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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.'"
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.
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.
...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".
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.
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.
Evaporated cane syrup is not the same as sugar. It's not cooked and doesn't have the molasses spun out. The name is fairly descriptive. It could be argued that evaporated sugarcane syrup might be even clearer, but there doesn't appear to be an intent to deceive.
On the other hand, renaming HFCS which is descriptive and is well known by consumers to some other name seems more deceptive in intent. It's fairly clear the intent is to create confusion so that people consume something they have consciously decided to avoid. If they want to come up with a substantially different product and call that corn sugar, that would be another matter.
I guess you're not a big fan of fresh fruits then?
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
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.
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.
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).
The problem is, regular corn syrup more rightfully deserves the name "corn sugar". However, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup are completely different animals.
Taking the word "fructose" out suggests that HFCS is somehow a natural sugar obtained from corn, then processed into granular form, much as sugar is formed by filtering out everything but the sucrose from sugar cane syrup and leaving the remaining granular sucrose. Such an implication would be an outright deception. Corn syrup, as it comes out of the plant, does not contain significant amounts of fructose. It is basically glucose syrup. High fructose corn syrup, by contrast, is corn syrup in which much of the glucose has been enzymatically converted into fructose. It resembles corn syrup about as closely as a plastic toy resembles its original form after you soak it in gasoline for a few hours.
Having the word "fructose" in the name of this ingredient is key to explaining how this differs from corn syrup. Eliminating the word "fructose" would have the potential to cause significant confusion, and any such proposal should be soundly rejected. I'd be okay with them calling it "high fructose corn sugar" if they would prefer, or maybe even "fructose-enhanced corn sugar", but if they think they can get away with concealing fructose as an ingredient, they have another thing coming. Either way, you know something is very wrong when an industry attempts to conceal its activities through name changes. That's tantamount to admitting guilt.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Maybe that's because the corn syrup soda tastes better? Even if it were possible to have cravings for soda, that doesn't mean cancer is growing in you.
You must not have been around before the switch to corn syrup. Coca Cola was awesome back then.
Secondly, cancer is growing in all of us, all the time. Out of the trillions of cells that comprise the human body, some number of them are going to be malfunctioning at any given time. The reason we don't all die of tumors shortly after birth is because the immune system identifies them and eliminates them.
Any food product which has the capacity to make cancer cells divide even more quickly than they already do (which, according to that study I linked, is an attribute of corn syrup but not regular sugar) is certainly worth avoiding.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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!
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."
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.
Ah-ha! You found me out!
Oh, wait, no you didn't. Sucrose is not an alternative to fructose and glucose, it is a combination of them. From the linked article:
The rest of your post is 99% pure nonsense. Transfats are chemically altered forms of vegetable oil. It isn't the processing, per se, it is -- objectively, demonstrably, and verifiably -- the altered chemical composition that causes the deleterious effects to health.
As for fructose being natural, this is quite irrelevant. All objections to HFCS that I've heard that even begin to be credible cite processing of fructose in the liver as origin of the supposed problem. If fructose is perfectly safe, then HFCS is 10% BETTER than sucrose, since it contains that much less glucose, the only other molecule found in either compound. But that can't be right, either, since (by your logic) glucose occurs in nature and, (more convincingly) it's the only form of energy the body can directly use.
To address the 1% of your post that isn't twaddle, it seems to me that there is one possible way that HFCS can cause appetite to malfunction. I suggested that sucrose and HFCS are practically identical from a metabolic point of view by the time they hit the bloodstream, to which you made no counter-argument. But, to the extent that appetite is tied to the interaction of the molecules with the body before digestion -- in the mouth, or even in the stomach -- it is possible that some "evil" lurks. But I'm unconvinced.
I'm sorry if I've been flippant in this post. While I do sincerely want correction where I'm wrong, I am quite disinterested in poorly researched, poorly thought-out, and flatly wrong-on-their-face counter-arguments.
-Peter
I thought the KFC rename was due to "Kentucky" stigma
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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
A lot of candy manufacturers have moved out of the US, relocating to Canada or Mexico where they have access to cheap sugar. I'll bet the jobs lost from sugar tariffs exceeds the jobs saved (or "touched", as it's now measured) by sugar tariffs.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Bottom line is, how about we all quit complaining about what it is they put in food, and just choose what you eat carefully.
If they will kindly not hide what they put in the food (including the use of newspeak), we can make a rational informed decision about what and how much to eat.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
But then you might make the rational informed decision to not eat high fructose corn syrup, or "corn sugar" or whatever it's called, which would affect the bottom lines of corn producers. Since they care more about their bottom line than your health or life, they have made the rational informed decision of trying to hide the fact that foods which include said semi-poison include it.
Basically, if you want businesses to play nice, you have to use government and the law to force them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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
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.
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.
I doubt bees use the same refining process that is used to produce most HFCS.
Can you link to this decline in HFCS use?
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.
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?
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..