Sugar Replacing High Fructose Corn Syrup in Sodas

Soft drink makers are turning to natural and low-cal sweeteners.

Sugar’s popularity with soda makers is soaring as the companies are scrambling to find alternatives to high fructose corn syrup, Supermarket News reports. For example, PepsiCo’s Sierra Mist Natural uses sugar, while the sweetener is mixed with stevia extract in Coca-Cola’s Sprite Green, a low-calorie version of Sprite. Other sugared carbonated sodas include Pepsi Throwback, Mexican Coke, Mountain Dew Throwback and kosher Coke.

Once upon a time, most soft drinks were sweetened with sugar. Three decades ago, high fructose corn syrup rose in prominence as sugar tariffs and quotas upped the price of imported sugar. High fructose corn syrup retains its spot as the most commonly added sweetener in processed beverages and food because of the ease in blending and its low cost, said Audrae Ericson, president of the Corn Refiners Association.

However, a growing number of consumers don’t want to consumer high fructose corn syrup, said Harry Balzer, vice president of the NPD Group. A Mintel poll found that nearly six in 10 consumers (59 percent) think that high fructose corn syrup is bad for health and that real sugar should sweeten soft drinks.

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Archer Daniels Midland: Corn Sweetener Prices To Jump 25%; Strong Mexico Demand

Archer Daniel Midland Co. (ADM) has finalized contracts for corn sweetener shipments in 2011, and will see prices jump 25%, Chief Financial Officer Ray Young said.

That increase will be sufficient to raise margins for its corn sweetener operations, despite the rising cost of corn, Young said in a conference call. Corn, along with other agricultural commodities, have soared in recent months and are at their highest level since reaching record highs in 2008.

The contracts represent 50% to 60% of its corn sweetener shipments, the company said.

Despite a well-publicized backlash among some consumers against high fructose corn syrup in the United States, demand has remained strong in Mexico. Young said corn sweetener shipments of 1.5 million metric tons were up 90% in 2010, and will remain strong.

In some cases, Mexico is importing high fructose corn syrup and shipping higher-priced sugar back to the United States.

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Tasteless Factory Farmed GMO Bt Corn-fed Beef Causes Taco Bell to Put More than 150 Chemical-based Ingredients into a Common Taco to Make it Taste Bet

In some, instances, particularly sugar, the amounts double because the sugar in high fructose corn syrup is not added to the amount of sugar on the label.

What’s more? Taco Bell now boasts of putting all of these chemical-based ingredients into your food to sell it. A California woman filed a lawsuit claiming that Taco Bell’s beef products contain very little meat. The class-action suit objects to Taco Bell calling its products “seasoned ground beef or seasoned beef, when in fact a substantial amount of the filling contains substances other than beef.”

According to attorney W. Daniel Miles III, just 35% of the Taco Bell taco filling was a solid, and just 15% overall was protein. Taco Bell officials rejected the claims that the meat in their tacos, burritos and other products is not all beef.

Taco Bell President Greg Creed said, “At Taco Bell, we buy our beef from the same trusted brands you find in the supermarket. We start with 100% USDA-inspected beef. Then we simmer it in our proprietary blend of seasonings and spices to give our seasoned beef its signature Taco Bell taste and texture.”

Okay. If that means Taco Bell uses the same USDA meat found in markets, then Taco Bell uses the same steroid-pumped, factory farmed beef, caged in at least ankle-deep urine-soaked manure that requires the insertion of ammonia to stop the E. coli bacteria that most, if not all, of the other fast food chains use.

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Federal Judge Boots Snapple Class Action

"It's probably no coincidence that the wholesale switch to corn sweeteners in the 1980s marks the beginning of the epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in this country. Sweetness became so cheap that soft drink makers, rather than lower their prices, super-sized their serving portions and marketing budgets."

Snapple does not owe class damages for advertising "All Natural" ingredients on juices that contained high-fructose corn syrup, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote granted summary judgment because plaintiffs "failed to present reliable evidence that they paid a premium for Snapple's 'All Natural' label."

Evan Weiner and Timothy McClausland filed the class action on Oct. 10, 2007. They claimed Snapple's label was misleading because high-fructose corn syrup "does not exist in nature." They sought damages for deceptive trade, unjust enrichment and breach of warranty.

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Corn People

Americans have become the true "corn people," more so than the Aztecs or the Incas. If you were to examine a typical American skeleton under an electron microscope, you would find corn isotopes throughout our bones. We have more corn isotopes than any other culture, past, present and perhaps future.

