I don't have much to add, but since I'm one of those sugared-soda fans, I have to note that my local international market now has different labeling that makes it impossible to tell whether a Coke bottled in Mexico has sugar or HFCS in it. There used to be two different labels, presumably for different bottling plants, that specified the sweetener; now it's 'sugar and/or HFCS.' It's very annoying.

However, it also looks like there's less sweetener overall in those drinks according to the carb count, regardless of type. So that's still a small advantage, along with the glass bottles.

Don't get me started...

Why is there an entire aisle in the grocery store dedicated to soda and chips, and about twenty feet of shelf space for natural juices?

I thought the first rule of conservative fiscal policy was not to pay anyone, directly or indirectly, for something they're going to do anyway.

There is one interesting fact that gets left out too much...high fructose corn sweetener has the same percentage of sugar to fructose as regular fruit juice. It wasn't intended to be a taxpayer ripoff, it was designed to be a healthier alternative to straight sugar syrup. Go figure.

I love the "it's fine in moderation" bit. That'd be nice......if 5 pounds of the sticky shit wasn't in everything.

http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/

You can find Coke made with sugar rather than corn syrup around Passover. Look for it marked Kosher for Passover.

Gotta be careful here. I was one of the first people I know to cut HFCS out of my diet, which is darned hard to do when you start reading labels (it's in salad dressing?!?! Bread ?!?! Holy crap!). It's insidiously bad stuff. In addition to being more easily converted to fat, HFCS halts the release of leptin, the hormone that tells us to stop eating. So it robs us of a little of our free will.

However, at one time there were good reasons to have a heavily corn-based economy heavily subsidized by the government.

Hunger in America was a real problem when I was a kid. I remember in the 1970s reading a list of the states with the lowest average weight. The funny thing is, the same states today (Ohio Valley, Deep South) are the most obese. Making food cheaper so poor people could afford to eat was one of the smarter things our government did in those years. The fact that we chose to subsidize corn wasn't an inherently bad idea, but we also should have been subsidizing fresh fruits and vegetables and other grains as well.

But Ezra is correct that it's now time to reform our agriculture policy and make some health- and nutrition-based policies on the foods that should be available to us most cheaply.

I was one of the first people I know to cut HFCS out of my diet, which is darned hard to do when you start reading labels (it's in salad dressing?!?! Bread ?!?! Holy crap!).

Oh yeah, I remember that, and I just cut it out for Lent. Some of the habits stuck, though, like buying different breads & making my own salad dressings. I'm not a stickler by any means, but if I'm going to eat something unhealthy, then I want it to be decent-quality food at least... splurges should be on the good stuff.

A few years ago, Laos had a knock off of Coca Cola that pretty much nailed the sugar based recipe. They seem to have been shut down from what I saw on my last trip to Laos. But it was pretty striking that a Lao knock off of Coke would be better than the "real thing" here in America. It's amazing what real sugar does for the flavor. But as lutton has noted, you can get the real thing during Passover.

"It's fine in moderation."

Not the most convincing slogan.

Other things that are fine in moderation:

Radiation
Lead paint
Electro-shock therapy
Heroin
Pornography
Joe Biden

I'm sure it depends on where you live, but the cane sugar Coke is easily available at Costco and other big box stores. They import it from Mexico if there's high enough local demand.

And Ezra, I know the job of a pundit is to have a confident opinion about everything under the sun, but claims like 'That's the primary way the syrup contributes to obesity' ought to be researched.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/76/5/911

Humans did not evolve to consume large amounts of fructose. Fructose is metabolized in the liver, unlike glucose, and it crowds out insulin maintenance, which leads to insulin resistance, which leads to diabetes. And magically, diabetes in the US has skyrocketed along with the growth of HFCS.

I highly recommend Gary Taubes' book Good Calories, Bad Calories as an interesting look into dietary science and the peculiarities of politics of science in general.

"They import it from Mexico if there's high enough local demand."

You can get it at Costco in the Denver area.

Take a hotdog. the meat has HFCS, so does the mustard, the ketchup, the relish, and even the bun. the problem isn't HFCS itself so much as the fact that almost any commercially made food is filled with sugar which means we all eat way too many calories.

My solution is to cook at home, and from scratch, whenever I can. Surprisingly, whenever I make a loaf of bread, I don't feel the urge to add a bunch of sugar syrup into my recipe!

