High Fructose Corn Syrup Myth
A calorie is a calorie and a sweetener is sweetener. Period. The myth that high fructose corn syrup is making us fat in a unique way should stop there. Unfortunately, it hasn’t.
When it comes to counting calories from sweets, the math is simple. All natural sweeteners—including sugar cane, sugar beets, corn, honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, and others—are made up of two basic sugars called glucose and fructose. Each of those sugars contains the same number of calories as all other carbohydrates: just four calories per gram. So a gram of fructose in table sugar is no more fattening than that same gram of fructose in honey, or in a sweetener made from corn.
It’s a common but unfortunate misconception that corn sugar, often called “high fructose corn syrup,” is substantially higher in fructose than table sugar. That’s not true. Its very name is, in fact, a misleading one.
Table sugar is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. High fructose corn syrup is either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, with the remainder being glucose. Nutritionally speaking, the two sweeteners are identical.
But false conventional wisdom has helped “green” eating activists and assorted other food cops to perpetuate the urban myth that table sugar is a healthier alternative to high fructose corn syrup.
Get the whole “scoop” from Consumer Freedom: Myth: High Fructose Corn Syrup Uniquely Contributes to Obesity.
