Give Me Real Sugar Instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup

By now most people know that High Fructose Corn Syrup is bad for you and worse than regular sugar, yet it is still being used in many foods and beverages simply because it is cheaper than sugar.

It is used in some products you wouldn't expect like Ben and Jerry's ice cream, Heinz Ketchup, Robitussin, and Wheat Thins.

Here is a list of foods that contain HFCS http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2005/06/09/foods_and_products_containing_high_fruct

But why is High Fructose Corn Syrup, a highly processed substance cheaper than regular sugar?
Michael Pollan does a good job of explaining here http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=52

It is the tragedy of the commons, an economic term for something benefiting an individual but hurting the group. As production of corn increases, the price falls. Farmers as a whole should reduce production, but they increase production to make the same amount of money as before which in turn lowers the price further. One farmer growing more wouldn't make a big difference, but when they all do that, the price drops.

When there is an excess of food people try to turn it into something else to make money, a value added commodity. In the 1800s they turned the extra corn into whiskey, now they turn it into high fructose corn syrup. Yuck. I'd rather have cheap whiskey.

The government encourages this crazy overproduction with subsidies! Instead of encouraging overproduction (and in turn larger portion sizes and obesity) by writing farmers checks we should try something like the New Deal program to encourage a stable price for corn. In that system the government set a goal price for corn based on the cost of production. When the market price was below that the farmer could get a loan from the government instead of just selling the corn at the lower price. When the price of corn went back up he could sell it and if the price didn't go up right away, he just turned in the corn that was the collateral for the loan. Then the government stored the corn for when there was a shortage. It's a pretty neat system!

Then the 70s came and people complained about high food prices, so we switched to the current system of encouraging overproduction and subsidies making HFCS cheaper than sugar. Companies who care only about making a profit seized the opportunity of lower material costs in their food.

Cane and beet sugar is almost all sucrose while HFCS like is name suggests is more fructose than glucose. Both the extra fructose and the body not being able to control the rate of breakdown, make it bad for you. Sucrose is a molecule composed of the glucose and fructose molecules held together by a weak chemical bond. The body can control the rate at which those bonds are broken making the fructose part of sugar easier on the liver than the fructose in HFCS.

"Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose. When sugar is given to rats in high amounts, the rats develop multiple health problems, especially when the rats were deficient in certain nutrients, such as copper. The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy--that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. (Copper deficiency, by the way, is widespread in America.) In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young." from author Linda Forristal at http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html.


More info here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-fructose-corn-syrup/AN01588



In summary we need to solve the problem of overproduction. If sugar was cheaper than HFCS then companies would use that like they do in the rest of the world (ever wonder why sweets and pop from other countries taste better?)

Let's set up a system similar to before to give farmers loans instead of writing checks and dumping the corn on the market. Let's get rid of sugar tariffs.
Let's get rid of high fructose corn syrup.