The Beginning of the End of HFCS: A WiseGuise Diatribe

As those of you who read this humble blog with any interest or regularity hopefully know, we are working toward a world without a need for the ubiquitous and unhealthy sweetener known as HFCS or High Fructose Corn Syrup. This unholy substance is used in almost every production food imaginable, including beverages, flavored alcohols, corn and potato chips, soups, candy, packaged vegetables, cereals and even bread. Bread! Why does bread need sugar? Much less hydrogenated oils and enriched (processed) white flour, but that's a topic for another rant.

As it turns out, we are not the only ones fighting this massively one-sided battle. As you may have noticed, some companies (even those owned by Big Soda) are beginning to sense a change in the tide and have begun to return to more natural sweet stuff; these include, but are not entirely limited to:

• SoBe: all redesigned bottles I have found now contain sugar, and proudly proclaim it
• Jones Soda: has switched many of their sodas to cane sugar
• Steaz: I have no idea who they are, but use only organic cane sugar
• Goose Island: same as above
• Dr. Pepper: it's called Dublin Dr. Pepper
  
• Coke: known as the "Mexican" Coke, it is produced south of the border, with regular sugar, and has a better taste in many persons' opinions, including my own
  

In recent reading, I found this surprising and amusing poll. An unbelievable NINETY PERCENT of people are at least trying to avoid HFCS, as I found while reading this article on the poll itself. Also in a related article (by related I mean linked) Coke is coming out with Passover Coke, since corn is not OK on passover, despite Coke being kosher.

It seems a lot of people also prefer the taste of sugar over HFCS, as in the MexiCoke. So you may ask, why the HFCS if people prefer the taste of sugar? There are a lot of reasons, but the main ones are simple economics. First, there are sugar tariffs in the U.S., making it more expensive to import (hint: it doesn't grow well here). Second, there are subsidies for the corn industry in the U.S., making it cheaper to run that corn through the lengthy process of converting it to HFCS; and therefore, cheaper than just buying sugar. Another reason is that it mixes easier with liquids, being a liquid. Less work for the soda companies.

I have read some rumorings of bringing back a stevia-derived sweetener into use again, since it was banned in the U.S. in 1991. Methinks this was a move by other sweetener lobbies to get it out of the picture since it was competition (300 times the sweetness of sucrose!). It has been used in South America for centuries, and if it was killing people, we'd probably know by now.

In conclusion, if you are making an effort to get HFCS out of your life, keep it up, it appears to be working, and maybe one day it will be as rare to see it in a product as it was to see sugar just a few years ago. Choosing healthier drinks is just the beginning.

Thanks to my sources, Wikipedia, the Consumerist and Google.

-- WiseGuise