Make your own iced tea and I bet that no matter how big a sugar fiend you are, you won't be adding as much as Nestea does by default. Sure you could buy Honest Tea or something, but seriously, its ridiculous how much money people waste on food that can be made at home for a teeny fraction of the cost, and once you get the hang of it, will taste so much better.

And the scary thing is just how many of these sugar-loaded foods the average person would consider "healthy" (like so many fruit juices, iced teas, whole wheat breads, etc.)

But, compared to the growth hormones packed into the meats we eat, I think there are other more serious health issues. Feed a cow hormones to make it big and fat, then feed that cow to a person, and we're supposed to believe that those growth hormones aren't getting into our bodies as well?

It always amazes me when I see documentary footage from the 60's or 70's (or travel abroad) and see what "average" weight used to be. There is no good reason for this country to continue doing this to ourselves. We're on our way to Wall*E World for sure.

Also: allergies. There's some evidence that all this HFCS in our food is creating more corn allergies and a new allergy to corn syrup itself (though the actual allergy might not be to the HFCS, but to the sulphur used to refine the syrup).

My proposal ? Change the egregious ethanol subsidy so ethonol made from corn kernels isn't subsidized and ethanol made from high fructose corn syrup is. The money goes to the same people so why would they mind ?

Fight obesity and global warming, kill two birds with one stone.

There is also an issue with what is called 'fructose malabsorption'. In Australia it has become apparent in the last couple of years that most of the people with irritable bowel syndrome are fructose malabsorbers and must limit the amount of fructose in their diet. While we don't have a lot of HFCS here it poses a big problem for sufferers. Also, I think they are finding that people with diets high in fructose may develop fructose malabsorption (unlike a lot of food allergies and intolerances it doesn't appear to be genetic, but develops over time).

I agree with everything, except the way you treat the tariffs on sugar cane as an aside. I've always that's a key element of the market for HFCS.

A few years ago, Peter Jennings did a special on food.

Any visitor to this site knows how expensive fruits and vegetables are, especially in the poorest neighborhoods.

Peter was speaking with a representative of a F&V trade group. I am heavily paraphrasing here, but Peter asked why beef, corn and dairy were so heavily subsidized and they were not. He said they each had a great lobby. Peter asked don't you think YOU ought to get one?

i miss Peter.

Feed a cow hormones to make it big and fat, then feed that cow to a person, and we're supposed to believe that those growth hormones aren't getting into our bodies as well?

1. It is customary to *cook* the cow before feeding it to a person. Cooking does things to organic molecules.

2. Then when the person eats the cooked beef, it enters their stomach, and encounters an acid solution with a pH of approximately 1. That has effects on organic molecules too.

3. Along with acid, there's also a variety of enzymes adapted to break down complex organic molecules into simpler ones.

4. If the hormone molecules have managed to survive heat and acid and various enzymes, then they may or may not be absorbed into the bloodstream.

5. While in the bloodstream, they are of course subject to the body's chemical regulation and filtration of the bloodstream, carried out mostly by the liver (and to some degree by other organs as well). You're assuming repeated doses so this may not actually be that big an obstacle, if it's reintroduced as often as it's removed.

6. Finally, if the hormones get past all that, then they can have whatever effect they have on a species different from the species that produced them; IIRC the most recent common ancestor of humans and cows was sometime back in the age of the dinosaurs, but some biochemical molecules are conserved in very similar form for incredibly long times, so it's possible that there might be some effect.

A quick internet search seems to indicate that cows are not, in fact, *fed* growth hormone, but rather, *injected* with growth hormone. This is obviously more hassle and more expensive, so the likely explanation of why anyone would bother is that the cow equivalents of (2) - (4) above would make simply spiking the food ineffective. The implications of this for a subsequent beef eater are obvious.

Cane sugar is much better for you than HFCS because it is a disaccharide made of glucose and fructose linked together. Your body has to digest--split the two sugars apart before the sugar can enter your bloodstream. Fructose, a monosaccharide, goes directly into the bloodstream, causing a faster and higher spike of sugar. Diabetics should stay away from HFCS because it is so highly glycemic (causes blood sugar to spike).

I recently started cooking for myself a lot more, mostly organic stuff. The belt I'm wearing right now used to be tight on me with the second-loosest notch and now the belt is loose even on the tightest notch, so I'm going to have to buy a new belt. It's amazing what doing what you can to cut out HFCS can do for you.

Also, those ads are just plain condescending. I'm not sure having a corporation saying the average person trying to look out for their and their kids' health are morons is the smartest marketing ploy in the world.

