Corn sugar

[AllenF]

Found on Yahoo News.

NEW YORK – The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten up its image with a new name: corn sugar.

The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans' concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low.

The group applied Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get the "corn sugar" name approved for use on food labels. They hope a new name will ease confusion about about the sweetener. Some people think it is more harmful or more likely to make them obese than sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence.

Approval of the new name could take two years, but that's not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising. There's a new online marketing campaign at http://www.cornsugar.com and on television. Two new commercials try to alleviate shopper confusion, showing people who say they now understand that "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar."

More here http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100914/ap_on_bi_ge/us_corn_syrup_image

[FRAMEshift]

Well, your body can tell the difference between fructose and sucrose, so this is an outright lie.

[luvin honey]

FRAME--do you mind explaining that? We have no HCFS in our house, but I'd still like to hear more. Yes, the HCFS marketing board is pretty clever :)

[FRAMEshift]

I just mean that the enzyme pathway in humans for metabolizing fructose is not identical to the pathway for sucrose.   The primary difference is that sucrose consists of a molecule of fructose and a molecule of glucose, so the entire glucose pathway is different from what happens with fructose metabolism.  Since HFCS also contains some sucrose too, this is not a qualitative difference but rather a quantitative one.  Whether this difference is important, healthy, unhealthy, etc. is a matter for debate, but to claim that there is no difference is patently false.

[AllenF]

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) –comprises any of a group of corn syrups that has undergone enzymatic processing to convert its glucose into fructose and has then been mixed with pure corn syrup (100% glucose) to produce a desired sweetness. In the United States, consumer foods and products typically use high-fructose corn syrup as a sugar substitute. In the United States, it has become very common in processed foods and beverages, including breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments.[5]

The most widely used varieties of high-fructose corn syrup are: HFCS 55 (mostly used in soft drinks), approximately 55% fructose and 42% glucose; and HFCS 42 (used in many foods and baked goods), approximately 42% fructose and 53% glucose.[6] HFCS-90, approximately 90% fructose and 10% glucose, is used in small quantities for specialty applications, but primarily is used to blend with HFCS 42 to make HFCS 55.[7]

In the U.S., HFCS is among the sweeteners that have primarily replaced sucrose (table sugar), due to governmental subsidies of U.S. corn and an import tariff on foreign sugar, raising the price of sucrose to levels above those of the rest of the world, making HFCS cost-efficient for many sweetener applications. Critics of the extensive use of HFCS in food sweetening argue that the highly processed substance is more harmful to humans than regular sugar, contributing to weight gain by affecting normal appetite functions, and that in some foods HFCS may be a source of mercury, a known neurotoxin.[8][9][10] The Corn Refiners Association disputes these claims and maintains that HFCS is comparable to table sugar.[11] Studies by The American Medical Association suggest "it appears unlikely that HFCS contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose" but call for further independent research on the subject.[12] HFCS was classified as generally recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976.[13]

Copied from wiki.

[Paraplegic Racehorse]

Am I the only person who brews beer at home? Do we not use corn sugar in our wort? Will this re-labeling of HFCS confuse the issue with brewers and others who already use a DRY product called corn sugar?