Taxes, chemistry and Advertising or High Fructose Corn Syrup, Part I

Now complete, this post has three parts. Part one, below explains HFCS and its popularity, part two discusses the link (or lack of link) between HFCS and obesity , part three discusses mercury and HFCS and offers a conclusion. 

High Fructose Corn Syrup. There, I did it. I wrote the first word of this post that has plagued me for months. It's not that I didn't want to research and write about HFCS. I did. I do, sort of. After months of reading here and there, I 'd read both sides of every issue and was still confused. But writing brings me clarity, and I've reached a conclusion--if I can find a big enough chunk of time to write it all down. This baby will have two parts and it's all for Amanda.

Do you know that hymn with line in it "On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand" ? I didn't find a way to connect Christ and HFCS (somebody has probably seen Christ's profile in a spilled bit of HFCS and tried to sell it on E-bay though). Seriously though, most of what I read, no matter what side of this issue it supported, felt like sinking sand. So much of the research can't prove cause so to me their conclusions are interesting, at best. And their funding: dubious. I know, enough silly analogies.

Chemistry or fructose/glucose
To begin, let's have a chemistry lesson. Table sugar, the white stuff most of you bake with is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Table sugar is also called sucrose. Brown sugar is sucrose mixed with molasses. Confectioner's sugar is another form of sucrose. High Fructose Corn Syrup has many different forms. The most commonly used types are HFCS 55 which is 55% fructose and 45% glucose and HFCS 42 which is 42 % fructose and 58% glucose. Really, the name high fructose is misleading because HFCS and sucrose have very similar compositions. Honey generally has a similar fructose/glucose ratio as sucrose.
Calorie for calorie, HFCS and sugar are essentially the same.

The sweetener you choose varies in sweetness. Fructose is the sweetest sugar of all. Glucose is about 50-60% as sweet as fructose and table sugar is about 70-85% as sweet.

Why HFCS is Popular
I've read that most cola in Mexico is made with real sugar. In the United States, most of it is made with HFCS. I know why now.

The process of taking corn syrup and turning it into high fructose corn syrup was invented in 1957. In 1971, Japanese scientists found a way to reuse one the enzmyes used to made HFCS, dramatically decreasing the cost of this sweetener. Several tariffs on sugar imposed in the late 1970s made sugar prices increase. Government subsidies on corn, and new agricultural technologies leading to higher and higher yields, decreased the price of corn. In the US, it became cheaper to use HFCS than sugar, especially after the US put limits on sugar imports in 1982.(Here's an interesting article about Archer Daniels, a major producer of HFCS and ethanol and their role in these government policies) Accountants began to love HFCS, food producers liked HFCS's traits: it dissolves more readily in liquid than sucrose and it doesn't crystallize like sugar in cold temperatures (if you buy ice cream made with sugar, you've seen the freezer burn crystals).And HFCS is cheaper and easier to transport than sugar because it is a liquid.

Now for the all-important alarming facts. In 1976, the percentage of obese people in America was 14.5%. In 2007, that percentage was around 25%. In 1970, according to the USDA, the average person in American consumed
72.5 lbs of refined sugar a year and 0.4 lbs of HFCS. In 2004, the average person consumed 44 lbs of refined sugar and 42.3 lb of HFCS. So clearly, sugar use has gone down and HFCS has gone up.

That's enough for today. I don't like blog posts that are too long and I'm guessing you can't either. Stay tuned for part two, coming in the next two days, where I'll explain all the medical research, the mercury issue, and the conclusion.
sources: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=93621
Goldstein, Jennifer. "High Fructose Corn Syrup" in May 2009 issue of Prevention.
Johnson, Richard and Timothy Gower. The Sugar Fix: The High Fructose Fallout that is Making You Fat and Sick. Published in 2008 by Rodale.
http://diabetes.webmd.com/news/20070625/fructose-sugars-dark-side,
http://blogs.webmd.com/healthy-recipe-doctor/2008/01/high-fructose-corn-syrup-new-bad-boy-in.html
http://www.askmen.com/sports/foodcourt_150/182_eating_well.html
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 86 (2007):899-906. American Society for Nutrition.
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html