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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.'"
Funny thing is, it's not as if high-fructose corn syrup is actually worse for you than a similar amount of cane sugar. The problem is not HFCS as much as it is "foods loaded with sugar."
That's not necessarily true.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why can't these guys do the right thing and stop making this evil stuff? Playing a shell game with the facts does not change reality.
Yes, well, you can thank a company called UOP for pioneering the process of making this stuff on an industrial scale (that was actually back in the sixties.) And you can also thank Congress for so fucking over the countries that used to grow cane sugar and sell it to us, which is why we even needed a substitute in the first place. Now, of course, those growers have switched to cocaine, cannabis, and other much more profitable crops.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And yet soda with HFCS triggers craving with me that is absent when drinking real sugar soda. So who the hell cares about the specifics of the chemistry?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
In response to [successful] bad press, the HFCS crowd is pushing for the rebranding the horrid syrup as "corn sugar". A waste of time and money, I wager, in the end. Ignoring the fact that it is reasonably well established that HFCS is not good for you, it tastes like crap. Compare yellow-capped Coke (yellow=kosher) with the "regular" sold in the US...there is no comparison (inexplicably, Coke only inflicts HFCS on the US market).
PETA recently attempted the same campaign to rebrand FISH as SEA KITTENS...apparently they felt that people wouldn't be so willing to eat something with a cuddly persona. Completely backfired with me...I had never thought of it before, but have you tried Kitten & Chips??? A new personal favorite. Kitten, the other, other white meat.
Who knows, maybe kitten tastes better in a nice HFCS glaze...
You are wrong. Very wrong. "AFAIK" is an insufficient fig leaf for your level of wrongness, which seems nearly malicious in its degree.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I also noticed that when I stopped eating crap that had HFCS in it, I no longer got drowsy in the afternoon. In fact I can tell right away when I've eaten something with HFCS in it, as I inevitably get drowsy not long afterwards. Needless to say I avoid it like the plague now, and so far have lost 40lbs since I stopped eating it.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
That reaction is not as trivial to the body as you make it out to be; nor is that 10% imbalance. Eating lots of sugar is bad, yes; but eating lots high-fructose sugar is worse, *measurably* worse, in several biologically-significant ways. Additionally, preliminary research suggest that some of the trace byproducts of the "fructinization" process (methylated something or others) could also have quite a disproportionately-negative effect compared to their small concentration.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
High fructose corn syrup != fructose.
HFC doesn't exist in nature, fructose does. Just as hydrogenated shortening (transfats) don't exist in nature but butter and lard does. And look it up your self, there is plenty out there with a simple Googling.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
And not according to these guys either:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It's pretty amazing. Do the experiment yourself - get some "mexican coke" or Pepsi Throwback (with sugar), and some regular soda.
Over the course of 15 minutes, drink 2 cans of regular soda. No big deal, right? Later on or the next day, drink sugar-based soda, and after drinking under 12 ounces of it, you will likely feel full, and like you don't want to drink anymore, in a way thats very different from HFCS-soda. I'd be surpised if you can even finish 24oz of sugar soda in 15 min (without forcing yourself).
This reminds me of when the Nuclear Power Industry, specifically Detroit Edison, referred to radiation as "Sunshine Units" at their cuddly exhibit at the Michigan State Fair back in the early 60s.
"Man, white dudes say some wack shit about black people, but we do love our fried chicken. That ain't no lie."
There is also a popular urban legand that Kentucky Fried Chicken had to change their name to KFC because they had found a way to grow birds with four legs and six wings to maximize yield, but the FDA would no longer allow them to be called "chickens."
HCFS is, by design, essentially liquid table sugar. 50% of it is fructose. Just like table sugar.
Umm .... NO!
It's not. "Table Sugar" is sucrose. HFCS is a mix of fructose and glucose.
Yes, sucrose is a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose. No, that doesn't make them the same. You understand the difference between a mixture and a compound, don't you? And that these compounds can have radically different properties to the elements they're made up from?
I mean, that was something we learned in chemistry class at the age of about 10.
The problem is, HFCS-55 fails to trigger the satiety reflex properly. And the vast majority of items it's put into are items that already aren't so great for you.
Soda/pop is particularly bad because it combines multiple known agents: caffeine (diuretic), carbonic acid (makes the tissues of mouth and throat feel dry), sodium chloride (ever drink salt water? Notice how it doesn't help you quench thirst?), and HFCS-55 rather than actual sugar to bypass satiety reflex. "Diet" sodas are even worse; nutrasweet dries out the mouth tissues in an action very similar to the carbonic acid, for a "double whammy."
The end result being that you can guzzle a 64-ounce Big Gulp down, feel yourself needing to pee, and at the same time still feel thirsty right after you finish the damn thing. Or in other words: go ahead. Drink your weight in nectar, lardo.
Actually the diabetes is for-real and not "pop-culture" medicine. Go reading up on the research. It causes major insulin spikes (because it goes into the bloodstream and doesn't respond to insulin (glucose does that)- and it is processed only by your liver.
Drinking a corn-syrup sweetened soda is very much like drinking a beer without the drunk- with the same impact on your system.
HCFS is NOT the same as sucrose, contrary to anything the industry has said on the subject. It's two monosaccarides instead of a disaccaride just for starters- it metabolizes completely differently with differing metabolic effects on you.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The ratio of Fructose to Glucose generated by our digestive system while digesting Sucrose is almost identical to the contents of HFCS.
