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While the evidence is not conclusive it does seem that HFCS is worse for you than regular table sugar.
You've forgotten, or never experience, how much better cane sugar tastes. Some of the QFC's are selling Coke from Mexico made with cane sugar. Make a Rum & Coke out of it and one using the ubiquitous Code with high fructose corn syrup - the difference is night and day. HFCS is just sweet cheap sludge.
It does happen to be used in tons of nutritionally dubious foods. Removing the corn syrup, and putting in cane sugar makes it no better for you, in any measurable sense. Coke with sugar is just as bad as coke with corn syrup. Vending machine cakes with sugar are just as bad as vending machine cakes with corn syrup.
This whole fight distracts from bigger, better defined problems with food in the United States.
Stupid, yes, but not needing a "Santorum" - style campaign. In the end they're just rebranding sugar as sugar, which is kind of funny because I would imagine that the name "high fructose corn syrup" was a way to avoid using the word "sugar" in the first place.
Maybe that's a good angle for some slogans:
"Moderation: Too Many Syllables"
"WARNING: Moderation Sold Separately"
"Availability of This Product Unfair to the Immoderate"
With all the tobacco lawsuits in the 1990s, the name Philip Morris was tarnished and their stock prices sagged. So what did they do? They bought Kraft foods and renamed themselves Altria. It worked. How many people know who makes Marlboro now? Almost no one.
I'll leave it to others more familiar with anal-play to figure out the specifics.
So it is bad.
@18, here's one little reference regarding one little study...there's plenty out there about fructose and how we process it differently than glucose if you just look around a bit rather than just call out "horseshit":
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200…
i.e.: "Ewwww, Brian, flush twice next time - you left some corn sugar in the bowl!"
The problem with HFCS has nothing to do with the health of your body, but everything to do with the health of the nation. HFCS is popular because corn is massively subsidized by the government, and these subsidies have shockingly horrible consequences for our soils, our waterways, the Gulf of Mexico, and the well-being of millions of people in less-developed countries who should be growing our sugar for us, instead of just a couple of megacorporations.
That's the story that the Corn Refiners are trying to direct your attention away from.
Let the market correct itself.
I did an extra credit project for freshmen to track how many of the foods they buy have HFCS. The vegan cooks had ~25%, the ditzy girls had >90%. They had no idea that 90% of the food they ate had so much sugar. The average came in around ~60-65%. This is an easier one to fight than "Redesign your whole diet around foods that aren't federally subsidized!".
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose
What's more, the industrial processes to produce HFCS are different (and more involved) than with cane sugar, and it's quite possible that this introduces some impurities that don't exist with table sugar. Some people have claimed that mercury is among the trace byproducts, and one study found it in over have of the samples examined. The process also involves sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. And government oversight to catch mistakes during this process ranges between lax and non-existent.
Add to that the anecdotal experiences (for example, my wife responded negatively to HFCS during her first pregnancy, but not sugar), and it just seems better to err on the side of safety. Especially with the economic dislocations Fnarf mentions that are caused by the corn subsidy that created the prevalence of HFCS in the first place.
well, that and the subsidies and export/import bans for sweet sweet cane sugar. this is why we have "French" Vanilla.
@31: What, specifically, about the processing is bad and why?
I actually agree with the move. While I agree with Will that the subsidy is stupid and unnecessary, I also think that the anti-HFCS is stupid. If we're going after childhood and adult obesity, and all the diseases that come with these conditions, then we should be going after sugar. Not just fructose, but sucrose. Excessive amounts of sugar in all things is bad, and while cane sugar may taste better (and it does), too much is too much.
Even if he is a Bongo Pony.
Corn sugar = the pus that oozes out of an infected corn or callus.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archi…
and the study
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob…
HFCS is very similar to regular cane sugar, but the small differences in chemical composition make a much larger difference than you'd expect.