High frutose corn syrup no worse than sugar

[sequoias]

Consumer groups: High-fructose corn syrup no worse than sugar
YouNews?
Story Published: Feb 16, 2009 at 6:44 PM PST
Story Updated: Feb 17, 2009 at 4:36 PM PST
By Herb Weisbaum
Watch the story
Obesity is a major problem in this country for both children and adults. A popular sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is often blamed for this epidemic. Critics claim it is worse than sugar.

Go down almost any aisle in your supermarket and you'll find high fructose corn syrup. It's in various brands of pop, cereal, salad dressing, baked goods, jams, jelly and even some yogurt. And the list goes on and on.

But is there any reason to fear this corn-based sweetener? The food industry says it's perfectly safe, as safe as table sugar. Many well-respected consumer groups agree.

Here's what Consumer Reports says: "While high-fructose corn syrup has been implicated in a rise in Type 2 Diabetes, obesity and other health problems, there is no clear evidence that it increases the risk more than regular sugar does."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group in Washington, D.C., has challenged many sweeteners in the past. But the group says "there isn't a shred of evidence that high-fructose corn syrup is any more harmful (or healthier) than sugar."

"There's very little chemical difference between these two sweeteners, and there's no reason to be more afraid of high- fructose corn syrup than regular table sweetener," said David Schardt, the center's senior nutritionist.

The issue, Schardt said, is that they are both empty calories.

"They're both sweeteners without any nutrients. They both should be consumed in moderation, but one is not worse than the other," he said.

Yet some still think more research needs to be done.

"There's no question that high-fructose corn syrup is a major contributor to excess calories that Americans are getting. Whether there's something above and beyond that - about high-fructose corn syrup that makes it particularly bad - is still a question mark," said Dr. John Swartzberg of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter.

The bottom line: There is simply too many calories in the American diet. Rather than trying to turn one sweetener into a villain, we'd all be better off if we cut back on all sugar, whether it's made from sugar cane, corn, beets or fruit juice concentrate.

These sweeteners are just empty calories. They put on the pounds with no nutritional benefit.

And finally this from the Mayo Clinic: "...recent research - some of which is supported by the beverage industry - suggests that high-fructose corn syrup isn't intrinsically less healthy than other sweeteners, nor is it the root cause of obesity."

A recently released study found that some food products sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup may contain small amounts of mercury. The study, which was not peer-reviewed, found that 17 out of 55 food products with the corn sweetener had a detectable level of lead.

As WebMD points out, this report "doesn't prove that the mercury in the tested products came from high-fructose corn syrup." Even the researchers who did the study say they can't advise consumers to change their diet based on this initial finding.

The Corn Refiners Association questions the validity of this study and it continues to call high-fructose corn syrup safe.

Consumer Reports says these studies "are cause for concern" because even low levels of mercury exposure can be unsafe. But the editors say "the total health impact remains unclear, and the studies pose more questions than answers."

 

[Frisky Feline]

True. i think frutose corn syrup on everything tastes weird! i tend to avoid drinking frutose corn syrup that gives my tummy upset.

 

[David]

The only reason to be afraid of high fructose corn syrup is that it is much more plentiful than sugar.

 

[Jiro]

The only reason to be afraid of high fructose corn syrup is that it is much more plentiful than sugar.

not plentiful. it's because it's SO CHEAP to manufacture it. Synthetically-made product is easier and cheaper to make than natural products. It's actually disgusting. Anyway... high fructose corn syrup contributes to obesity because the body cannot effectively break it down... thus it gets stored in your body fat.... thus an obesity.

 

[Banjo]

Of course, high fructose corn syrup is terrible. They're in everything especially soda drinks. Did you know that they used sugar until the 1970s for the soda drinks?

 

[Jiro]

Of course, high fructose corn syrup is terrible. They're in everything especially soda drinks. Did you know that they used sugar until the 1970s for the soda drinks?

stopped in 1970's cuz of Cuban embargo and political mess. Haiti was our major sugar cane exporter.

 

[PowerON]

You still can get certain soda that made with sugar cane: Jones Soda, Dublin Dr Pepper, etc... Look at the label if that said it made from sugar cane. It's awesome.

Dublin Dr Pepper is No. 1 champ taste you ever had.

 

[Jiro]

You still can get certain soda that made with sugar cane: Jones Soda, Dublin Dr Pepper, etc... Look at the label if that said it made from sugar cane. It's awesome.

Dublin Dr Pepper is No. 1 champ taste you ever had.

oh? cool!

 

[sequoias]

BTW, I posted that from my phone, it was a hassle to copy and paste and never will do that again.

