a patriotic make-over for the USA's favourite over-used ingredient!

[foxtongue]

A new name for high fructose corn syrup:

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents firms that make the syrup, has been trying to improve the image of the much maligned sweetener with ad campaigns promoting it as a natural ingredient made from corn. Now, the group has petitioned the United States Food and Drug Administration to start calling the ingredient "corn sugar," arguing that a name change is the only way to clear up consumer confusion about the product.

"Clearly the name is confusing consumers," said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington-based group, in an interview.

"I’m not eager to help the corn refiners sell more of their stuff," Dr. Nestle wrote in an e-mail. "But you have to feel sorry for them. High-fructose corn syrup is the new trans fat. Everyone thinks it’s poison, and food companies are getting rid of it as fast as they can."

Although food label changes aren’t common, the F.D.A. has allowed name changes in the past. The ingredient first called “low erucic acid rapeseed oil” was changed to “canola oil” in the 1980s. More recently, the F.D.A. allowed prunes to be called “dried plums.”

Comments

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Oh I certainly don't "feel sorry" for them, but I agree with their point. HFCS is demonized for the wrong reasons. There isn't compelling evidence that it is worse/different than other sweeteners. It is a cheap & hyper prevelent sweetener, though, & disgustingly sweetened food is the disgusting norm these days. So yeah, HFCS is no worse than adding tons of sugar to everything, but you shouldn't do that either. Like the people who want cane sugar Coke. You know it is just as gross to drink sugar water as corn syrupy water, right?

[fluffymcdeath.livejournal.com]

Well, the crux here is the definition of "compelling" but there is growing evidence that increasing the consumption of fructose is bad for humans. Glucose is easy for us to deal with but fructose, we have a more complicated relationship with.

It seems to promote the growth of at least one type of cancer:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080204793.html

It is also implicated in insulin resistance and type II diabetes:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081209221742.htm

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

But nobody eats glucose. Or freaks out about fruit or honey. Or well-- sucrose has carcinogenic effects as well. My point is-- HFCS is bad for you, definitely. So are lots of the alternatives, that are being embraced in the margins of HFCS. When the better option is NEITHER.

[fluffymcdeath.livejournal.com]

sucrose is a disaccharide composed of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose. The bond between the two monoscaccharides is broken down during digestion to sucrose is 50/50 glucose/fructose. HFCS used for regular sweetening is 45/55 glucose/sucrose. Sucrose is not a good thing but HFCS is worse as it's the fructose that does the damage.

"Long-term fructose intake is also associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) which is another manifestation of the metabolic syndrome."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805058/?tool=pmcentrez

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

HFCS may not be worse than sugar unless you're one of about 1/3 of people (!) who suffer from fructose malabsorption and have no idea what's causing their diarrhea, depression, headaches, and sugar cravings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose_malabsorption

[syukton.livejournal.com]

Adding HFCS as opposed to glucose or sucrose is actually much worse. It takes time, but this would be worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 16717]

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've seen back & forth & I've seen the studies having suspicious funding & heck-- I'm certainly not saying HFCS isn't poison. I'm just saying that plenty of people are slagging on HFCS without moderating other intakes-- & that is just as important.

[fluffymcdeath.livejournal.com]

When everything you buys contains HFCS then the consumer has a much harder time avoiding it (and pays a premium to do so).

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Except that it tastes better, for certain measures of "better". (I recently couldn't finish a can of Canadian Dry that I bought in Seattle, mistakenly presuming it would be the same ginger drink as is sold in Canada. Wrong. Second ingredient, not ginger, but HFCS. Bleah. Inedible.)

I completely agree that the problem isn't so much the ingredient itself but the PERPETUAL ADDITION OF IT TO EVERYTHING AMERICAN. Trying to shop for food without it as an additive is a royal hassle.

*sigh*

[koppermoon.livejournal.com]

And yes, I have had to explain to some of my customers (and as natural retailers, mine should know better) that a prune IS a dried plum.

We sell a lot of "cane sugar sweetened beverages", but it's still soda pop.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

How vaguely embarassing. I mean, somewhere along the line, that should have been explained the them as children, the same way we pick up that raisins are made of grapes.. Oh wait. No, I had to explain that to someone last year. Nevermind.

[mallinson.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless, the solution is certainly not to trick people by renaming the item to something with no emotional context. At the very least that's disrespectful and lazy, using a gimmick to change our minds that conceals your product instead of spreading education about it, and at the most that's pure Orwell, using tricks with language to keep controversial things culturally blank and keep us from having opinions.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

The phase "corn sugar" is already in use, referring to dextrose, also known as glucose.

[mallinson.livejournal.com]

! So does that mean calling corn syrup corn sugar is basically pretending it's another product? Is that legal?

[fluffymcdeath.livejournal.com]

... and NutraSweet is now AminoSweet.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Is it really?

[telecart.livejournal.com]

"[...] a natural ingredient made from corn"

I'm usually not one to defend the artificial/natural distinction, but that's a very loose understanding of what 'natural' means. HFCS does not exist in nature without significant industrial processing.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

One of the things I find dubious in food labelling is that anything is a "natural" flavour, as long as it's only been tampered with three times or less. So if you strain something through arsenic, then boil it in bleach, that only counts as twice, and so the remaining substance still counts as "natural".