December 27, 2011

Big Sugar Suing Big Corn Over Name Change


This is one battle where I hope the Sugar Industries win. Yes, as a person with type 2 diabetes, both are not good for us, but what the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is trying to convince the US Department of Agriculture to allow needs to be stopped.

The CRA wants to change the name from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to corn sugar. If I was them, I would like to get rid of a product name that has garnered such a bad image. However, with people being aware of this change, if they are successful the bad image should remain. I know that I will not stop my attitude because of a name change. I do live in a large corn producing state and grew up on a farm, but I do not appreciate what the corn organizations are doing to attempt to cover up a product that is so damaging to the health of our country.

Consumers are doing the right thing by avoiding the product and not purchasing food products containing HFCS. Sugar had the same molecules as HFCS, Sucrose (aka, table sugar) contains one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose, which are bound together chemically. HFCS also contains one molecule of each, but they are not bound together chemically.

Unlike its cousin sucrose, when we ingest fructose, it is directed toward the liver. It does not go through some of the critical intermediary breakdown steps that sucrose does. For years nobody knew what this meant, but eventually cell biologists figured out that fructose was being used in the liver as a building block of triglycerides. Being overwhelmed by an excess of fatty acids, the liver releases them into the bloodstream. Muscles find themselves bombarded by these fats and they develop insulin resistance.”

The above is what the Corn Growers Association and the Corn Refiners Association do not want you to know. "Whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar," one ad says. Reading the quote from above shows the difference and how dangerous HFCS is to our health. We need to be relentless in our opposition regardless how they try to camouflage it.

I am surprised at a statement by author Andrew Weill when he states that the corn product “is a marker for low quality food and has no place in a healthy diet.” He is correct, but this also is a marketing ploy to confuse consumers as well. Either way, this argument will be aired in court, and hopefully the Corn Refiners Association will not succeed.

For more information read the following from Yahoo News, my previous blogs here and here. Also read thisblogger and the information from the two websites of the Corn Refiners Association here and here. For a very controversial study read this press release here in Medscape. The advertisements big sugar is referring to can be viewed here. And I need to thank Scott Strumello, who alerted me to this on Dec 19.

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