Anyway, yea I think sugar is more natural than the man made thing aka high frutose corn syrup. I don't think they will tell us the truth and they just won't admit anything.

I would like to try Dublin Dr. Pepper.

 

[deafaussie]

You can get Coke or Pepsi drinks in Mexico. My wife and I often go across the border to Tijuana, do personal things and buy bottles of Coke or Pepsi.

These are pure sugar based.

My brother is an SVP (Senior Vice President) of marketing in Asia Pacific Operations. He states that US bottlers dont use pure sugar for two reasons

1 Supply and Demand. It is hard to obtain sugar to keep up with the sales. THus, they had to convert it to Corn Syrup. These are readily available.

2. Taxes and duties associated to sugar imported from another countries.

 

[PowerON]

BTW, I posted that from my phone, it was a hassle to copy and paste and never will do that again.

Anyway, yea I think sugar is more natural than the man made thing aka high frutose corn syrup. I don't think they will tell us the truth and they just won't admit anything.

I would like to try Dublin Dr. Pepper.

There is one available at Farm Market in one of small store that have one for 8 oz at 2 bucks in glass bottle.

 

[sequoias]

There is one available at Farm Market in one of small store that have one for 8 oz at 2 bucks in glass bottle.

Guess Dublin Dr. Pepper is hard to find?

 

[sarasf]

Is high frutose corn syrup worse than corn syrup? More processed? Someone I work with is obsessed with checking labels for high frutose and will not touch anything that has it.

 

[purplecatty]

not plentiful. it's because it's SO CHEAP to manufacture it. Synthetically-made product is easier and cheaper to make than natural products. It's actually disgusting. Anyway... high fructose corn syrup contributes to obesity because the body cannot effectively break it down... thus it gets stored in your body fat.... thus an obesity.

You hit exactly right to the point, "it gets stored in ur body fat". It is very true when we eat and drink too much stuff that have sugar, high frutcose, any sweeteners, we gain weight. Simple as is.

Slurpee at QuickTrip convenience store made me feel little nauseated after drinking 22oz of frozen high frutcose flavored drink. I realized that I need to stay away from drinking 22oz. Small drink like 16oz would be fine. Quicktrip no longer provide 16oz plastic slurpee cup (small size), so what I did was using 16oz coffee syrofoam and filled with slurpee.

Like post above, I agree that nearly 3/4 of foods in grocery stores include high frutcose in its ingredent.

If americans need to slim down, they need to cut down on high frutcose and eat fruit, veggie ect and drink plenty of water.. And get some exercise. School need to throw out vending machine filled with junks.

Catty

 

[naisho]

Yea, I can bring science info about this:
Plant based oils (syrup inc.) are totally riddled with elements and hard to break down. It takes longer for the cells to work with it and break it down.

You can see the chemical structure of a standard fructose molecule here:

What then happens is the fructose gets broken into specific parts to deliver for processing by the enzymes in your body:

In layman's terms, "high" fructose corn syrup goes directly to your liver for processing since it is a sugar. The liver then converts it to glucose, which is another makeup of the standard table sugar, the excess material, I'm not sure where it goes. Probably directly to the intestines and or body lining.

The chemical structure fructose is really complex, for just a single drop of the substance.

I would like to explain more but I can't myself, as I need to research more into the topic.. it's one of the current topics of my research.


Basically said, any plant-created oil/syrup type substance takes some time for your body to break down, and that's why it is bad.

 

[Foxrac]

Of course, high fructose corn syrup is terrible. They're in everything especially soda drinks. Did you know that they used sugar until the 1970s for the soda drinks?

Coke and Pepsi don't switch to HFCS until 1984.

The Great Sugar Shaft
by James Bovard, April 1998

The U.S. government has devotedly jacked up American sugar prices far above world market prices since the close of the War of 1812. The sugar industry is one of America's oldest infant industries — yet it dodders with the same uncompetitiveness that it showed during the second term of James Madison. Few cases better illustrate how trade policy can be completely immune to economic sense.

The U.S. imposed high tariffs on sugar in 1816 in order to placate the growers in the newly acquired Louisiana territory. In the 1820s, sugar plantation owners complained that growing sugar in the United States was "warring with nature" because the U.S. climate was unsuited to sugar production. Naturally, the plantation owners believed that all Americans should be conscripted into the "war." Protectionists warned that if sugar tariffs were lifted, then the value of slaves working on the sugar plantations would collapse — thus causing a general fall in slave values throughout the South.

