I think the issue is less about corn syrup sugar vs cane sugar, gram for gram, and more about the subsidization of corn and low cost of corn syrup creating an incentive to use more sugar in processed food products.
Summarized (per hombre_fatal's request):
For over 80 years, U.S. government policies have protected domestic sugar production, resulting in elevated sugar prices and an annual cost of $1.4 billion to consumers (as of 2013). These higher prices, combined with federal support for corn production, have fueled the widespread use of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as a cheaper alternative. HFCS production is driven by advanced technology and heavy corn subsidies, allowing it to dominate processed foods and beverages. The rise in HFCS use and overall sweetener consumption has contributed to increased intake of "empty calories," linked to obesity.
Efforts to address the issue include taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) aimed at reducing consumption and funding nutrition education. However, these taxes face challenges, such as consumer compensation by shifting to other high-calorie foods and lack of evidence on long-term impacts on obesity. Nutrient-specific excise taxes at the point of purchase are hypothesized to be more effective.
Additionally, U.S. sugar prices surged during 2009-2012 due to global weather-related production declines, but HFCS remained a slightly cheaper option. HFCS's affordability is rooted in subsidized corn production, which also benefits livestock industries by reducing feed costs.
If you're going to dump text, I think it's good etiquette to frame it with what you think that text is doing for the discussion so it's not just an exercise for the reader.
In 2018, the British government introduced a tax on soft drinks with a sugar content of more than 50g per litre. The tax isn't particularly onerous, at 18p or 24p (22¢ or 29¢) per litre depending on the sugar content. The industry response was immediate - the majority of drinks were reformulated to reduce their sugar content to below the threshold, which is precisely what the government intended. Although initially controversial, the levy is now regarded as a clear victory for public health, with no significant economic impact on industry.
Even if the purchasing habits of consumers are price-inelastic, the decisions of manufacturers most certainly aren't.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/sugar-ta...
I can’t stand the reformulated sweetened drinks. The flavour profile and aftertaste is completely different. I wasn’t a huge consumer of soft drinks to start with, but now I consume absolutely zero.
They brought out "half-sugar" sodas about 20 years ago (Coke C2), but they hit the market with a thud. I suspect that the recent "Zero Sugar" brands are intended to fill the same spot. Notice how the branding is much closer to the sugared brand than the diet brands, and TBF, they're a lot more comparable taste-wise to the sugared versions than Tab or Diet Coke ever were.
There's little case for introducing these products if it's primarily going to cannibalize their existing brands and consume already limited shelf space, unless there's some long-term appeal in it. But if there's a sugar tax, or some dramatic economic fallout that makes sugar ahistorically expensive, watch as the default position on the vending machine suddenly switches to suddenly Coke Zero.
It matters enough that it determines where things get manufactured though.
> There are two prices for sugar: the price you pay in the U.S., and the price you pay almost everywhere else in the world.
> The price in the U.S. is about 15 cents a pound higher than the price in the rest of the world. That costs Spangler Candy an additional $3 million a year.
> The higher U.S. sugar price is spelled out in U.S. law. You can find it right here, in the latest version of the farm bill, which says the U.S. government shall guarantee a minimum price for sugar that is not to drop below 22.9 cents per pound.
> Because of the higher price here, lots of candies that used to be made in the U.S. — Life Savers, candy canes — are now made overseas.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/26/179087542/the-...
While true, if this was something we really cared about, it's easily solved with tariffs. This is an actual job for tariffs.
> switching to sugar is unlikely to change the consumers buying habits.
If this is the case, why has it not happened yet? The argument "the cost delta is not material enough to matter" comparing corn syrup to sugar, but the evidence based on participant actions leads us to conclude that is not the case.
Edit: @gruez: I agree with regards to consumer demand for the foods in question, I was refuting the point "It's not like sugar is expensive. No more than a few cents worth in a 2L bottle of soda."
I'm not refuting that, I'm only saying that in the context of public health, cheaper corn syrup being subsidized doesn't make a difference when it comes to consumer behavior. That doesn't mean that producers are going to be dumb and buy sugar when corn syrup is so much cheaper. Consumers aren't going to stop drinking coke because it costs 1% more, but the beancounters at coca cola are certainly going to care if they're spending 50% (made up number) more on sweeteners if they don't have to.
There are good reasons to promote excessive sugars in general, but specifically targetting high fructose corn syrup is like that old joke where someone asks if we should ban adding dihydrogen monoxide to foods.
Because there’s very few things as annoying as someone making broad generalizations and calling others “misguided”.
High-fructose corn syrup is literally a 45-55 mixture of fructose and glucose.
Table sugar, sucrose, is a disaccharide composed of 1 unit of, you guessed it, glucose and one unit of fructose. Sucrose is broken down in the gut by sucrase into a 50-50 mixture of fructose and glucose. The only difference is that sucrase takes a bit of time to break sucrose down. Not a lot, but enough to smooth out the absorption curve a little.