Table sugar is not a syrup; syrup is created through hydrolysis. Hydrolysis of cane sugar produces cane syrup. Eating any kind of syrup is different from eating granulated sugar. When cane sugar is used in a drink it's hydrolyzed into syrup, or the product wouldn't be commercially viable - the sugar would crystalize in the bottle while on the shelf and add a granular texture to the drink. It's only the lemonade or whatever you whip up at home for instant consumption that actually contains sucrose. While some hydrolysis occurs in the gut after eating granular sugar, it's a limited process. The presence of syrups in the blood produces an insulin response, but fat cells are unable to store it. So they absorb all other glucose from the bloodstream, lowering blood sugar. It's not until the liver has metabolised the syrup that fat cells can absorb it and insulin levels return to normal. As a result the insulin response is longer and the non-syrup blood sugar drops lower than if you ate plain sugar. Apart from making you fatter this also has the effect of reducing insulin sensitivity and inducing fatigue. Over time you get fat, lazy, and diabetic.
I had to scroll this far to see this comment? Mod up parent.
The only reason there is cheap high fructose corn syrup is because the massive corn subsides make the process cheap and profitable. If there were none, sweetener would be pure sugar from beats or cane. Falsely cheap corn because of subsidies causes uses for it that would normally not be economical nor profitable.
The immune system is only partially responsible for weeding out those nasty malfunctioning cells. Many other systems kick in. Mainly in the cell itself, programmed cell death - apoptosis - is triggered from a multitude malfunctioning cell states, as well as from various well functioning states internal and external to the cell itself. Malfunctioning cells generally have to be seriously malfunctioning, and express a "non-self" surface biochemistry before the immune system kicks in and starts attacking it.
Here's what I think I know about HFCS:
The human body is not geared to consume it and results in stress and even damage to internal organs.
That's about all I think I know. I have heard nothing about making cancer cells multiply. When you say this, do you mean to say that it causes cancer cells to increase their rate of growth over control groups without HFCS present? Rather than implying, I would rather see such statements made clearly. Also, while I am not doubting, do you have any references to cite?
I think what we are seeing is a similar sort of public rejection that was witnessed with "Nutrasweet." When people learned the harm it could do, they started avoiding anything with Nutrasweet on the label. So what was the industry's response? They took it off the label... not out of the products though. It's still in there. Look for "aspartame" in the ingredients.
And it's not like there isn't a better alternative. There is in sweetleaf. It's just that the various industries like making money the way they are -- especially the corn farmers.
People do call fructose "fruit sugar", but the FDA does not allow HFCS to be called "fructose", since (as you point out) it isn't. Nor can it be labeled "sugar", which it is, due to the chemical processes involved (much like how you have to specify that fat is hydrogenated, even though it's still just fat).
Citation needed, and here it is: HFCS use in food has declined about about 20% per capita, since the high point in 2002 (source, table 50). In fact, the use of caloric sweeteners has fallen by 15%, while obesity has increased by 15% in the same time period (source).
Of course, HFCS consumption still correlates positively with obesity on the individual level – just not directly. More HFCS generally implies more junk food.
Oh, if only logic worked... The obsession with HFCS vs. fructose vs. cane sugar vs. honey is the same old fantasy of being able to eat all the crap you want as long as it's the right kind of crap.
Obesity as a biological problem was solved ages ago: consume less energy and/or expend more. Science will eventually solve the psychological problem that you can't eat that donut even though you really want to, but until then, wishing really hard won't make it come true. And trying does not help.
You still need the healthcare. If you don't die of one thing, you'll die of another.
You might be much better able to PAY for the healthcare - obesity and its accompanying diseases occur in relatively young people. Here in the UK where our healthcare is universal, we actually have people arguing that we should be more widely offering stomach stapling surgery, especially for younger recipients, because the benefits outweigh the costs - what the state pays in surgical costs will be more than made up for by the patient getting thinner, getting back to work, and paying their taxes again.
I was recently watching a documentary on wartime rationing - as a nation we had never been fed better. Our kids were taller and stronger than they ever had been, at a time of adversity and privation, because we were actually educated on what was good to eat - not so we could get thinner, but so we could be strong enough to carry on even though our supplies were limited. We grew vegetables. We ATE the vegetables.
Only the higher percentage HFCS is sweeter ... so either they use HFCS-90 or it has just as many calories.
The exact type of HFCS is rarely mentioned and wikipedia's justification for saying HFCS-90 is rarely used is a single article by an industry shill. Are there any independent tests of glucose/fructose ratios in soft drinks?
If fructose is so much worse than sucrose, then why is it frequently used as an alternative sweetener to sucrose for diabetics? (See, for example, manufacturers such as Fifty 50)
Fructose causes blood glucose levels to rise more slowly than glucose (duh...) or sucrose. As a result, it is a better sweetener for diabetics. Sucrose needs to be split into its components (glucose and sucrose) followed by chemical reactions that convert fructose to glucose. Fructose needs to be converted in its entirety.
However HFCS is pretty bad news, due to that 45% glucose which can be immediately absorbed into the bloodstream (even through the cheeks!) without any processing by the body, it's actually worse than sucrose for diabetics. (It took me a while to get used to "High fructose corn syrup != fructose".)
(I've been a Type I diabetic for over 15 years.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?