
'Corn Sugar' Makers Hope You'll Buy The New Name - georgecmu
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129971532
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whyenot
I don't care what they call it. Get rid of corn subsidies and let corn syrup-
sugar compete against other sweeteners without Uncle Sam having his fingers on
the scale.

~~~
icefox
As a result of that bottles of Coke with real sugar in it get a price premium
and even if they might taste the same (depending on who you ask). People are
willing to pay more for it because they "know" it is the "good stuff". Even if
they don't really care there is something to ask people if they want a coke
and then causally insert you have code with real sugar in it which makes it
suddenly much better. What is rare is sought after.

~~~
X-Istence
There is a big difference in taste when it comes to Coca-Cola sweetened with
real sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

I much prefer the taste of soda with real sugar over HFCS, so when Pepsi did
their throwback I bought it by the case, when I can find Mexican coke (Costco
has it generally) I will buy entire cases. To me it is not so much about the
perceived health benefits of one over the other, but rather the taste.

~~~
js2
supposedly the Coke released once a year that's kosher for passover is also
made with sugar - [http://consumerist.com/2010/03/kosher-coke-is-here-for-
passo...](http://consumerist.com/2010/03/kosher-coke-is-here-for-
passover.html)

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rsheridan6
In the anti-sugar video by Donald Lustig, pediatric endocrinologist, that's
been posted here a million times, he says HFCS is no worse than sugar -
they're both terrible for you in the quantities people consume these days.
This makes sense because they're chemically essentially the same thing
(sucrose is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose, whereas HFCS is mix of
glucose and fructose monosaccharides in proportions that may slightly skew
towards fructose or glucose depending on the formulation. The disaccharides of
sucrose are broken up in the body anyway, so in the end there's no clinically
significant difference. Lustig didn't think the difference was important).

If there's anything misleading going on here, it's that people think that
"real" sugar is OK. I guess it'll give you natural diabetes.

Obligatory link to the video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

~~~
tzs
The problem with HFCS isn't that it is necessarily worse than other forms of
sugar. Rather, the problem is that it is usually an indicator of other
problems. It's like Van Halen's famous brown M&Ms.

The band Van Halen had a term in their contracts, buried in the section of
technical requirements that specified things like power requirements and
structural requirements for the stage and such, that required the venue to
provide a bowl of M&Ms for the band, with all the brown M&Ms removed.

This was there not because they had anything against brown M&Ms. Its purpose
was to provide a way to see if someone had actually read the technical
requirements. When they arrived to set up for a show, they could walk
backstage, glance at the bowl of M&Ms, and if they saw brown ones, they
invariably found on closer inspection that other requirements had also been
ignored--including safety requirements.

Same with HFCS. If you find HFCS in the ingredient list, it is usually a sign
you are dealing with a food that has had a lot of processing applied to it to
try to "improve" it, or make it cheaper at the expense of nutrition, and so
on. A food that has not been processed like that almost never will have HFCS.

~~~
izendejas
Your comment is spot on. The rule of thumb is that if you can't make sense of
the ingredients list on back labels (especially if they're extremely long),
it's more than likely highly processed junk.

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Cushman
The industry trying to rebrand corn syrup as something that sounds healthier
is pretty slimy. But the real problem here is that consumers think sugar is
healthier than corn syrup in the first place.

I think it's great that people are turning on corn syrup— the super-cheap
supply of sugar has definitely had a horrible effect on public health. But I
don't like the thinking that the solution is to start using a similar amount
of cane sugar.

~~~
dmfdmf
The PR/Marketing types have not gotten the memo that the internet is a game
changer with respect to such age-old trickery as rebranding the same product
under a different name. If the FDA approves the name change you can be sure
there will be whole websites announcing that corn sugar=HFCS thus defeating
their goal. When someone searches google for corn sugar it will say "did you
mean High Fructose Corn Syrup?"

In Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" he goes into why HFCS might be
worse than table sugar because fructose is processed in the liver. (HFCS is
55/42 fructose/glucose but sugar is 50/50). But I agree that sugar is bad too.

Finally, the reason HFCS was invented was because of the corn subsidy and
sugar (cane and beet) tariffs created the market conditions. Drop the
subsidies and tariffs and sugar will take back a lot of the market share.

~~~
georgecmu
_In Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" he goes into why HFCS might be
worse than table sugar because fructose is processed in the liver. (HFCS is
55/42 fructose/glucose but sugar is 50/50). But I agree that sugar is bad
too._

55 vs 50 doesn't seem like a big enough difference to make HFCS significantly
worse for you than sugar. I thought that the problem were the trace amounts of
enzymatic and chemical conversion agents that are used to degrade cornstarch
into HFCS.