If you are allergic to one, you are allergic to the other.
Since glucose is key to human life, it's probably not that part.
If you have fructose intolerance, you'd probably know. It causes liver and kidney damage, and you wouldn't be able to eat much food people consider ordinary. If you have fructose intolerance you cannot eat sucrose either. You'd be pretty much relegated to sugar alcohols for sweeteners like sorbitol.
If you can, honestly, contact a medical researcher. (You'd want to be blindly provided tasteless pills encapsulating both HFCS, sugar, fructose and an intert substance, of course.)
What wouldn't be unprecedented is a fructose sensitivity.
I am not sure how true that is. I do argue against corn syrup under the notion that sugar is bad, and more sugar is worse, and I am far from alone.
> You see something similar in the seed oil discussions.
That’s quite a leap. Are you saying that people arguing against corn syrup (which was demonstrated to be terrible from a public health perspective many times) and those arguing against seed oil (who do not have a leg to stand on and are making counter-factual points) are in any way similar?
It is more prone to lead to fatty liver or obesity, because fructose is not consumed directly in the body, but the liver uses it to synthesize reserve fat.
So excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than excessive consumption of plain corn syrup or of sugar.
Nevertheless, the source of fructose does not matter much, but only the total amount that is consumed.
It is recommended to avoid a daily intake above around 25 g of fructose per day for someone of average size and having a sedentary life style. This corresponds to 50 g of sugar, but with a lesser amount of high fructose corn syrup.
Very high amounts of carbohydrates including fructose can be consumed without any risk only when a proportionally high physical activity is performed, using the high energy intake provided thus (for example by athletes during competitions or intensive training).
The harmful effect of excessive fructose consumption has been used for several millennia, for making "foie gras", by force feeding geese with fruits.
I have said that what matters is the total amount of ingested fructose, not its source. Eating large quantities of dried fruits can have the same effect as eating too much sugar or HFCS.
Besides HFCS-42 and HFCS-55, there is also HFCS-70, with an even higher amount of fructose.
I agree that saying that HFCS is bad without giving more details about what kind of HFCS is meant is ambiguous.
That does not change that at equal amounts HFCS-70 or HFCS-55 are more likely to provide excessive fructose than sugar, even if HFCS-42 is less likely to provide excessive fructose than sugar.
HFCS is also absorbed faster than sugar, which must first be split into glucose and fructose. This may be desirable during intense effort, but undesirable otherwise.
You said, "So excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than excessive consumption of plain corn syrup or of sugar." This appears to be plainly false.
What are the good reasons to promote excessive sugar?
Isn't difference between oils way more serious than between cane sugar and corn syrup?
If say soda were 10% more expensive, how many sales would be lost? Would the risk of losing sales justify reducing the amount of sweetener to retain those customers? Would Americans then recalibrate their taste buds to less sweet beverages?
FWIW, American packaged junk food like potato chips often has lower sodium today than it used to, so there's evidence that you can slowly adjust this stuff without losing sales.
After more than a year of Keto and not having had any bread, I ate some wheat bread again for the first time. Nothing sweet on top. Just bread (with butter on top). It tasted sweet! And it wasn't even your typical North American floppy toast white bread but just regular, proper wheat bread like you might eat in France in your neighborhood corner bakery (here they usually call it "artisan bread" now).
That sweetness went away really quickly after eating bread more regularly again but it surprised me nonetheless and makes your point on getting used to things.
Another NA example is cup cakes. There are cup cakes and then there are US cup cakes. I really don't like cup cakes at all. I avoid them. It's a tiny bit of cream with a ton of sugar. Just disgusting. They do the same with actual cakes. You can't buy a proper cake with cream based frosting and some tactful addition of sugar. It's a tiny amount of cream with a load of sugar on a tasteless body of (in many cases overly dry) sponge cake.
Take Subway "bread" as an example. It's so sugary it's classed as cake in Ireland.
"Richardson, you effectively raised costs! Here's your bonus. Congratulations!"
The heightened demand for that product may be an incentive, though.
Corn syrup could disappear overnight and nothing would change about how much junk food we eat, how much we produce, nor how sweet it is.
Ask anyone who's visited the US about how the food tastes. It's not just that serving portions are much bigger, but everything just tastes sweeter too. I've had people tell me they visited the states and even the plain white bread was sweet in comparison to everywhere else.
This brings the unit cost down.
Um, sure they are. As sugar gets cheaper and cheaper, the incentives are to substitute sugar for other ingredients that are more expensive.
Look at the "fat free" foods--they've got whopping amounts more sugar than their normal counterparts, for example.
I thought the reason they put sugar in “fat-free” products is because they taste like inedible garbage without it. Because they’re garbage.