no high fructose corn syrup list

Corn Refiners Association Launches Web Site to Inform Us All About Sweeteners

From the “Web Sites as Propaganda Machines” file, I am flabbergasted to bring news that the Corn Refiners Association has launched a web site called “sweet smarts” so they can inform all of us ignorant folks out in the webosphere about how different sweeteners stack up against each other.  (i.e. try to convince us that 4 calories worth of high fructose corn syrup is no worse for you than 4 calories worth of honey or sugar.)

They have a cute little quiz that I took.  I deliberately got all of the answers wrong so they could preach at me, and tell me how great hfcs is.

They presented two very arguable (in my opinion) points as factual.  First, they referred to research which came to the conclusion that sweetening beverages with HFCS does not have any different affect on hunger and satiety than regular sugar.  I’m guessing they were referring to one such study that I posted about last July, whose findings were highly dubious, as I opined at length.

The other was that high-fructose corn syrup is considered natural based on the FDA’s definition of natural.  Careful with that one, now – they did NOT say that the FDA had described HFCS as being natural.  They said HFCS is considered to be natural according to the FDA’s definition of the term ‘natural.’   Those are two very different things.  Considered natural by who???  One can only surmise….

The Center For Science In the Public Interest initiated a lawsuit against Cadbury-Schweppes for labeling 7-Up as “All Natural.”  The crux of the lawsuit was that 7-Up contains  HFCS and therefore can not be labelled as “all natural.”  As a result, Cadbury-Schweppes dropped the “all natural” claim and CPSI dropped their lawsuit.  As a bonus, Cadbury-Schweppes also dropped the “natural” claim from Snapple labels as well, but a lawyer still filed suit against the company last summer, attempting to get class action status.

The CPSI’s claim that HFCS is not natural is explained in this quote, “…in to contrast to table sugar, high-fructose corn syrup is made through a complex chemical industrial process in which corn starch molecules are enzymatically reassembled into glucose and fructose molecules.”  (SOURCE:  The Center For Science In The Public Interest)

I took a look at the “Terms of Use” section of the Sweet Smarts web site, and it was so long and heavy with legal disclaimers, my jaw hit the floor.  I was ready for some legalese, of course, but this read like a cell-phone contract.  I was really shocked that it didn’t have an arbitration clause in it!

They also seemed to be pushing a sweetener I’d never heard of called “neotame.”  I guess that is the next big thing we’ll be hearing about.  I wonder whether the Corn Refiners Association is connected to it at all.

February 11, 2008 | Filed Under Corn Refiners Association | Leave a Comment 

King Corn

Here is a review and a run-down of the movie “King Corn” which devotes a segment to high-fructose corn syrup.  An entertaining documentary,  it raises a lot of good questions.  One of the biggest, to me, “Why no cameras in the high-fructose corn syrup manufacturing plant????”

January 10, 2008 | Filed Under Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Statistics

1) According to the Corn Refiners Association, per capita U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup has gone from .5 pounds per year in 1970 to 59.2 pounds per year in 2005.

Which also equate to 2 calories of hfcs consumed daily in 1970 to 200 caloires of hfcs consumed daily in 2005.

SOURCE: http://www.corn.org/web/percaphfcs.htm

Absolutely frightening.

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2) From LookSmart (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0854/is_7_27/ai_n17207352) :

“Refined Carbs and Soda Are Culprits. “We saw a huge upswing in total calories between 1980 and 1997, almost all of it from refined carbohydrates, particularly corn syrup sweeteners,” says Lee Gross, M.D., lead researcher of the study. During the same 17-year period, the number of people with type 2 diabetes skyrocketed by 47%.”

November 8, 2007 | Filed Under Statistics | Leave a Comment 

Health Info

Excellent Study with tons of information about high fructose corn syrup, diabetes, liver and pancreas function and more. Especially interesting is the study on its effect on insuling and leptin: Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.

August 8, 2007 | Filed Under Health | Leave a Comment 

Study On Effects Of High Fructose Corn Syrup

An extremely odd study on the effects of high fructose corn syrup on hunger and satiety was released by the University of Washington late last week. The gist of the study was that they had 37 people drink soda pop in the morning – some drank soda pop that was sweetened with hfcs and others drank soda pop that was with sweetened with sugar.

Hours and hours after this, the subjects took part in an “all you can eat” lunch buffet and all consumed virtually the same number of calories.

I have approximately 3 problems with this study (maybe more, once I dig into it). The first is that the purported problem with hfcs is that your body does not process it when it should, in a timely manner, thus WHILE you are having a soda pop with your meal, your body does not detect the calories of HFCS, so does not send the fullness indicator when it should. If you consume hfcs much earlier in the day and THEN eat, of course it’s not going to impact how much you eat – because the hfcs in the soda pop is not a factor in your CURRENT meal.

Another problem I have is that this study did not disclose what was on the menu at the all-you-can-eat buffet. Was it totally devoid of high fructose corn syrup? Or did everything contain high fructose corn syrup? And did all subjects have the same daily calorie requirements? If one person there had a smaller daily calorie requirement and still ate the same number of calories as the person next to him who had a higher daily calorie requirement, then that person overate. And if that person overate, was hfcs in the current meal a factor? Was a menu item with hfcs consumed by that person and not by the person who did not overeat?

My last problem is partially addressed above as hfcs being prevelant in most foods and not just soda pop. The hfcs in soda pop is the hfcs 55 – which is virtually the same as sugar (though not quite, and it doesn’t come by its fructose naturally – it is upped by a genetically modified enzyme in a man-made process). BUT the hfcs that is in most of our food, especially baked goods, is hfcs 90. That means that 90 (NINETY!!!!) percent of that concoction is artifically processed/created fructose and only 10% is naturally-occurring sucrose. And this study does not address THAT at all.

July 16, 2007 | Filed Under Studies | 1 Comment