the body. (Reaction to insulin, etc)
So, just because fructose might be (bio)chemically similar, this doesn't mean that biologically it is similar.
First, thank you for an interesting theory that is worth researching. I had not thought about the possibility of enzymes being included in the product. It would be interesting to know what portion of enzymes survives the process, packaging, storage, temperature fluctuations, and human ingestion to be able to affect the digestion of other foods. My educated guess would be very little, but it would be interesting to find out. It would also be interesting to know if the types of enzymes used could even function at human body temperatures if they arrived unharmed in the digestive tract.
There is no doubt that ingesting sugar could lead to a "sugar spike" in the bloodstream, but it's unlikely to cause any harm in a healthy individual. Your post implies sugar spikes cause Type II Diabetes. While sugar spikes can be a symptom of Type II Diabetes, there is no evidence that they are a cause of the disease. In fact, there is quite a lot of evidence suggesting sugars do not contribute directly in any way. They do, however, contribute to obesity which is a considerable factor. One could ingest large quantities of fruits for a quick fructose rush immediately followed by sucking down pixie stix for their sucrose topped off with several spoonfuls of honey (which is similar to HFCS) daily and not develop diabetes from it.... unless they got fat from it & lack of exercise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus_type_2
It's a bit odd that you attribute Type II Diabetes as being caused by a sugar spike b/c the body couldn't produce enough insulin -- when type II diabetes is generally caused by insulin resistance. The pancreas pumps out enough insulin just fine -- just not enough relatively b/c the body resists using it. It's the body's cells that resist absorbing the sugar with the help of the insulin that is the culprit.
The most prescribed treatment for type II diabetics is to avoid fatty foods and start exercising regularly b/c more than half the cases are caused, at least in part, by being overweight. People generally know that diabetes is a sugar-related disorder, so it's easy for people to get confused and mistakenly link the intake of sugar with being one of the many contributing factors that causes the disorder.
The argument against fructose has to do with the way the GLUT transporters are regulated. Glucose uptake into the liver is regulated by insulin mediated GLUT4 translocation and GK etc preventing too much of it from going into the liver and getting converted to FA/VLDL and so forth. Fructose can only be metabolised in the liver (unlike glucose) and its uptake into the liver is not insulin mediated as it is transported in by GLUT2.
On the other hand, you could make the argument that sucrose is at least half as bad as fructose since it has about half amount of fructose by weight but fructose is sweeter than sucrose by weight so if one uses the proper proportion it isn't that much worse..
HFCS is used in virtually every sweetened store-bought product in the US, except for organic and some high-end foods. Most American processed foods are very sweet, and even products that wouldn't traditionally have much or any sweetening are sweetened with HFCS, such as bread and pasta sauce.
Foods and drinks sweetened without HFCS are available, but generally these are more expensive or organic items.
HFCS is only used because corn syrup is significantly cheaper than cane/beet sugar in the US (pretty much uniquely in the world). This is because corn is highly subsidized and because there are relatively few domestic sugar producers and there are prohibitive tariffs on imported sugar, plus the fact that there is an embargo on the closest large sugar-producing country, Cuba
Generally, HFCS is considered to have an identical or worse taste compared to real sugar, though it would be hard to actually measure this. Anecdotally I do find imported Coke from Mexico (with real sugar) to taste somewhat better than domestic HFCS Coke, though I don't drink either enough to really compare.