Americans eat about one ton of corn per person, per year. This is not the delicious sweet corn our local farms grow. This is commodity corn appetizingly called "number two" corn and is the main crop grown in our country. We primarily eat corn in the form of animal products.

Cows, ruminants that naturally eat grasses, are being unnaturally fed corn. Salmon would never eat corn in the wild, but are fed corn on salmon farms. Chickens and pigs were naturally designed for varied diets but instead are fed mainly corn. Corn is one of the main ingredients in over 4,000 products found in American homes, even toothpaste. Some processed foods like Twinkies contain over 36 forms of corn.

The corn that wasn't fed to animals went to make corn sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, lactic acid, sorbitol, corn syrup, enzymes, starches and thickeners.

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New ‘Shout Outs!’ Girl Scout Cookies are sensibly sweet

“Shout Outs!,” this year’s new Girl Scout Cookie, is sure to have everyone talking. The Belgian-style caramelized cookie has zero grams of trans fat per serving, no hydrogenated oils, no artificial colors or preservatives, and no high fructose corn syrup. Its ingredients are similar to what you might find in your own kitchen: flour, sugar, vegetable oil, brown sugar, vanilla and spices.

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Support for “Corn Sugar” Growing

Support from corn grower organizations to use the term “corn sugar” instead of high fructose corn syrup is growing.

The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) recently sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration supporting use of the term ‘corn sugar,’ and other state organizations such as the Texas Corn Growers have also voiced their support.

“We are calling upon the FDA to eliminate the confusion of the safety of high fructose corn syrup,” NCGA President Bart Schott said. “Permitting use of the term ‘corn sugar’ on labels will allow manufactures to more clearly describe high fructose corn syrup as a natural ingredient, nutritionally equivalent to sugar.”

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High Fructose Corn Syrup: What's the Big Deal?

The most disturbing fact is the genetic technology employed in growing modern corn.

High Fructose Corn Syrup has been rising in the food debates as of late, but why? It comes from corn, right? So it's natural. They're always telling us sugar is bad, so wouldn't this be better than sugar, or at least the same? It seems like every label I read has it, so could it really be harmful?

To look into this debate I started reading (and watching) information about high fructose corn syrup and what it is. I read Michael Pollan books and watched documentaries such as Food, Inc and King Corn.

Before this education, I assumed genetic modification of crops was perfectly fine. After all, don't cultivators all do this? They breed one animal with another to get offspring with certain characteristics: color, size, etc. They breed flowers to have a certain color or scent or size. Even nature adapts animals and plants with certain characteristics to assimilate with the surrounding environment. So why would the same technology be harmful for crops that we eat? Wouldn't it merely be an improvement just like natural adaptation?

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Establishment Runs Defense For High Fructose Corn Syrup

While doing some research on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or as it will likely be renamed in the future to ‘Corn Sugar’, AP was hard at work spinning the facts. In the article Corn Syrup Producers Want Sweeter Name: Corn Sugar an AP Marketing Writer presents the same tired old arguments to counter consumer’s well founded concern over the corn based product.

The article, disguised as an informational piece is nothing more than an infomercial. Like the agenda behind those annoying TV spots from a few years ago where two people discuss HFCS but soon come to the conclusion there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ‘natural’ product, this article is nothing more than a last ditch effort to confuse consumers.

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High Fructose Corn Syrup - Two reasons to avoid this Corn Sugar

The move is on to further muddy the waters pertaining to High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). The goal is to convince or confuse consumers into thinking that HFCS is like sugar by changing its name to Corn Sugar. While there are issues that surround processed sugar, HFCS or Corn Sugar presents a wider problem. The primary concern is how HFCS is metabolized by the body and the hidden, and not-so-hidden, genetic modifications it undergoes.

HFCS is comprised of approximately 55% fructose. This fructose is unbound meaning it is not attached to any other molecule. In nature fructose would be bound most likely to glucose. Unbound fructose is immediately taken up by the liver for metabolizing when HFCS is consumed. This initiates a metabolic nightmare. The liver is forced to work hard at metabolizing the instantly present fructose. Often times the liver has to ignore or inefficiently handle other metabolic duties such as the breaking down of fatty acids. In addition, the liver may be unable to metabolize all of the fructose. All of this leads to a fatty liver and increased fat storage in the body.

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