~~~
dmfdmf
Taubes discuss that in his book and apparently (from a liver, bio-chem, blood
chemistry angle) that extra 5% can make a difference for some people (there is
a genetic element to it). He mentions teens getting cirrhosis of the liver
from drinking too much soda.

But I (and I think Taubes) agrees with your point, sugar is bad for you too.
"Corn sugar" may be a bit worse but especially bad if it damages the liver.

~~~
nathos
In sucrose, glucose and fructose are chemically bonded (a disaccharide). In
high fructose corn syrup, converted 90% fructose corn syrup is blended with
100% glucose syrup.

Because the digestive system doesn't need to break the disaccharide bond in
HFCS, the body can metabolize it more quickly, possibly leading to more
dramatic blood sugar spikes and other nutritional weirdness.

~~~
dmfdmf
This is correct but I omitted it for the sake of simplicity. I think this will
turn out to be important because it impacts the rates of metabolism of various
bio-chemical processes. Also, per Taubes, its not just blood sugar and insulin
spikes that are important but the processing of fructose in the liver that
impact the levels and types of cholesterol, etc, that end up in the blood, not
to mention actual liver damage if over taxed (which has similarities to
alcohol induced cirrhosis).

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jdietrich
They have a point. HFCS isn't necessarily very high in fructose - it's called
that because natural corn syrup is all glucose and has to be processed into
what we in the UK call "glucose-fructose syrup". I hope I don't need to point
out that fructose is a perfectly natural sugar and is the predominant source
of sweetness in apples, pears and many other natural foods.

It's also worth pointing out that fructose is not only 73% sweeter than
sucrose, but is also synergistically sweeter when combined with other
sweeteners. As a result, HFCS can be used in significantly smaller quantities
than ordinary corn syrup.

HFCS isn't really the issue - it's just the cheapest source of sweetness,
without the subsidies it'd just be replaced with plain old sucrose. The real
problem is that the average American consumer demands phenomenal levels of
sweetness in almost all foods. HFCS is everywhere because consumers expect
nearly everything they eat to be sweet. Food manufacturers don't dare reduce
the sweetness of their foods because it would cost them countless millions,
something no public company has any legal right to do. Without a federal
mandate or a massive cultural shift, I can't see any progress being made.

~~~
gnaritas
> I hope I don't need to point out that fructose is a perfectly natural sugar
> and is the predominant source of sweetness in apples, pears and many other
> natural foods.

Yes, in nature though it's generally package with a dose of fiber which slows
down its absorption. Being natural doesn't make it good.

~~~
smackay
Robert Lustig from University of California San Franciso has a great
explanation, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>, that shows all the
metabolic pathways that fructose takes and why it is bad for you.

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tjmc
"Sara Lee switched to sugar in two of its breads last month." This line was
revealing. If you look at the ingredients list of bread in Europe for example,
you won't find any sugar added. Sara Lee must figure that going "cold turkey"
on sugar is going to hurt its offerings in a US market that's been weaned on
sugar for decades. So it "rearranges the deckchairs" on a couple of lines to
placate the niche of consumers concerned about HFCS, but does nothing to
address the larger health issue - the addition of sugar of any kind.

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hugh3
I've also started to notice "organic evaporated cane juice" appearing on
ingredients lists.

Nice try. So that would be... sugar?

~~~
araneae
Sucrose from sugar cane is more expensive than sucrose from beets, so the
manufacturer is making sure people know it was made from sugar cane rather
than beets.

~~~
hugh3
Or they're trying to fool the ignorant (or those who are quickly scanning the
label for sugar) into thinking it's something other than plain ol' sugar? If
they'd said "Cane sugar" I wouldn't have a problem with that.

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ericd
One issue with the sugar vs. HFCS argument presented in the article - I
thought that HFCS was ~60% fructose vs. table sugar's pure sucrose (50/50
glucose/fructose)?

EDIT: Seems there are a few variants - 42% fructose, called HFCS 42, 55% (HFCS
55), and a whopping 90% fructose (HFCS 90) (from
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup> )

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naner
Rebranding proves to be more difficult in the information age. Everyone knows
about this name change since it is being reported everywhere and it looks like
an admission of guilt.

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lachyg
Oh god. I don't think a change of name is what they need, but a change of
product.

~~~
hugh3
If only the cornfields of the American midwest were suitable for growing sugar
cane, we wouldn't have this problem.

Anyone with agricultural knowledge know what you _could_ grow instead of corn
in the cornbelt if the demand (and/or subsidies) for corn were to collapse
substantially?

~~~
yellowbkpk
In most places that can grow corn farmers can also grow (and usually do - just
in smaller quantities) soybeans, grain, rice, and hops. Also, if corn wasn't
subsidized so much we would probably see farmers make more room for cattle and
other animals in the fields so they could eat grass and replenish the
nutrients in the field rather than shoved in a barn somewhere.

