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The Future of High-Fructose Corn Syrup
by admin on: June 10th, 2011

High-fructose corn syrup has been in the news and its outlook is not so good. Many Americans are as concerned about corn syrup as they are about ???Mad Cow Disease??? and finding mercury in their fish and seafood. This level of concern has prompted several food makers to rework their recipe to eliminate high-fructose corn syrup by replacing it with cane sugar or beet sugar.

The Corn Refiners Association made the suggestion to simply change the name used for this product ??? use ???corn sugar??? instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

So, why all the fuss over this product? According to the American Diabetic Association, the difference between high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar (sucrose) is indistinguishable; the products are equivalent nutritionally. Further, the American Medical Association has stated that they do not believe that high-fructose corn syrup is more responsible for contributing to America???s problem with obesity as compared with regular sugar.

However, that is not to say that there are no differences; the process of making table sugar differs from that of high-fructose corn syrup. Table sugar is made by squeezing the sugar out of beets and cane, whereas the high-fructose corn syrup production involves the use of enzymes and processing in order to turn corn starch into glucose, which is then converted into fructose.

Sugar historians will tell you that the hub-bub surrounding high-fructose corn syrup dates back to an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1994. However, the intent of this article was distorted. The article???s intent, according to the author, was to highlight the over-consumption of beverages containing sugar. People, perhaps incorrectly, assumed it was due to the presence of high-fructose corn syrup rather than admit that they had a sugar problem.

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