Posted on September 15th, 2010 by
cortney and tagged
HFCS.
image via bien-tre
The corn industry doesn't like all the bad attention that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has received lately. So, they've decided to make some changes. No, they don't want to improve the healthfulness of their products; they just want to change the name of HFCS to "corn sugar" in hopes that consumers won't catch on to the switch.
Thanks to today's unparalleled information inundation, consumers have slowly but surely become aware of the negative effects of HFCS and in response, they have decreased their HFCS. Studies have linked HFCS to obesity, cancer, diabetes. Feed one lab rat sugar and feed another rat an equivalent amount of HFCS, and the HFCS rat gains more weight every time. Many (non-plutocratic) countries have even banned the sale of HFCS.
"HFCS is much more dangerous as it is a highly processed free form molecule that metabolizes in a completely different way than glucose," Dr. LindaJoy Rose, raw foods expert, writes in her upcoming book Raw Fusion, "Fructose is broken down right in the liver... In recent studies, high fructose corn syrup has been linked to cancer cell proliferation due to the way it metabolizes."
Unfortunately for consumers, staying away from HFCS meant staying away from most food products on the market, from bread to pickles. Recently, however, some manufacturers (like Gatorade, Snapple, and Hunt's) have responded to public demand by replacing HFCS with sugar.
Still, despite the falling use of HFCS and a poor economy within the United States, the American corn industry's profits remain steady in the $3 billion to $4 billion range, thanks to an expanding international market—but this isn't enough for this greedy industry. They don't want the same-ol' profits—they want even more, hence their latest debacle.
A lab rat might gain more weight from HFCS, but would it if you changed the sweetener's name to corn sugar? Scientifically speaking, yes. The corn industry knows this; it just hopes consumers won't associate this new name with the negative connotations tied to the old name.
"Instead of replacing ingredients that are unwanted by the public," HuffPo commenter Chrisjsamp writes, "most food manufacturers will announce that the public 'doesn't understand' and then they change the name of the product to trick the consumer into buying what [the consumer] doesn't want. The food manufacturer recognizes that the public does not want to buy [HFCS] and does not want to put [HFCS] into their bodies—and the manufacturer's response is to change the name so the pubic will buy it unwittingly, without knowing what it is. What an example of unethical business!"
Consumers have a right to more information—not less—especially if the product enters their bodies. If the corn industry truly feels that consumers are avoiding HFCS for the wrong reasons, they should attempt to propagandize educate the public and point to independent research supporting their views (hint: you won't find any such research). They shouldn't, however, blatantly try to deceive consumers. This move merely shows that the industry doesn't have any facts on its side.
As HuffPo notes, the FDA could take up to two years to decide on whether or not it will allow "corn sugar" to replace "HFCS" on ingredients labels. Still, the corn industry has already embraced the new name in its advertising.
Angry consumers can contact the FDA and/or their representatives, but the government has a shoddy history when it comes to picking the public's health over corporate interests.
Instead, the best method of combating this ridiculousness is to spread the word. Email, text, or call your friends and tell them about "corn sugar" and what it really stands for: obesity, diabetes, and cancer. As this scandal shows, nothing scares big business like an informed consumer!
