Call Me Corny
January 23rd, 2007 by Al
This is in relation to Franks post below, re Capitalism. You can apply this to one of many food types produced but one that mystifies me is a sweetener called ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup’ (HFCS). HFCS was developed in Japan (circa 1970’s) and adopted by the Corn Belt of the USA as a stable and cheap method of obtaining sweetener. It is more complicated to make than cane or beet sugar, but is cheaper in overall end-cost and easier to manipulate, transport etc.
I got to wondering why, when I pick up something produced in Europe you rarely saw HFCS on the label and it seems that every food stuff you pick up and read from the States has HFCS?
Well after a bit of digging I found out that in the EU, HFCS is very rarely used as an ingredient because the price of natural sugar is at market level. So cheap natural sugar in the EU is supported and encouraged. It seems to me that the strong Farmers Union in the USA have lobbied to have HFCS used in food production rather than change or adopt other sugar types due to economics. Now I know the reason why so much of the food from the States has HFCS and apparently these companies are now trying to relabel HFCS as a natural sweetener!! Reasoning, it comes from corn. But if you actually look into how HFCS is made it is far, far from natural and totally genetically modified. HFCS is linked to under development of children, obesity, diabetes and coronary disease.
People now complain that natural food has become more expensive. Isn’t it funny 
how in a few short years convenience food has flipped from a luxury to cheap stable? But once again it is simple economics, supply and demand. All done for the corporate greed, due to an invented and facilitated need for the convenience of living the fast life. When you shirk your responsibility for the food you eat, and pass it on to a corporation, what do you expect. Inadvertantly for some of us our jobs are related to fat cats like these. But when I go home, I eat my own food and support the farmer as much a possible. You can’t avoid these things all the time and it seems everything will kill you these days. But watch out for HFCS kids, because even in the States it’s not allowed in baby food. Now what does that tell you!
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January 25th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I checked out the article you linked to about HFCS and obesity, but it seems to imply that there is no real link between the two things. The article says “we’re not just overdoing HFCS-sweetened foods, we’re consuming too much sweetened everything.” So basically I don’t see why we should demonize HFCS exclusively - we should be keeping an eye on a lot of the things we eat, not just HFCS.
THanks though for explaining why HFCS is used here as a sweetener as opposed to sugar in the EU. That was pretty interesting.
January 26th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
LS, thanks for pointing out the hypotheses. It is based on the fact that the average weight of the US population has risen dramatically, which is incidental to introduction of HFCS into the mainstream diet. HFCS is a (simple carbohydrate) refined/processed sugar that is quickly absorbed by the body. Therefore the sugars burn quickly and the unused portions are passed into cells and turned into fat. A side affect is that after this sugar spike, you crash and feel hungry again. This is a manmade abnormal hunger. Correlations can be made between anything but there is a clear chain of causation for HFCS to be a factor in the trend of obesity. Obesity can also be determined by genetics or psychology. But, if you think back to when sugar was less prevalent (grandparents days), obesity was rare. Statistically, today sugar intake is 30% of the average Americans daily diet. HFCS is a cheap way to make food taste better. And I have to ask, why not grow and cook the produce to have those characteristics? Reason, it’s more labour intensive, therefore less economically viable. After all, a corporation is making the decision.