Stumble It!
The Great High Fructose Corn Syrup Con
The blogosphere is on fire of late about a new ad campaign designed to devilify High Fructose Corn Syrup. (See Kelly Kunik’s F-ing Kidding Me post, and Scott Strumello’s excellent overview of this “Sweet Surprise” travesty).
The ad campaign, created by an agency owned by Omnicom Group (which I’m embarrassed to say also acquired the San Francisco agency I once worked for) is in part targeting “influential mommy bloggers.” Have a look for yourself:
All that comes to mind is: How dumb do they actually think we are?
I keep flashing back to my recent reading of Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He chronicles the transformation of America’s diet to a corn-fest, and provides some pretty convincing evidence that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is “the prime culprit in the nation’s obesity epidemic.”
Makes a helluva lot of sense, considering HFCS didn’t reach the American market until 1980, about the time that our obesity problem started getting really big. It’s about more than people just eating too much; they are eating the wrong things!
The ads try to convince us that HFCS is “natural” and just as “harmless” as sugar when eaten in moderation.
Allow me to deconstruct that argument:
1) There is no such thing as moderation, when HFCS has become so ubiquitous. HFCS now sweetens everything from juice to spaghetti sauce to toothpaste. As Pollan notes, it’s lurking not only in syrups and shakes and sodas, but also makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes!) in Chicken McNuggets, for example. And remind me, will you? Why does a piece of chicken need to be packed with corn sweetener?!
As a person with diabetes, I try to stay away from foods that are obvious HFCS bombs. But when you look into it, you discover that HFCS is hiding everywhere: in jars of pickles, Stove Top stuffing, baked beans and tomato paste. What is it doing there, other than ruining our collective health?
2) HFCS is quite clearly UNNATURAL. Making it entails a convoluted chemical process that begins with genetically modified corn. HFCS wouldn’t exist today if the big food conglomerates didn’t have the sophisticated science to break down commodities into their basic components and then put them back together again as processed food.
3) There is plenty of scientific evidence that HFCS is worse for your health than sugar:
“In soda, it has been found that by using HFCS instead of pure sugar it can make the soda 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds. According to one study, carbonyl compounds are elevated in people with diabetes and are blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage. Another study concluded that foods with increased quantities of fructose stimulate the liver to produce triglycerides, promotes glycation of proteins and induces insulin resistance.”
Naturally, too much sugar can also be very damaging to our bodies, causing obesity, liver damage, heart disease, etc. But scientific evidence also tells us that “the body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. It also forces the liver to kick more fat out into the bloodstream.”
This is why so many nutritionists will agree that a bit of old-fashioned sugar in your diet is preferable to HFCS, if you have a choice.
In any case, it just pisses me off to think that our kids might grow up believing that it’s normal and “natural” for their foods to be packed with HFCS.
Luckily, there’s quite an outcry across the blogosphere and smart media over these ridiculous ads. You want to speak up? I would suggest contacting the Corn Refiner’s Association directly, to tell them where they can stick their misinformation.
Meanwhile, you can visit some good blogs on living HFCS-free:
Amy –
Posted by: Kelly K | September 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 amWonderful and detailed Post,and thanks for the “Shout out!”
HFCS has made me angry since my CDE told me about it a few years ago. Now, thanks to Omnivore’s Dilemma,” the wonderful doc film “King Corn,” & pissed off bloggers across the globe, more and more people are hearing the call to arms. People are starting to question HFCS and refusing to buy products that contain it.
“Natural” my ass! How natural is it for one acre of Yellow Dent # 2 (the type of corn that HFCS is made from) to yield over 10,000 bushels, which equal 57,000 cans of soda. Plus, it’s be fertilized with ammonia. Yeah, REAL natural! As consumers we have power, and now is the time for us to harness our power as a whole, and say ” No” to this crap!
THANKS AGAIN!!!
k2
When I first saw this commercial I was slightly confused. Then the more I thought about it, the more I thought someone was trying to pull a con. Being diabetic like you, I’ve tried to watch out for HFCS ever since I saw the one Oprah show with Dr’s Oz and Roison talking about it and detailing just what it can do to your body. As you said, though, it’s in so many things that it’s hard to totally avoid. Still, seeing this commercial pop up out of the blue bothered me; kind of like if Marlboro was allowed to put the Marlboro Man back on TV.
Posted by: Mitch | September 23rd, 2008 at 8:51 amI wondered how dumb they think we are, too.
Posted by: Lili | September 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 amI think the question of just how dumb we are is more a matter of experience in the advertising business. With enough long-term messages like this, history has proven that people do actually start to believe it. But I can honestly say that spending $20 million to $30 million over 18-months is not sufficient to change opinions; brands are not built overnight, they require long-term investments over decades with consistent advertising. In the meantime, I’m glad people are discussing this, because for too long, this has been silently slipping into the average American’s diet, regardless of the health consequences. Perhaps the next step is to vote with our food dollars!!
Posted by: Scott | September 23rd, 2008 at 2:57 pmI’m pretty sure I’ve heard nutrition giants such as Dr. Marion Nestle railing against HFCS as early as 2002… which means the issue was probably known much earlier, though most likely in publications considered to be of marginal value. I remember reading about the biological horrors of trans-fats (separate item, but also a dietary horror) as early as 1975 or so (before I even heard of Dr. Walter C. Willett or Dr. Nestle) — though I must admit, it was in either The National Enquirer or The Star! (I was a teenager.)
At this point in my life, I very rarely knowingly consume either HFCS or trans-fats (I don’t eat out much, and it’s pretty easy to read nutrition and ingredient labels). I believe this is part of the reason I’ve been able to keep my blood glucose and lipid levels in control with diet only, six years after diagnosis.
Posted by: tmana | September 23rd, 2008 at 3:09 pmOne has to be careful about getting too excited about the difference between HFCS versus what we know as sugar (sucrose). Just substitute sugar in the ingredients in place of HFCS and it would still be as bad for diabetics as these foods containing similar amounts of HFCS. Remember “regular sugar” is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. If regular sugar was cheaper than HFCS, they would be adding it instead. The reason that regular sugar is more expensive is that the US sugar lobby has kept high tariffs on importing sugar. Diabetics and non-diabetics have to be equally concerned with needless addition of HFCS or regular sugar to processed foods.
Posted by: Steve | September 24th, 2008 at 11:00 amI have been searching the web in vain for a line graph showing the correlation between increased consumption of HFCS and the increase in Type 2 diabetes over the past few decades. Has anyone seen such a graph? It would help me make my case to friends and family to stop eating the stuff.
Posted by: Janet | September 26th, 2008 at 11:59 am