Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.
High fructose corn syrup now has a sneaky new name, trying
to fool you into believing it has gotten healthier.
In May 2012, I wrote an article on the danger of high
fructose corn syrup, HFCS. Go to the website and read that article for further
context.
HFCS is the number one source of calories in the USA today.
This stuff is not good for your health, especially in the amounts it is
consumed by many people. Soda and sweet drinks are the largest culprit, but
many packaged foods have high amounts of HFCS too.
The food industry is in the business of, well, selling their
food. They are also very deceptive in how they market those products. They know
people want healthier choices, and they do what they can to make you think
their products meet that desire.
The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) first tried to change
HFCS to simply corn sugar. Unbelievably, the FDA actually denied that one. Now,
they have made a “whole new” product called HFCS-90. Prior versions were
HFCS-42 and HFCS-55. The numbers are merely the percentage of fructose in the
product, 45%, 55%, and the new one is 90% pure fructose.
.
Here is the Corn Refiners Association’s press release: “A
third product, HFCS-90, is sometimes used in natural and ‘light’ foods, where
very little is needed to provide sweetness. Syrups with 90% fructose will not
state high fructose corn syrup on the label, they will state fructose or
fructose syrup.”
So now that box of cereal… ahem… General Mills Vanilla Chex
can technically say “contains no HFCS,” yet still contains HFCS-90 because they
just changed the name of the new sweetener. Isn’t that just awesome?!
This new product is even worse than the previous versions.
“In the United States, food ingredient information is written for regulators
and scientists, not for the average consumer,” said Anne Munoz-Furlong, founder
of the nonprofit advocacy group Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.
The CRA explains it this way: “Simply eliminating the high
fructose corn syrup designation for the laboratory sweetener that is nine-tenths
fructose and calling it what it really is: fructose. And that’s how a product
like Vanilla Chex that contains ‘fructose’, a substance that, according to the
corn refiners, used to be called HFCS-90, can now declare itself to be high
fructose corn syrup – free.” Simply amazing and absurd!
Here are a few other deceptive names that you should
recognize as the same old HFCS: maize syrup, glucose syrup, glucose/fructose
syrup, tapioca syrup, fruit fructose, crystalline fructose, and the new ones,
fructose or fructose syrup. You have been warned.
We need to stop being willfully ignorant of the marketing
tricks of food companies. Stop buying the hype and actually read labels.
Familiarize yourself with the ingredients you don’t want in your food. Buy food
from companies that aren’t trying to fool you. Sure they may cost more, but
drugs cost a whole lot more.