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The PR/Marketing types have not gotten the memo that the internet is a game changer with respect to such age-old trickery as rebranding the same product under a
by dmfdmf 16y ago
The PR/Marketing types have not gotten the memo that the internet is a game changer with respect to such age-old trickery as rebranding the same product under a different name. If the FDA approves the name change you can be sure there will be whole websites announcing that corn sugar=HFCS thus defeating their goal. When someone searches google for corn sugar it will say "did you mean High Fructose Corn Syrup?"
In Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" he goes into why HFCS might be worse than table sugar because fructose is processed in the liver. (HFCS is 55/42 fructose/glucose but sugar is 50/50). But I agree that sugar is bad too.
Finally, the reason HFCS was invented was because of the corn subsidy and sugar (cane and beet) tariffs created the market conditions. Drop the subsidies and tariffs and sugar will take back a lot of the market share.
- georgecmu 16y agoIn Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" he goes into why HFCS might be worse than table sugar because fructose is processed in the liver. (HFCS is 55/42 fructose/glucose but sugar is 50/50). But I agree that sugar is bad too. 55 vs 50 doesn't seem like a big enough difference to make HFCS significantly worse for you than sugar. I thought that the problem were the trace amounts of enzymatic and chemical conversion agents that are used to degrade cornstarch into HFCS.
- dmfdmf 16y agoTaubes discuss that in his book and apparently (from a liver, bio-chem, blood chemistry angle) that extra 5% can make a difference for some people (there is a genetic element to it). He mentions teens getting cirrhosis of the liver from drinking too much soda. But I (and I think Taubes) agrees with your point, sugar is bad for you too. "Corn sugar" may be a bit worse but especially bad if it damages the liver.
- nathos 16y agoIn sucrose, glucose and fructose are chemically bonded (a disaccharide). In high fructose corn syrup, converted 90% fructose corn syrup is blended with 100% glucose syrup. Because the digestive system doesn't need to break the disaccharide bond in HFCS, the body can metabolize it more quickly, possibly leading to more dramatic blood sugar spikes and other nutritional weirdness.
- dmfdmf 16y agoThis is correct but I omitted it for the sake of simplicity. I think this will turn out to be important because it impacts the rates of metabolism of various bio-chemical processes. Also, per Taubes, its not just blood sugar and insulin spikes that are important but the processing of fructose in the liver that impact the levels and types of cholesterol, etc, that end up in the blood, not to mention actual liver damage if over taxed (which has similarities to alcohol induced cirrhosis).
- nitrogen 16y agoThis question may be prompted by an unawareness of more up-to-date information, but is it conceivable that the cirrhosis is caused by metabolites of other chemicals in soda or diet soda, such as possibly toxic byproducts of aspartame metabolism?
- dantheman 16y agoI don't know about that, I mean most people don't know that AirTran is ValueJet
- dmfdmf 16y agoTrue but the info is out there if people wanted to know. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Airlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Airlines). Also, presumably after the name change ValueJet cleaned up their act and stopped crashing planes otherwise the new name would quickly be ruined too. With HFCS, its not like the name change buys them time to change or improve the product, its the same stuff and -- rightly or wrongly -- people now think that it is bad for you.