April 03, 2008
Legal/Government
FDA: High fructose Corn Syrup is NOT natural!
Finally the FDA has done one thing right: Foods that contain Corn Syrup cannot be labelled as "Natural":
Products containing high fructose corn syrup cannot be considered 'natural' and should not be labeled as such, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said.
The decision is likely to cause a massive stir in the food and beverage industry, where a discreet battle has been raging over the status of the controversial sweetener.
Awesome! Anyone even slightly concerned about eating "Naturally" should take note. I hope this will raise awareness to the fact that corn syrup has laced nearly all of the foods you can buy at a regular store. Now I can only hope that manufacturers return to more realistic ingredients like sugar and evaporated cane juice, and not delve deeper into creating another evil sweetener.
Posted by Mayhem at April 3, 2008 11:29 AM
'Foods that contain Corn Syrup cannot be labelled as "Natural"'
Careful with your wording there - High Fructose corn syrup cannot be labeled as natural. Regular corn syrup is no less natural or more processed than granulated cane sugar. And many things cannot be made without it! (or at least, can't be made practically.) Obviously in a lot of things HFCS is used just as a cheep sweetener and is better replaced by alternatives. But lots of candy making especially requires some corn syrup (or other forms of glucose) in addition to the cane syrup (or other sucrose). It is essential in home candy making primarily to prevent the sucrose from crystallizing. of course in industrial settings there may be more industrial methods that can be used instead.
Honestly HFCS seems to be taking too much heat lately. I mean, yeah - it's way overprocessed and unnatural and just not very good (in my opion), and used in friggin' *everything*. But people act like the fact that HFCS is in so many foods is making people fat. But really it's not the use of HFCS as a sweetener that is the bug problem, it's the overuse of sweetener! It's not like drinking 6 cans of HFCS sweetened coke per day will make you obese but 6 cans of cane-sugar sweetened coke will maintain a perfect figure.
