High Fructose Corn Syrup wants to assure you that it is just fine

Watching television last night, my wife came across a commercial promoting high fructose corn syrup. After hearing about this and finding it a bit odd, I searched online for a video of the ad. After a little digging, I found sweetsurprise.com, a web site created by the Corn Refiners Association to try to "educate" Americans about the wonders of their cheap, processed goo. You can watch their ads directly on the site, but, for whatever reason, they wouldn't load for me. 

I felt a little hurt by this exclusion.

But, I found the site fascinating. It pretty much reads like the site of someone running for high school student council president. "Here's why I'm great! See! No, forget that I burned the football field last year, look at the grades I got in Calculus last quarter!" Yes, the HFCS industry wants you to know that they are "safe" and only make you just as fat as sugar. Just as fat! Okay, besides the fact that this isn't necessarily a good thing (can you imagine trying to choose a restaurant and seeing in an ad that one has just as many rats in the pantry as the other?), this leads to a point that the Refiners don't seem interested in mentioning. The thing is, because of the low cost of HFCS, more fattening, unhealthy products can not only be made, but also purchased. Sure, HFCS doesn't make you fatter than sugar, but they help you afford two bottles of Coke instead of one.

Speaking of Coke, which I love (not as much as Pepsi), did you know that, outside the US, virtually all of their products are made with sucrose? It is true. The US has tariffs on sugar importation, which leads many companies to use HFCS instead of a natural sweetener.

"Wait," you say. "According to the sweetsurprise web site, HFCS IS a natural food! You've just caught yourself in a lie, Mr. Smartypants!"

Well, the Corn Refiners aren't lying by saying HFCS isn't natural. It contains products that come from nature. But, tell me where the "high fructose corn syrup cane" field is and I'll begin to consider it a natural product. Anything that has to go through a multi-step process to be created as an ingredient has a hard time being considered natural, doesn't it?

The Washington Post ran an article about the ecological dangers of HFCS back in March. The author, Eviana Hartman, writes:

High-fructose corn syrup "may be cheap in the supermarket, but in the environment it could not be more expensive," Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" (Penguin Press, 2008), writes in an e-mail.

Most corn is grown as a monoculture, meaning that the land is used solely for corn, not rotated among crops. This maximizes yields, but at a price: It depletes soil nutrients, requiring more pesticides and fertilizer while weakening topsoil.

"The environmental footprint of HFCS is deep and wide," writes Pollan, a prominent critic of industrial agriculture. "Look no farther than the dead zone in the Gulf [of Mexico], an area the size of New Jersey where virtually nothing will live because it has been starved of oxygen by the fertilizer runoff coming down the Mississippi from the Corn Belt. Then there is the atrazine in the water in farm country -- a nasty herbicide that, at concentrations as little as 0.1 part per billion, has been shown to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites."

Did you read that? Hermaphrodite frogs! Thanks, HFCS!

The article goes on to discuss the energy used to refine and chemically create HFCS, which, honestly, probably isn't any more of less than that of a sugar factory.

But, hermaphrodite frogs! Where's that fact on the sweetsurprise website?

So, watch for these ads. From what my wife told me, they're a hoot. I know I'll be waiting for my first viewing, sweaty glass of Coke in one hand, a blueberry Pop-Tart in the other. Sure, I can hate the stuff, but I gotta have my Coke and Pop-Tarts.