Dealing what is surely a mighty blow to those in the corn industry hoping to improve the image of high fructose corn syrup, the Food and Drug Administration has denied the Corn Refiners Association's petition to rename HFCS as "corn sugar."
The FDA laid it all out in the form of a letter to the CRA's president, Audrae Erickson.
In the letter, dated May 30 and titled "Response to Petition from Corn Refiners Association to Authorize 'Corn Sugar' as an Alternate Common or Usual Name for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)," Michael Landa, Director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition explains the reasons why the Sept. 14, 2010 petition is being denied.
We picked out some of the pertinent parts below:
The CRA was hoping the name change would help to change consumers' perception that HFCS has more adverse effects for humans than sugar. The group contended that "corn sugar" more accurately reflects the nature of the ingredient.
Too bad, says the FDA.
Also important is the fact that "corn sugar" is already an FDA-approved alternative name for dextrose monohydrate. The letter points out that, far from clearing up confusion to consumers, changing the name of HFCS could cause confusion for some people who are already familiar with the current use of the name:
Continuing on the dextrose monohydrate topic, the FDA also rejected the portion of the CRA petition that had asked to the agency to put an end to the old school use of "corn sugar."
The thing we're most excited about is the expected end to those horrid "corn sugar" ads that plague our basic cable commercial breaks.
Response to Petition from Corn Refiners Association to Authorize "Corn Sugar" as an Alternate Common or Usual Name for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) [FDA.gov]
Source.
The FDA laid it all out in the form of a letter to the CRA's president, Audrae Erickson.
In the letter, dated May 30 and titled "Response to Petition from Corn Refiners Association to Authorize 'Corn Sugar' as an Alternate Common or Usual Name for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)," Michael Landa, Director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition explains the reasons why the Sept. 14, 2010 petition is being denied.
We picked out some of the pertinent parts below:
As explained below, your petition does not provide sufficient grounds for the agency to authorize "corn sugar" as an alternate common or usual name for HFCS.
First, you contend consumers are confused by the name "high fructose corn syrup" and that the proposed alternate name "corn sugar" more closely reflects consumer expectations and more accurately describes the basic nature of HFCS and its characterizing properties.
The CRA was hoping the name change would help to change consumers' perception that HFCS has more adverse effects for humans than sugar. The group contended that "corn sugar" more accurately reflects the nature of the ingredient.
Too bad, says the FDA.
However, FDA's regulatory approach for the nomenclature of sugar and syrups is that sugar is a solid, dried, and crystallized food; whereas syrup is an aqueous solution or liquid food....
Consequently, the use of the term "corn sugar" for HFCS would suggest that HFCS is a solid, dried, and crystallized sweetener obtained from corn. Instead, HFCS is an aqueous solution sweetener derived from corn after enzymatic hydrolysis of cornstarch, followed by enzymatic conversion of glucose (dextrose) to fructose. Thus, the use of the term "sugar" to describe HFCS, a product that is a syrup, would not accurately identify or describe the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties. As such, using the term "sugar" would not be consistent with the general principles governing common or usual names.
Also important is the fact that "corn sugar" is already an FDA-approved alternative name for dextrose monohydrate. The letter points out that, far from clearing up confusion to consumers, changing the name of HFCS could cause confusion for some people who are already familiar with the current use of the name:
Moreover, "corn sugar" has been known to be an allowed ingredient for individuals with hereditary fructose intolerance or fructose malabsorption, who have been advised to avoid ingredients that contain fructose. Because such individuals have associated "corn sugar" to be an acceptable ingredient to their health when "high fructose corn syrup" is not, changing the name for HFCS to "corn sugar" could put these individuals at risk and pose a public health concern.
Continuing on the dextrose monohydrate topic, the FDA also rejected the portion of the CRA petition that had asked to the agency to put an end to the old school use of "corn sugar."
The thing we're most excited about is the expected end to those horrid "corn sugar" ads that plague our basic cable commercial breaks.
Response to Petition from Corn Refiners Association to Authorize "Corn Sugar" as an Alternate Common or Usual Name for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) [FDA.gov]
Source.
The primary differences between HFCS and a similarly concentrated sucrose solution is that your body first has to hydrolize the sucrose to produce glucose and fructose, and that HFCS is in varying proportions of glucose/fructose rather than the 50/50 result of sucrose hydrolysis.
Fructose can't be used by our bodies directly, it first has to be converted to glucose. That is primarily done in the liver by mechanisms we don't completely understand because apparently the liver is magic.
(You know this isn't my field, but I got tired of the FUD from both sides of this debate so I made it a point to go learn about it. :) )
I am aware that hydrolysis of sucrose occurs under the acidic conditions of the stomach (though that bond is a lot stronger than you'd probably think). What I was trying to convey is that there are separate transporters for fructose and glucose. The GLUT2 transporter can do both, but is much more efficient for glucose. The fructose transporter is not as highly expressed ("naturally" if you will, though I agree the term is nearly meaningless in the context often presented in commercials). High exposure to the compound can upregulate expression of the protein. Thus, people begin to absorb a lot more, even though we probably shouldn't be for the reasons you've already stated regarding metabolism in the liver. Someone below has described the mechanism quite well, so I won't re-hash it. And random point of note, while fructose is usually converted to glucose in the liver as a result of first-pass metabolism, fructose can be used directly by certain types of cells in the body--it doesn't always need to be converted to glucose.
The direct consequences all this has still isn't quite clear, but I am eagerly awaiting the day when someone can present such data. There are also weird consequences of excess sugar consumption on the gut microbiota in the large intestine that I've been waiting on data for since it could have implications for a lot of intestinal diseases.
ngl I barely undertood the stuff I was reading, especially the details about the GLUT2 and GLUT5 transporters. And once things got into the liver I was pretty much lost.
Overall though, is it accurate to say that it doesn't matter where the fructose comes from (HFCS or sucrose hydrolysis), it's handled by the body the same way? And can be problematic?
Sucrose is obviously 50/50 fructose:glucose, but HFCS can be 55:42 or 42:53 depending on the type used. Given the competitive nature of some of these transporters, there could be differences in absorption (like consuming x grams of fructose with only y g of glucose instead of z g of glucose might mean a higher percent of fructose is absorbed). But like I said, those differences may be trivial. Or they may not. Transporters are weird, confusing, and hard to study. I imagine some problem in doing studies results from the fact that our population ingests HFCS so regularly (and in larger quantities than we think), who knows what the fuck the baseline on a no pre-processed foods, no sweets diet actually looks like.
Generally, I think the idea that we consume way too much sugar, and the inclusion of HFCS in fucking everything driving that habit is, as you say, problematic, The argument that we consume too much of sucrose and HFCS and it is bad for us is pretty solid.
I did read some papers where they had tested the absorption of various glucose/fructose ratios but they were all short-term tests and didn't take into account any of the variables you mention. Someone who is acclimated to a diet with lots of HFCS probably DOES have a different result than someone who isn't. I don't remember running across ANY longer-term studies.
Do you know that the other day I saw HFCS as an ingredient in potato chips the other day? Plain potato chips. WTF? (My partner and I avoid processed foods in general, but he likes potato chips and occasionally indulges.)
Thanks for clearing up some of my confusion.
And yeah, it's pretty awful. I habitually look at the ingredients now AND I AM ALWAYS SO DISAPPOINTED. I wanted to get some V8 fruit juice blend and there it was! Like, fruit juice already has sugar in it and I find it to be plenty sweet. Stop adding more.
Potato chips are pretty wtf though. Did they like...have extra that was going to expire so they were like "eh, just put it in the chips"?