A good movie that investigates this subject is called King Corn. A subplot in the documentary, has two of the filmmakers setting out for the recipe for corn syryp. It's hilarious to hear how the big companies that produce corn syrup respond.

Watch out, you're going to get hit! I wrote a "letter to the editor" commenting on HFCS, and received a HUGE mailer from the corn refiner's association showing me how "misinformed" I was. They also sent a counter letter to the paper which was unfortunately printed the following week. They've seen the writing on the wall, and they're hitting back.

The other "support" to the effectiveness of the corn subsidies is the system of import restrictions that keep the US sugar price well above world averages. (It's also a program that makes it difficult for the US to advocate liberalized trade with a straight face.) Not only is HFCS cheaper than it should be, sugar is more expensive than it need be.

Ezra, I agree 100% that subsidies for high fructose corn syrup ought to be abolished.

However, I suggest you ask your friend Megan to explain the words "public choice theory" to you. And then take the lesson of subsidies for high fructose corn syrup and generalize.

You might learn something useful.

Ezra -

I don't quibble with your post. It is worth noting, however, that this particular trajectory has a much longer history than just subsidies to American corn growers (though this has proved a particularly toxic nexus).

The anthropologist/historian Sidney Mintz, in his book "Sweetness and Power" tracked the links between the Caribbean slave system and European industrialism. Among other important links was the use to which sugar was put: a relatively cheap, high-calorie food product that could industrial workers could purchase in lieu of more expensive forms of calories, like meat or vegetables. This allowed factory owners to cut wages and maximize profits. Which in turn were invested back into the sugar-slave complex.

Sugar, and cheap calories, being fed to the poor has a long pedigree in Western society.

Go SEE KING CORN: a fairly unbiased look at this industry. fantastic documentary

rent it from netflix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiCRwMMh9k8

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/

http://www.kingcorn.net/

King Corn is great. I saw those guys wearing this great HFCS tshirt at a screening...

http://tshirtinsurgency.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup-t-shirt

Sugar is sugar. Eat too much and you'll develop insulin resistance and then diabetes.

I'm surprised only one commenter (ajwak1) has mentioned Fructose Malabsorption Syndrome.

After recently reading about it, I cut 90% of the fructose out of my diet (from all sources, not just HFCS, though that's the most insidious one) and now I feel like a new man. My IBD is gone, my energy level is up, I've dropped almost twenty pounds in about four months, and I even feel sharper mentally. I highly encourage anyone with unexplained IBD symptoms to look into it.

Robert M.:

You're wrong. That's the line that the big agribusiness companies are using, but it's clear to me now that not all sugar is metabolized the same way.

As someone with Fructose Malabsorption Syndrome, I can, for instance, gorge myself on sucrose-based candies and suffer no more ill-effects than the next person, but if I eat a hot dog with onions and ketchup on a bun made with HFCS, I'll spend the rest of the day with stomach cramps and diarrhea.

So, no. All sugar is not created equal.

Hunger in America was a real problem when I was a kid. I remember in the 1970s reading a list of the states with the lowest average weight.

I agree with several others. The print ads are offensive. I've seen them in two womens' magazines and they ridicule women's way of sharing informaion. Woman 1--"My hair dresser says HFCS is bad for you." Woman 2-"Oh, you get your hair done by a doctor?" Gauling. Really. Snarky. The point is not, as the ad explains, that HFCS is sugar, but that HFCS is cheap and makes eating more sugar easy and hard to avoid (as pointed out by others). Also, I thought we all learned in the 50s and 60s that science is imperfect (even medical science) and that those who question common wisdom as pushed by doctors and industry, are sometimes the most prudent among us. This ad makes me sick because it acts as though the way women share information is worth nothing. And, by the way, I am pretty gosh darned hard to offend. I'm typically the one who is rolling her eyes at people saying they are offended by "x" or "y". But does this ad smack of the AMC TV show called Mad Men....? The show is supposed to show us how far we've come. Ahem.

合金管

I had ibs for many years not sure what was the cause. I changed doctors and was tested and surprise!! My body could not handle HFSC. After I found food I could eat things are better. I till have issue when I eat out. HFCS is in everything, When I eat something with hfcs in it only takes minutes for my body to get sick. NOT GOOD Please take it out of our food!!!

thaaaaanks
شات بنت السعوديه

http://www.wowgold-powerleveling.com

http://www.igchest.com