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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.'"
"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.'"
What's in a name? High-fructose corn syrup by any other name would taste as sweet ... and still make your cancer cells multiply.
And here thought that fraud and false advertising was illegal in this country. If the Feds go for this then they're not doing their jobs.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
When manufacturers start *printing "No HFCS!" on packaging*, your ship has pretty much sailed, folks.
...can we start calling cigarettes, "All natural inhaled plant extracts"?
What's in a name? that which we call an industrial chemical
By any other name would taste as sweet;
So HFCS would, were it not HFCS call'd,
Retain that cloying mouthfeel which it owes
Without that title. HFCS, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all my pancreas.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
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.
...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".
Massive subsidies for corn farming (also in the form of biofuel kickbacks) combined with tariffs on imported sugar to protect certain agricultural sectors make corn syrup an incredibly inexpensive and profitable sweetening agent.
This is the big reason why most sodas in the US use corn syrup whereas foreign recipes usually rely on ordinary sugar.
In short, no politician wants to risk losing support in the midwest or the southeast. Advocating reform on either of these policies is political suicide in those regions.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
You want the "Corn Refiners" to stop refining corn?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
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.
Still makes us all fat.
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.
Because Iowa hold their caucuses early in the presidential election cycle and a lot of candidates like to use that as a chance to get their campaign's momentum going. Many areas of public policy, particularly anything affecting corn farming, are dictated by the feelings of the corn farmers of Iowa.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
It's actually "High Fructose Corn Syrup" currently. This is because it is a liquid sugar (sugar + water).
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Well, the candidates could do what politicians do best: lie through their teeth. Then eliminate the tariffs as would be appropriate for a country seeking to participate in the GLOBAL ECONOMY .
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
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
One problem is that corn sugar is a synonym for dextrose, which is used as an adjunct in brewing. I don't think fructose is as fermentable, which would result in a very different product.
It's an accurate name. It's called high-fructose corn syrup because it has a lot more fructose than regular corn syrup, which is what HFCS is made from.
To be fair, "corn sugar" is slightly deceptive, in that it's renaming an existing product to make it sound similar to a different, more-desired product, but it's entirely accurate. Glucose, fructose, and sucrose, along with many others, are all sugars.
Sucrose is not good for you, the reason HFCS gets all the attention because fructose is noticeably worse. Sugar refiners deserve to have their names dragged through the mud almost as much as corn refiners have been.
Frankly, I think the CRA should be sued for attempting to defraud the American public by selling a product known to be harmful under a new name for the sole purpose of deceiving said public into buying a product they do not wish to buy.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Can you explain your assertion that HFCS is "evil"?
As I've stated elsewhere in this story, HFCS is only 10% more "evil" than table sugar, and that's if we presuppose that fructose is evil. (You know, fructose, the principal form of sugar found in those well-known health-wreckers, apples.)
I'm not saying that you're wrong, by any means. But, while I hear that HFCS is bad all the time, I've never heard any sort of convincing explanation how it's worse than sucrose.
Corn subsidies, on the other hand . . .
-Peter
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).
The Texas Rancher's Association has applied to their board of regents in hopes of changing the name of "Cow Patties" to "Cow Flowers" in hopes that people will think their bovine droppings smells good. No input yet from the manure retail industry but word is they're gearing up to put pictures of flowers on their bags to help enhance the new aroma.
It's not the HFCS, it's your ass, in that chair, 12 hours a day
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
What you cite is "anecdotal evidence" and what works for you, may not work for anyone else...and in fact, you probably ended up removing a number of food sources that contribute to heartburn such as caffeine.
The reason your physicians don't see to care is that they can't generalize the information....so they would be remiss to pass this information on.
Someone could set up a project to research this... but that takes time and money...so who would pay for the study? The corn growers? The makers of proton-pump inhibitors? Neither one cares, and would actually discourage such a study as it would hurt their bottom-line...so the federal government might fund it...but then there are those lovely folk known as lobbyists...I'm sure they would love to push for funding for said research....
Guess I'd have to say, it's just not a hot-button issue.
And for the record, I'm a physician. (But certainly not a primary care physician).