In 1934, the U.S. government imposed sugar import quotas to complement high sugar tariffs and direct government subsidies to sugar growers. By the 1950s, the U.S. sugar program was renown for its byzantine, impenetrable regulations. Like most arcane systems, the sugar program vested vast power in the few people who understood and controlled the system. As author Douglas Cater observed in 1964, "In reviewing the sugar quotas, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Cooley has had the habit of receiving the [foreign representatives interested in acquiring sugar quotas] one by one to make their presentations, then summoning each afterward to announce his verdict. By all accounts, he has a zest for this princely power and enjoys the frequent meetings with foreign ambassadors to confer on matters of sugar and state."

Sugar quotas have also provided a safety net for former congressmen, many of whom have been hired as lobbyists for foreign sugar producers.

Since 1980, the sugar program has cost consumers and taxpayers the equivalent of more than $3 million for each American sugar grower. Some people win the lottery; other people grow sugar. Congressmen justify the sugar program as protecting Americans from the "roller-coaster of international sugar prices," as Rep. Byron Dorgan (D.-N.D.) declared. Unfortunately, Congress protects consumers from the roller-coaster by pegging American sugar prices on a level with the Goodyear blimp floating far above the amusement park. U.S. sugar prices have been as high as or higher than world prices for 44 of the last 45 years.

Sugar sold for 21 cents a pound in the United States when the world sugar price was less than 3 cents a pound. Each 1-cent increase in the price of sugar adds between $250 million and $300 million to consumers' food bills. A Commerce Department study estimated that the sugar program was costing American consumers more than $3 billion a year.

Congress, in a moment of economic sobriety, abolished sugar quotas in June 1974. But, on May 5, 1982, President Reagan reimposed import quotas. The quotas sought to create an artificial shortage of sugar that would drive up U.S. prices and force consumers to unknowingly support American sugar growers. And by keeping the subsidies covert and off-budget, quotas did not interfere with Reagan's bragging about how he was cutting wasteful government spending.

Between May 1982 and November 1984, the U.S. government reduced the sugar import quotas six times as the USDA desperately tried to balance foreign and domestic sugar supplies with domestic demand.

While USDA bureaucrats worked overtime to minutely regulate the quantity of sugar allowed into the United States, a bomb went off that destroyed their best-laid plans. On November 6, 1984, both Coca Cola and Pepsi announced plans to stop using sugar in soft drinks, replacing it with high-fructose corn syrup. At the drop of two press releases, U.S. sugar consumption decreased by more than 500,000 tons a year — equal to the entire quotas of 25 of the 42 nations allowed to sell sugar to the United States. The quota program drove sugar prices so high that it wrecked the market for sugar — and thereby destroyed the government's ability to control sugar supply and demand. On January 16, 1985, Agriculture Secretary John Block announced an effective 20 percent cut in the quota for all exporting countries.

Sugar quotas made it very profitable to import products with high amounts of sugar. As a USDA report noted, "The incentive to circumvent restrictions had led to creation of new products which had never been traded in the United States and which were designed specifically for the U.S. market." On June 28, 1983, Reagan declared an embargo on imports of certain blends and mixtures of sugar and other ingredients in bulk containers. Naturally, businesses began importing some of the same products in smaller containers. The Economic Report of the President noted, "Entrepreneurs were importing high-sugar content products, such as iced-tea mix, and then sifting their sugar content from them and selling the sugar at the high domestic price." On November 7, 1984, the Customs Service announced new restrictions on sugar- and sweetener-blend imports.

Federal restrictions made sugar smuggling immensely profitable. The Justice Department caught 30 companies in a major sting operation named Operation Bittersweet. Federal prosecutors were proud that the crackdown netted $16 million in fines for the government — less than one-tenth of 1 percent of what the sugar program cost American consumers during the 1980s. The Justice Department was more worried about businessmen's bringing in cheap foreign sugar than about the sugar lobby's bribing of congressmen to extort billions of dollars from consumers. (Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a Washington, D.C., consumer lobby, reported that the sugar lobby donated more than $3 million to congressmen between 1984 and 1989.)

A few thousand sugar growers became the tail that wagged the dog of American foreign policy. Early in 1982, Reagan announced the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) to aid Caribbean nations by giving them expanded access to the U.S. market. In his May 5, 1982, announcement, Reagan promised, "The interests of foreign suppliers are also protected, since this system provides such suppliers reasonable access to a stable, higher-priced U.S. market. In arriving at this decision, we have taken fully into account the CBI." But between 1981 and 1988, USDA slashed the amount of sugar that Caribbean nations could ship to the United States by 74 percent. The State Department estimated that the reductions in sugar-import quotas cost Third World nations $800 million a year. The sugar program has indirectly become a full-employment program for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, as many poor Third World farmers who previously grew sugar cane are now harvesting marijuana.

