There’s a powerful lobby out there, searching the far reaches of the world wide web, looking for anyone that dares, could be so bold as to besmirch the good name of high fructose corn syrup. I know. They’ve sent me packages (yes, more than one–really expensive looking to) of information touting the benefits. They have run multi million dollar ad campaigns to fix the marred reputation of their favorite sweetener. They are the Corn Growers Association and holy crap have they put alot of money into PR for HFCS.
I mean, really, I have an ice cream shop in Denver. I am the definition of small potatoes. Yet they had enough man power (and cash) to find me on the internet and learn that all our products are completely free of high fructose corn syrup. Not only that, they found this threatening enough to send me not one, but two packets of information encouraging me to cease and desist on our HFCS ban. My favorite part was the letter from the FDA clarifying that products containing high fructose corn syrup can indeed be labeled as “natural” (scary).
Apparently, the Corn Refiners Association took umbrage at the FDA stating that they would , “object to the use of the term ‘natural’ on a product containing HFCS, because it is produced using a synthetic fixing agent” and they used their considerable legal weight to take them to task. The result, of course, was a backtrack on the part of the FDA and a loss on the part of eaters everywhere.
According to foodnavigator-usa.com:
The process sees the enzymes for making HFCS being fixed to a column by
the use of a synthetic fixing agent called glutaraldehyde. However,
this agent does not come into contact with the high dextrose equivalent
corn starch hydrolysate and so it is not “considered to be included or added to the HFCS,” said June.
Really? How about the fact that, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “HFCS cannot be considered natural because its chemical bonds are broken and rearranged in the manufacturing process.” Are we seriously having this conversation? “Natural”, quite simply, means that it was made in nature. Last I checked natural things did not have broken chemical bonds or need synthetic fixing agents (glutaraldehyde?) in order to be produced. Natural it is not.
But really, I digress. The meaning of “natural” has been so watered down recently (see my previous blog post) and we could spend all day arguing with the FDA. Too many variables here, let’s look at the facts. Results from a recent Princeton University study clearly show that the effects of high fructose corn syrup are significantly different than the effects of simple table sugar, even in smaller doses. Rats who eat their regular chow and drink water sweetened with HFCS got fat, really fat. Worse than that they saw a significant rise in triglycerides, these two things in combination are the known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes. This (from the Princeton study) is the simplest and clearest explanation I have ever seen for the difference between sugar and HFCS…
High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.
Seems like as good a reason as any to get rid of something in our food supply that should never have been there in the first place.
Oh, and if you want to go somewhere where you don’t have to be obsessive about looking at labels, come to The Trolley. We obsess about it for you.
For ice cream shop