--- From WebMD: (http://www.webmd.com/heartburn-gerd/guide/understanding-heartburn-basics)
What Causes It?
The basic cause of heartburn is an underactive lower esophageal sphincter, or LES, that doesn't tighten as it should. Two excesses often contribute to this problem: too much food in the stomach (overeating) or too much pressure on the stomach (frequently from obesity or pregnancy). Certain foods commonly relax the LES, including tomatoes, citrus fruits, garlic, onions, chocolate, coffee, alcohol, caffeinated products, and peppermint. Dishes high in fats and oils (animal or vegetable) often lead to heartburn, as do certain medications. Stress increases acid production and can cause heartburn. And smoking, which relaxes the LES and stimulates stomach acid, is a major contributor.
Not quite, Corn syrup starts out as 100% glucose after being converted into either 55% fructose Corn Syrup or 42% fructose Corn Syrup, the most commonly used types, the products do certainly have higher levels of fructose than unmodified Corn Syrup hence the "High Fructose" descriptor. Cane sugar on the other hand starts out as sucrose. If we start taking about carbonated beverages when the sucrose is put into solution with water and carbonic acid(from CO2) and in most cases with phosphoric acid or citric acid you have a low pH environment. Under these conditions sucrose splits into its constituents glucose and fructose. At this point, a 50% free glucose and 50% free fructose solution has shown no medically significant difference with HFCS. Better yet, something that affects both HFCS soda and cane sugar soda is that the glucose will start to convert into fructose under abnormally high, usually improper storage temperatures (90F), making this entire 5% part meaningless. So yes, one can end up with cane sugar sodas that for whatever reason have higher percentages of fructose than HFCS sodas.
Also, anyone ever look at the ratio of glucose to fructose on fruits, they are all over the map. Apples, for instance, have 90% of their sugar as fructose.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
Or doubleplusgood sugar?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
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.
This sounds crazy, but I had this exact conversation with my daughter's doctor yesterday, and she really didn't have much to say about HFCS either (nothing beyond "sugar is bad" anyway). Though based on various research studies that I've seen recently, and the number of food companies dropping HFCS in their products, I expect this to hit the news in a huge way sometime soon.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Unicorn sweetener.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
The government is paying farmers to make a product that is killing the populace. And they are borrowing the money from China to do it. What's wrong with THIS picture?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
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.
Corn-Sugar is already in use, it means dextrose. Ask anyone who homebrews.
... but force every product containing it to show cigarette-like warning labels
It's the sugar lobby who caused this whole mess.
I believe Coke was one of the first to make the switch. In a free market, sugar would be much cheaper and that's what would be used.
I'm also pretty sure this causes problems for candy and other food manufacturers. It makes their products more expensive.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Then they should pick another name. Corn Sugar means dextrose.
The first thing I focused on was the ingredient that was most pervasive--corn syrup.
That's extremely unlikely. The most pervasive ingredient is high fructose corn syrup, not corn syrup (they are *extremely* different things.) Corn syrup (which is nearly impossible to find - even in bottles labeled "Corn Syrup") is 100% glucose, whereas HFCS is a solution of fructose and glucose (at least 42% fructose, usually 55%, but sometimes as much as 95% fructose.)
I now avoid it like the plague. Within a month of removing it from my diet (as much as possible, the shit is in everything), the heartburn stopped entirely.
You should check to see if it's a sensitivity to corn, or if it's the fructose. To test: go to a brewer's supply and buy a bottle of glucose (this is 100% corn syrup.) From a health food store, buy a jar of brown rice syrup (70% maltodextrin, 30% glucose). Try each one for a few days and see the result. If both cause heartburn, it's a sensitivity to glucose. If the corn syrup does but the rice syrup doesn't, it's a sensitivity to corn. If neither one does, it's probably a sensitivity to high fructose corn syrup.
The only logical conclusion I can come to, considering the stuff (corn syrup) has been in HEAVY use for decades now, is that the medical "industry" knows, but cannot monetize the solution--removing corn syrup from ones diet. Telling people to stop eating it would actually cut into their business. Corn syrup makes them money in the form of direct medical symptoms that need to be treated and the inherent medical problems associated with obesity. LOTS of money.