The Reagan administration responded to sugar-import cutbacks by creating a new foreign-aid program — the Quota Offset Program — to give free food to countries hurt by reductions. In 1986, the United States. dumped almost $200 million of free food on Caribbean nations and the Philippines. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "By flooding local markets and driving commodity prices down, the U.S. is making it more difficult for local farmers to replace sugar with other crops." Richard Holwill, deputy assistant secretary of state, observed, "It makes us look like damn fools when we go down there and preach free enterprise."

The U.S. government's generosity to sugar farmers victimizes other American businesses. Brazil retaliated against the United States for cutting its sugar quota by reducing its purchases of American grain. In the Dominican Republic, former sugar growers are now producing wheat and corn, thereby providing more competition for American farmers. American candy producers are at a disadvantage because foreign companies can buy their sugar at much lower prices. Since 1982, dextrose and confectionery coating imports have risen tenfold and chocolate imports are up fivefold.

The sugar program has also decreased soybean exports. In the Red River valley of Minnesota, heavily subsidized sugar growers have bid up the rents on farmland by more than 50 percent. As a result, relatively unsubsidized soybean farmers can no longer find sufficient land to grow soybeans, America's premier export crop. This illustrates how restrictions on imports become restrictions on exports.

The sugar program is corporate welfare in its most overt form. The General Accounting Office estimated that only 17 of the nation's largest sugar cane farmers received more than half of all the benefits provided by the sugar cane subsidies. GAO also estimated that the 28 largest Florida sugar cane producers received almost 90 percent of all the benefits enjoyed by Florida sugar producers from federal programs.

The number of American jobs destroyed by sugar quotas since 1980 exceeds the total number of sugar farmers in the United States. The Commerce Department estimates that the high price of sugar has destroyed almost 9,000 U.S. jobs in food manufacturing since 1981. In early 1990, the Brach Candy Company announced plans to close its Chicago candy factory and relocate 3,000 jobs to Canada because of the high cost of sugar in the United States. Thanks to the cutback in sugar imports, 10 sugar refineries have closed in recent years and 7,000 refinery jobs have been lost. The United States has only 13,000 sugar farmers.

Many observers expected that, with the Republican Revolution in Congress, the sugar program would be abolished when the new farm bill was written in 1996. Instead, the sugar program's survival became one of the starkest symbols of that revolution's collapse. Two-hundred and twenty-three House members cosponsored a bill to get rid of the sugar program; but, when push came to shove, the sugar lobby persuaded several sponsors of the bill (including freshman conservative stalwarts Rep. Steve Stockman [R.-Tex.] and Rep. Sue Myrick [R.-N.C.]) to switch sides. The House voted 217-208 to continue the program.

Environmentalists were anxious about the adverse effects of Florida sugar cane production on the Everglades. Congress did not choose the obvious solution — ending subsides that irrationally encourage sugar production in a fragile area — but instead voted $200 million to clean up the Everglades by buying some of the sugar cane fields from farmers.

There is no reason why the United States must produce its own sugar cane. Sugar is cheaper in Canada primarily because Canada has almost no sugar growers — and thus no trade restrictions or government support programs. Paying lavish subsidies to produce sugar in Florida makes as much sense as creating a federal subsidy program to grow bananas in Massachusetts. The only thing that could make American sugar cane farmers world-class competitive would be massive global warming.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0498d.asp

 

[Foxrac]

stopped in 1970's cuz of Cuban embargo and political mess. Haiti was our major sugar cane exporter.

Not reason because of switch to HFCS.

We have high tariff on all imported sugars to make more expensive to use sugar in soda.

Cuban embargo is started in early 1960's.

 

[Foxrac]

I'm heavily consume on HFCS due Sprite lover and don't cause any weight gain because of got physically job.

I would like to see switch to sugar but we need remove the tariff on all imported sugars.

 

[PowerON]

Guess Dublin Dr. Pepper is hard to find?

Outside of Texas northeast region to anywhere is hard to find one

 

[Mistyrose]

I'm heavily consume on HFCS due Sprite lover and don't cause any weight gain because of got physically job.

I would like to see switch to sugar but we need remove the tariff on all imported sugars.

Well, you are young and you can handle it but when you get
older, be careful cuz you will gain the weight. This high
fructuse stuff is bad for your health really. If you keep
active, like you said, heavy physical type of job or exercise
will keep you from gaining weight.