Sweet Surprise

Is anyone else fascinated by the campaign to change the public opinion of high fructose corn syrup? I wonder is it working.

I think it's very clever how it promotes the idea that health concerns about high fructose corn syrup have no basis in fact and that people who prefer to avoid it are ill-informed and, frankly, a bit foolish and sheepish just following the crowd.

Two bits of it make me laugh. The first is the suggestion that because it's made from corn it's natural so it can't really be all that bad for you. And, isn't corn actually supposed to be good for you? This is argument is ridiculous. Lots of natural things are poisonous and in terms of chemical structure high fructose corn syrup bears very little resemblance to the corn it comes from.

The King Corn High Fructose Corn Syrup commercial spoof makes the same point humorously.



Secondly, the suggestion that it's no worse for us than sugar. If you have to resort to saying that it's no worse than sugar then you know you've lost.

The web-site Sweet Surprise is full of the same sort of disingenuous arguments with carefully chosen bits and pieces taken from friendly scientific studies - most of which are funded by the sugar industry in the same way as most tobacco studies are funded by the tobacco industry.

At best the scientific evidence is inconclusive while the anecdotal evidence seems quite compelling. Americans are consuming huge - and I mean HUGE - amounts of sugars, huge numbers of Americans are becoming obese, huge numbers of obese Americans are developing type 2 diabetes. Go figure.