the Fodder File

Photo credit: kgstudiosoakland mosaics

So what’s the deal with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)?

Some are waging all-out war against this sweetener, and some are defending the golden syrup as a miracle of modern food science. But what is the consensus among the scientific realm?

Well, if anything, the debate is even more ferocious among scientists, who come conveniently equipped with metabolic jargon and correlative epidemiological statistics on both sides of this raging torrent of sticky sap.

High-fructose corn syrup is a derivative of corn that is used as a sweetener in millions of products, from cereals to soft drinks, fruit juices to breads.  Getting its start in the 1970s, HFCS has quickly worked its way into the  food supply as a cheap alternative to sucrose, a 50:50 mixture of fructose and glucose, and the typical “gold standard” for sweetness.  HFCS is some what of a misnomer, because it typically appears in one of two forms: a 42:58 fructose/glucose split, or a 55:45 fructose/glucose measure, neither of which have a particularly higher concentration of fructose than sucrose.

Sugar-sweetened beverages mostly use HFCS as their sweetener for a number of reasons: 1) it’s liquid as opposed to crystalline (sucrose), making it better for transportation, pumping and dilution; 2) it doesn’t hydrolize in acidic conditions the way sucrose seems to, making it more suitable for acidic beverages; and 3) it comes from corn, a more price stable and cheap commodity from the US Midwest, as opposed to sucrose, which comes largely from sugar cane in the tropics.

Why the outcry?

… stay tune for tomorrow’s entry!