If this was true, how is it that the medical industry says to cut out saturated fat and sodium for other ailments?
The actual reason is much simpler: the research on high fructose corn syrup is just beginning, and there is a *lot* of effort from the corn industry to block or obscure it. For some interesting viewing (it's quite long, and relatively heavy on the biochem) you should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Actually you get the expensive corn shit since our cane sugar is cheaper than your HFCS.
A lot of cane sugar is also bad since half of it breaks down into fructose anyway and huge amounts of glucose isn't much better for you anyway - so a bit beyond half as bad.
HFCS-55 is 55% fructose. Cane sugar is sucrose, which is one quick reaction (which happens in the stomach before absorption of the sugar into the bloodstream) away from being 50% fructose. If the enemy is fructose, cane sugar is almost as bad as HFCS.
The enemy is our high-sugar diet in general. We should have switched over to Sweetleaf / Stevia 30 years ago, as it would have let us continue with our current taste in foods, only healthier.
But someone (corn or sugar lobby is the obvious culprit, but don't count out the artificial sugar guys, most of them are made by huge chem companies) had a friend in high places place a ban on the stuff back in the early 90s.
No doubt because you can replace sugar (and all artificial sugar) with processed Stevia at something like a 30 to 1 ratio -- I use 1/4th a teaspoon to make an entire pitcher of KoolAid, as opposed to a cup or whatnot of sugar. In other words, if we had switched to Stevia, all three of the HFCS, the Cane Sugar, and the cancer causing alternatives would have been rendered obsolete, incredibly rapidly. There's an interesting dynamic going on -- the sweetener industry uses something that's incredibly unhealthy but dirt cheap, and when that starts to go south they also sell us (equally if not worse) alternatives under the guise of "health food". All while ignoring an actual healthy alternative cause they can't control it.
The complaint was that "we just don't know if this Stevia thing is OK", and after banning they... promptly refused to study it to see if it WAS ok. It's a really common tactic, really.
Meanwhile, Japan's been using the stuff for 30 years with no ill effects. At all.
Oh, and they recently unbanned it (Maybe. They might have just "unbanned" the fake-but-patentable alternatives. See the Owndoc link above), but only after huge chemical company Cargil and artificial sweetener company Merisant -- aka the GM seed jerks and makers of Roundup, Monsanto -- found a way to make cancer-causing, but patentable, alternatives -- Truvia (Coke/Cargil) and Purvia (Pepsi/Monsanto).
Since Stevia's an incredibly easy to grow herb (you almost definitely can find a powdered or liquid version at your local store in the health food section, or a live plant the gardening section when it's that time of year), well, they couldn't compete with THAT.
Meanwhile, if you do grow it yourself, tossing a leaf or two in with one's tea sweetens it up quite perfectly. Enjoy.
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).
Search for stevia, it is very sweet but contains no sugar. It's a shame producers are so stubborn about pushing unhealty food when perfectly good alternatives exists.
Tomorrow is another day...
(You know, fructose, the principal form of sugar found in those well-known health-wreckers, apples.)
Apples are actually pretty nutritionally devoid. It's almost as if they're pure sugar. In many, many fruit drinks, you'll see Apple juice as the number one ingredient as it is used as filler. Even if you are drinking something like Strawberry+Blueberry Juice, the chief ingredient is Apple juice. The same is true of the watermelon juice I like to buy. It's mostly Apple juice.
SUGAR!
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.
Well, you know what they say. In America, First you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You forgot to add that if you use to sweeten things to a high level it tastes like crap. I use it in small amounts for tea and it works OK, but my wife likes things very sweet and the aftertaste is worst than any of the "artificial" sweeteners out there.
Believe it or not people are not that stupid when it comes to labels. You could call it unicorn spit and after a lag period the same baggage and public reaction will eventually be restored.
It happened with trans fats where manufacturers would just adjust the serving size such that each serving contained less than .5 grams just to get away with legally claiming their product contained 0g trans fat. How the govt allowed such rank nonsense to occur in the first place is beyond comphrension.. At the end of the day it didn't matter.
The end result was that the "*0g trans fat" advertisement became meaningless and people started looking for the word "partially hydrogenated" in the ingredients to make their purchasing decision.
