The FDA has just foiled the sugar lobby's attempt to corner the market. Why you should care
Cheers to the FDA. It just said a firm no to the Corn Refiners' petition to be allowed to call High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) "corn sugar."
The FDA' s rationale:
- Sugar is solid, dried, and crystallized. Syrup is liquid. HFCS is liquid. Therefore, it is syrup, not sugar.
- Corn sugar already has a regulatory definition: dextrose (glucose). HFCS contains fructose as well as glucose. Therefore, it is not corn sugar.
As I mentioned earlier, I filed comments to the FDA on the Corn Refiners' petition:
The [Corn Refiners'] website quotes comments I have made to the effect that HFCS is biochemically equivalent to sucrose. It is. But I do not believe that biochemical equivalence is a good reason for the FDA to agree to a name change at this point.It is highly unlikely that public misunderstanding of nutritional biochemistry and the differential physiological effects of glucose vs. fructose will be addressed and corrected by changing the name of HFCS to corn sugar.
...the name change is not in the public interest. Its only purpose is to further the commercial interests of members of the Corn Refiners, and that is not one the FDA should be concerned about.
I was referring here to the legal and public relations wrangling between the Sugar Association, which represents the growers of cane and beet sugar (sucrose), and the Corn Refiners.