Back when I was in Business School, I did some strategic analysis role-modeling as if I were in charge of Monsanto. At the time, Monsanto was best known for the "terminator gene", suing farmers allegedly stealing their agricultural IP, and BT corn that killed monarch butterflies.<p>I suggested that they change their name as the first part of their strategy to turn over a new leaf in both PR as well as core business activity. My peers mocked me, saying that no big evil corporation would be so brazen as to just change their name to clean up their brand, as their critics would see right through it.<p>The very next week, Philip Morris rebranded itself to Altria.
And?<p>Sugar is what's bad for you. The "high fructose" in HFCS is "high" relative to <i>other corn syrup</i>; table sugar breaks down into glucose and fructose during digestion.<p>"Big Corn" is probably right, here; "HFCS" is a misleading term (for one thing, it doesn't mean anything --- different HFCS blends have wildly different amounts of fructose), and more importantly, the notion that it's just "the bad kind of sugar" that's hurting people is dangerous.<p>What is it with health reporting on the Huffington Post, anyways?
Trying to eliminate what I consider "bad" foods from my diet is becoming harder as the producers change the name. I really don't care if it has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be bad - because that process took over 100 years for tobacco. I want X out of my life, I should be allowed to detect items containing X.
The grammar geek in me likes the parallel construction between "corn sugar" and "cane sugar".<p>No matter what they call it, I will still prefer the taste of my imported Mexican Coke made with cane sugar.
Personally, I'd like to see Sugar Alcohols get more widely used (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_alcohol" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_alcohol</a>). Sugar alcohols are not metabolized by oral bacteria so they're much better for dental health (and used in many chewing gums today such as Trident). They also have fewer calories and are metabolized slower by the body. That means there's less chance that they'll contribute to obesity (fewer calories) and they have a lower impact on the body's blood sugar levels (with a low glycemic index due to the way it's slowly metabolized).<p>I'm guessing the reason that they're not widely used would be cost and difficulty. Still, if we could figure out a way to produce sugar alcohols cheaply, we could keep our sweet food while having a meaningful and scientifically proven positive impact on our bodies.
I don't eat HFCS because of semi-dubious claims as to health.<p>I don't eat HFCS because I refuse to help the industry that is most to blame for the algae bloom in the Gulf, and I don't believe that government subsidies should be what makes a given industry profitable (outside, say, weapons research, development, and manufacture - but that's an entirely different can of worms that I oppose on an entirely different reasoning).
What's the big deal? If people are being "hurt" by HFCS or "Corn Sugar" or whatever you want to call it, then they can avoid eating it - it says right on the label what's in the food. If you drank 10 beers a day it'd probably be harmful as well. We shouldn't be focusing on the "evil" companies, we should be focusing on ourselves and our own diets. We allowed these "evil" companies to grow this big in the first place by willingly and eagerly buying their HFCS saturated products.<p>(Not that HuffPost said companies are "evil" but that's the commonly held belief among HuffPost readers)
Accoding to wikipedia, honey is about 38% fructose and 30% glucose.
HFCS 55 (mostly used in soft drinks), approximately 55% fructose and 42% glucose.<p>Why aren't people rally against honey? Because it's "natural".