Big Corn Wants to Rename HFCS “corn sugar”

It’s a deft move by the CRA. Once the evil ingre­di­ent du jour, sugar is now pre­ferred to more processed sweet­en­ers such as HFCS, aspar­tame and Splenda. Of course, whether it’s HFCS or beet and cane sug­ars, most con­ven­tional sweet­en­ers are made from genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops and aren’t required to be labeled as such.

But because it’s less processed than HFCS, sugar cur­rently wears a health halo that CRA wants to align “corn sugar” with.

The CRA says its name-change motives are sim­ple: to help peo­ple under­stand the sweet­ener is just the same as sugar. “It has been highly dis­par­aged and highly mis­un­der­stood,” Audrae Erickson, pres­i­dent of the Washington-based Corn Refiners Association told the New York Times.

“The name `corn sugar’ more accu­rately reflects the source of the food (corn), iden­ti­fies the basic nature of the food (a sugar), and dis­closes the food’s func­tion (a sweet­ener),” reads the peti­tion that CRA sub­mit­ted to the Food and Drug Administration for an offi­cial name change.

But wait; HFCS is not sugar at all, accord­ing to a group of sugar man­u­fac­tur­ers and trade orga­ni­za­tions. The group, which includes C&H Sugar, has filed a law­suit accus­ing the corn indus­try of wrongly using the term “corn sugar” in place of HFCS in adver­tise­ments and elsewhere.

Experts agree that high-fructose corn syrup is def­i­nitely not sugar. “The true [FDA] def­i­n­i­tion of corn sugar is a refined, crys­tal­lized dex­trose prod­uct. Crystallized is the key word here. Nothing about high-fructose corn syrup sug­gests crys­tals,” says Kimberly Lord Stewart, indus­try journalist/analyst and author—Eating Between the Lines (St. Martin’s Press, 2007).

Furthermore, if HFCS gets an offi­cial name change, it will only muddy already murky waters sur­round­ing the sweet­ener. “The change in name will cer­tainly add more con­fu­sion to an already con­fus­ing issue,” says Rachel Begun, MS, RD, reg­is­tered dietit­ian and culi­nary nutri­tion­ist. Many con­sumers don’t fully under­stand what HFCS is and will believe that “corn sugar” is some­thing dif­fer­ent from the syrup.

Crystal ver­sus syrup is not the issue for most con­sumers though. The cen­tral con­cern is that HFCS is a processed ingre­di­ent with poten­tial health risks. Although the American Medical Association asserts that there is no research indi­cat­ing HFCS poses sig­nif­i­cant health risks, ini­tial research indi­cates oth­er­wise. For exam­ple, a study last year at Princeton University found that rats fed HFCS all expe­ri­enced obe­sity, vastly dif­fer­ently from those rodents fed sugar.

And HFCS and sugar dif­fer in how the body metab­o­lizes them. “Both HFCS and sucrose con­tain fruc­tose and glu­cose, but the 55 per­cent fruc­tose in HFCS is unbound and ready for uti­liza­tion, while sucrose’s 50 per­cent fruc­tose is bound to glu­cose, which means an extra meta­bolic step needs to be taken for the body to use it,” explains Todd Runestad, edi­tor in chief, Functional Ingredients magazine.

It is impor­tant to note, how­ever, that all added sug­ars con­tribute calo­ries to the diet with no nutri­tional value. “The best direc­tion man­u­fac­tur­ers can take is to focus on reduc­ing the amount of added sug­ars in their prod­ucts,” Begun says.

How the court will view the corn sugar issue remains to be seen, but some believe the scales are tipped against per­mis­sion grant­ing for an offi­cial name change. “Given that the Corn Refiners Association is already ask­ing for for­give­ness rather than per­mis­sion, by using the name `corn sugar’ and say­ing sugar is sugar, it could rub reg­u­la­tors the wrong way. FDA direc­tor Barbara Schneeman has already voiced her con­cern about it in let­ters to the Corn Refiners,” accord­ing to Stewart.

In September, lawyers for the CRA filed for a dis­missal of the suit, cit­ing that adver­tis­ing is a form of free speech. The Los Angeles County judge on the case has yet to rule about the dis­missal request. The CRA con­tin­ues to use the term “corn sugar” in its communications.

Anna Soref is the for­mer edi­tor in chief of Natural Foods Merchandiser mag­a­zine, a lead­ing B-to-B pub­li­ca­tion serv­ing the nat­ural prod­ucts indus­try. She has been a con­tribut­ing writer for numer­ous trade and con­sumer nat­ural health pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Yoga Journal, Whole Living, The Herb Quarterly, Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals, and Vegetarian Times. Anna is a fre­quent speaker at events, such as the Natural Products Association’s MarketPlace, HBA Global Expo, SupplySide West, and Natural Products Expo West and East.