High Fructose Corn Syrup: Oh, the sky is falling

Introduction

Johnny Depp's 'Secret Window' always comes to mind (and the crunching sound of him biting into a corn) whenever one brings up the keywords 'corn' or 'maize'. The movie (and Johnny Depp's flawless characterization) does leave that kind of effect on you just like high fructose corn syrup has left it mark on the commercial production of soft drinks, yoghurt, cookies, bread and a blast of other products as a sweetener and a preservative.

And much like Johnny Depp used his 'imaginary friend' to do what he never had the courage to do otherwise, high fructose corn syrup is particularly used a 'substitute' for sugar in almost every commercial product you can name or pick off a shelf in a supermarket. Of course, we're talking about products that require a little 'sweetening' here and which has become synonymous with the term 'fattening' as well.

For those of you who aren't necessarily used to looking at food labels, let's understand what high fructose corn syrup is all about before we get into why there's so much fuss about high fructose corn syrup.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

Pure corn syrup is normally prepared from the starch of corn (oh yes, it is known as maize in the UK) of which glucose is its main component. In the case of High Fructose Corn Syrup, a group of these corn syrups go through enzymatic processing that converts the glucose into fructose after which corn syrup that is composed of 100% glucose is added to the mix, thus being named as glucose-fructose syrup.

Now there are varieties of HFCS that are used for various products such as HFCS 55 in soft drinks, HFCS 42 in processed foods and baked goods while HFCS 90 is used in special case only with a mix of the other two as well.

Strangely enough, since it is used as a substitute for table sugar (read: sucrose), some experts say that this cheap sweetener will cause far more adverse health effects as compared to table sugar itself, whereas others say that there is no cause for panic.

These conflicting reports are enough to make anyone go, "So what's the truth now ? "

And for that one must look at the various studies conducted by reputed institutions to see if these allegations hold water or is just another case of 'the sky is falling', thanks to the 'chicken little' in all of us.

Pros & Cons

In a study first published in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it was speculated that HFCS was twice as bad as sugar when it comes to being the root cause for obesity. A few years later, those behind the study finally reached a conclusion that both these products were just as bad as each other.

However, more recently, a study conducted at Princeton and published in the journal, Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior revealed that not only is HFCS worse than sugar, it does make people fat.

According to the tests run, male rats that consumed HFCS as opposed to table sugar, were more likely to gain weight even though the number of calories were the same. Now this is attributed to the way the body metabolises both these products differently!

And yet, from another angle which is based on research from the beverage industry, it is accepted that this sweetener isn't necessarily as healthy as others but it isn't necessarily the root cause for obesity either.

And the debate rages on…

In Closing

What the final outcome of this decision is, is anyone's guess but the next best course of action is to just use these products moderately or to just avoid them completely by checking the 'food label', but all the while I can't help but think that 'going green' in all aspects of our lives is turning into a better option day by day now that these chaps can't make up their mind really.

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