By Any Other Name

That which we call a High Fructose Corn Syrup/By any other name would taste as sweet.

The Corn Refiners Association is looking to see how what this era’s Shakespeare, Stephen Colbert might call naminess, is going to play out for them. The trade group recently petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to change the way corn based sweeteners can be labeled on packages of food. Out with the HFCS and in with corn sugar.

Shock, outrage, Michael Pollan went out to his backyard and dug a 6ft hole to practice rolling over in his grave? Not so much. The much esteemed and Saucyendorsed, Marion Nestle was quoted in the NY Times as saying “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.”

A quick primer on HFCS

Invented in the US in the 50s, perfected in Japan in the 60s, HFCS is made by breaking down corn with an enzyme. This produces short chains of starch, which are then combined with bacteria; transforming corn sugar into glucose. Additional refining and mixing produces a syrup that is 55% fructose. The sweetener currently known as HFCS, is an inverted sugar. Inverted sugars are pretty neat-o bakewise both for the home and industrial baker/candy-maker; mostly they increase shelf-life and prevent crystallization (the separation of sugar from liquids).

Corn Syrup has the advantage of coming from a crop that receives $9 billion USD in annual subsidies from our government. Tariffs placed on cane sugar keep their price artificially high. So cheaper price, consistent availability (don’t have to worry about a hurricane knocking out the DR’s cane crop or political strife in Columbia ruining exports), plus the bonus of a longer shelf-life for your products makes HFCS a winner for industrial food producers and the home pecan pie baker alike.

Many people are concerned corn syrup is the cause of the recent spike in obesity. This is still a feeling and it is doubtful it will get upgraded to a fact anytime soon. What reasonable people can say is there is a correlation between the consumption of corn syrup and the rise of obesity. If you like to speculate, not even wildly, one could claim, that like dieters whose metabolism is unfooled by the sweetness of zero calorie soda pop, our bodies seemed wired to react to sweetness and HFCS is sweeter than sugar. HFCS may contain fewer calories than sugar but your body might be engaging in complex chemical reactions rather than a simple calorie in/calorie out accounting.

Language matters but other products like beet sugar is legally a sugar. Dr. Nestle thinks the plural ‘corn sugars’ is a more accurate description, my only caution is Corn lobby President Audrae Erickson was quoted as saying “Clearly the name is confusing consumers…”. I don’t wish to call Ms. Erickson disingenuous, but she once blamed the very same consumers for not exercising enough when asked if HFCS had anything to do with societal weight gain. The only time trade groups are ever concerned about consumers is when their subsidies or sales are threatened. Just something to consider before you leave a comment with the FDA.