O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
your cane sugar is cheaper than our hfcs because we have tariffs on the sugar and you don't. then the price of hfcs can be raised above what the market would otherwise pay for it, if sugar weren't being propped up. It's a friggin' cabal is what it is.
And here thought that fraud and false advertising was illegal in this country. If the Feds go for this then they're not doing their jobs.
I'm propose a new ad campaign along the lines of "Got Milk!?". In this case it would be "Get fruct!!!!"
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
HFCS is evil. Causes obesity, cancers, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases. Why? Because it raises blood sugar levels, which raises insulin levels.
What else raises your blood sugar?
Whole wheat bread? Check.
Orange juice? Check.
Oatmeal? Check.
The problem at this point is that only HFCS is blamed, when in fact, any consumption of any object that raises your blood sugar levels is going to lead to chronic disease. The problem, of course, is that many of these things have been touted as "healthy" for the past 40 years.
And you wonder why we've had an obesity epidemic since the 70s....
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.
Yup. What makes it different is it is a combination of glucose and fructose in a single molecule, which means it must be broken down first. This ever-so-slightly moderates the effects of fructose, but not much. It's nearly as bad as HFCS.
Even starches aren't that great, they are simply easy to break down chains of glucose, and ultimately do similar things in your body in large quantities. Starches are better than the others because they take slightly longer to digest, which means the effects are slightly moderated, and they contain no fructose, which has its own special nasty effects.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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
Uh... Cancer causing? Do you even KNOW what's in Truvia/Purevia?
Stevia Rubandia A extract and Erythritol...
If what they're making is cancer-causing, then you're plugging cancer-causing. The only reason they pressured the FDA to allow it, had nothing to do with "cancer-causing" stuff, but rather that they found a patentable way to make big piles of cash cleanly producing sweetener out of an unpatentable plant.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Sometime in the future, the corn syrup industry (which includes the entire beverage industry, and much of the food industry) is going to see revealed the evidence that its scientists and execs all knew that their corn syrup products were increasing people's cancer, diabetes and other disease rates, and was habit forming. Even as they worked to cover up those evil facts with cheerful, healthy marketing. Exactly like the tobacco industry. Then there'll be hell to pay.
--
make install -not war
Heh... Depends on if you're using "SweetLeaf" or if you're using Truvia/Purevia. If you're using pure stevia, yeah, it's got this "nifty" licorice aftertaste if you've gotten carried away. The aftertaste isn't QUITE as bad with Stevia blended with Xylitol or Erythritol- and it's actually not as bad as most of the other stuff. Your mileage may vary, but I've had less issues with Stevia than with the other stuff- and I can't do anything with Nutrasweet, so much of the stuff out there is not available to me.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
According to this video, HFCS causes a similar amount of harm to the liver per unit as Ethanol, without the fun of being drunk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Can anyone rebuke this gentleman's claims? Because at the moment I'm simply taking anything i see with HFCS in the ingredients list out of my shopping cart.
Go ahead and search, you will never find it all, I am baking muffins as I speak. - ComicBook Guy
The Corn Refiners Association calls itself a "trade group". Basically it is a propaganda and lobbying machine. Increasingly and accurately people are realizing that corn syrup, specifically high fructose corn syrup, isn't exactly the healthiest thing you can feed yourself and your children. It's in damn near everything that, Americans at least, eat today. It's cheap to produce and appealing to the taste buds. The CRA seems to think that if they change the name of the product they represent, we'll all forget that it's making us fat.
They started using Fructose as it was a little better for diabetics to process over the usual glucose it replaced.
But the problem is that Fructose is only metabolised by the liver and so it can cause liver damage.
Every cell in your body can metabolise glucose.
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?
No, sucrose is split immediately into glucose and fructose, which from that point is metabolized exactly the same as that in HFCS. There is reasonable evidence that fructose may be bad for you, but you get about the same amount of fructose from typically used HFCS as you do from sucrose. HFCS contains slightly more fructose relative to glucose than does sucrose, but it is also sweeter, so less of it is used. It ends up being pretty much a wash. Details and references to primary scientific literature can be found here.