Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Deception is bad, but from a nutritional point of view this really shouldn't be an issue for informed consumers (ie. people who read the ingredient lists) given that "nutrition facts" also exists. 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless if it came from a strawberry, fruit juices, or HFCS. This is especially true in highly processed foods, where the processing eliminates any advantage that "natural" sugars have.

View on HN

No, making the law only protect those who are informed is a poor idea on many fronts.

Firstly, you've incentivized companies to prevent people from becoming informed. You can already see online that lies spread faster because they don't have the inconvenience of needing to be true. You have one truth, and it has to stand up to countless thousands of lies.

Secondly, nobody can be informed about everything. The whole reason we have experts is because they are the ones informed on their subject, and they devote their entire careers to it. You cannot possibly be well-read and up to speed about everything you buy while still being able to function as a human being.

Thirdly, what happens when the deceptive, shitty product completely out-competes the safer one because it's that much cheaper? Hey, guess what? You can't buy the safe or sustainable version of the product anymore because every business that did went out of business. It's no longer in the market.

I want to buy the thing that was the most expensive and exuberant to manufacture for the lowest price. So yeah, when I want jam, I want jam that is the most strawberries. This isn't complicated.

It is actually complicated in this case, because you want jam. Jam is made with 1 part fruit 1 part sugar. But it is even more complicated now because you want not just any jam, but strawberry jam in particular. This is a low pectin fruit so you have to supply your own. Things also change depending on the type of pectin you go for and I think I better stop here...

And yet some people will pay extra to buy jam with no added sugars but agave syrup. I'd rather pay more to have more fruit and just ... less overall sugars.

> 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless if it came from a strawberry, fruit juices, or HFCS.

From a biological pov, that is wrong on so many levels. It is why labels now have Added Sugars listed separately. Sugars as whole fruit aren't unhealthy in moderation, whereas HFCS is one if the unhealthiest added sugars. There is no way to equate them except in pure chemistry with no relation to biology.

>Sugars as whole fruit aren't unhealthy in moderation

That's why I specifically mentioned the processing part. Sugar in apple might not be comparable to sugar in a coke, but all of that goes out the window when you're comparing the sugar content of jellies.

>whereas HFCS is one if the unhealthiest added sugars. There is no way to equate them except in pure chemistry with no relation to biology.

Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Healt...

>As of 2026, there is no scientific consensus or regulatory concern that fructose or HFCS impacts cardiometabolic health when substituted for sucrose

https://medicalxpress.com/search/?search=fructose&h=1&s=0

Ok, you might not know this, but sucrose (white sugar) is a di-saccharide consisting of a molecule of glucose and one of fructose, which your body splits during digestion. So the amount of fructose you get from HFCS is almost identical to the amount you get from white sugar. Your body can't tell the difference.

That's why I don't get the US hype about Coke with actual sugar. It's still 50% fructose, what do you think will happen if you drink several cans every day?

People say they prefer the taste. I don't know that I could tell the difference though.

Some people definitely can, but at least in the informal sample for this article, they preferred regular coke.

https://www.seriouseats.com/coke-vs-mexican-coke

I'd be wary of what people say they prefer in tests. People also prefer Pepsi to Coke in blind taste tests but they don't prefer it to drink an entire can.

Pepsi tastes much sweeter than Coke and I wouldn't be surprised if corn syrup Coke was sweeter than sugar Coke.

I can tell the difference, but I couldn't tell you which is which.

This usually pops up around Passover, when Coke switches to an all sugar formulation for reasons I'm unqualified to explain. It's an "oh hey, this Coke tastes different", I'll check the label, and see that it's sweetened with sucrose instead of HFCS.

I'll handwavingly claim that this is close enough to a blind study/anecdote as I'm not Jewish and haven't a clue when Passover falls. As I buy cans, not bottles, it's not the yellow caps giving it away either.

> Your body can't tell the difference.

That's not metabolically true. Fructose by definition doesn't have glucose which is present in sucrose. Metabolically, your body absolutely reacts differently.

A core issue is that isolated fructose and its derivatives, e.g. HFCS, don't sufficiently trigger satiety. In contrast, regular sugar and glucose trigger satiety. This has been known for over a decade:

- Dissociable Behavioral, Physiological and Neural Effects of Acute Glucose and Fructose Ingestion: A Pilot Study (2015) (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130280)

- Attenuated hypothalamic response to fructose via a dedicated gut-brain pathway (2026) (DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2026.05.013)

Your body can't certainly tell the difference between glucose and fructose, but that's not what we are talking about. HFCS is typically either 42% or 55% fructose, which is very similar to sucrose (50% fructose).

If HFCS is problematic, white sugar is problematic in exactly the same way.

It is problematic that the ingredient label doesn't list which types of HFCS are used in the product. It could be HFCS-90 for all I know. The manufacturer could also keep shifting the formula. 90% fructose would be disastrous to one's health.

In fact a 2014 study found 60% fructose, not 55% as is expected with HFCS-55. This suggests a blending of HFCS-55 and HFCS-90 in a ratio that yields 60% fructose. This thuggery by hiding it from the label is bad for health. As a consumer, I am within reason to make the pessimistic assumption of HFCS being up to 90% fructose via HFCS-90, which for all practical intents and purposes is fructose. In any event, your claim of the product containing up to merely 55% fructose is falsified.

Fructose content in popular beverages made with and without high-fructose corn syrup (2014) doi: 10.1016/j.nut.2014.04.003.

Yeah I was working from Wikipedia. They say that 55 is typically used in soft drinks, and 42 in sweet snacks.

The claim isn't that HFCS isn't bad for you, it's that it isn't worse for you than just regular sugar. Linking a bunch of articles about how HFCS is bad doesn't refute that.

Isolated fructose and its derivatives, e.g. HFCS, don't sufficiently trigger satiety, while stressing the liver and the heart. In contrast, regular sugar and glucose trigger satiety. This has been known for over a decade.

For anyone who actually bothers to read:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-fructose-weaker-satie...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-12-brain-reward-circuits...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-06-fructose-brain-reward...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com