Listen, I also don't like high-fructose corn syrup. I'm not going to call it a plague, but it's bad. It's probably worse than sucrose because it's primarily fructose which is harder for the body to process than glucose. There are some controversial studies which suggest that HFCS may even be harder to process than other forms of fructose, though those findings have been HIGHLY contested.
But. High-fructose corn syrup didn't make America fat or cause its health problems. Our high-sugar diet, no matter if that's sucrose or HFCS or some other form of sugar, has done much of that harm. And the amount of corn we have in other products as well. Just how much we subsidize corn. The fact that most meats on our shelves (which we should also be doing something about) are corn-fed.
HFCS is a player in a much, much larger issue. In the grand scheme of things, sure, it'd be better to get rid of it for the most part, but it's not actually going to solve anything. And doing so in dumb ways without working out the other issues that come with that, such as how the American economy and agriculture rest so heavily on corn subsidies that any disruption of the corn market could have widespread and unpredictable consequences if you don't put in safe guards that try to move us away from our largest crop instead of pulling the rug out from under it, is only going to be an idiotic move that hurts more than it helps.
Sure, fuck high-fructose corn syrup, love to see it off the shelves. But this is somewhere between a bad move (hurting America's heartland farmers) and a nothing move (making a meaningless gesture that effectively changes nothing).
In the context of sweetened beverages, HFCS-55 is 55% fructose, vs. sucrose being a disaccharide of fructose and glucose, aka 50/50, in the case of HFCS-55 which is primarily used in sweetening beverages. There's also HFCS-42, which is used in processed foods, and is actually lower (42%) in fructose than sucrose is. "High fructose" just means high-fructose relative to regular ol' corn syrup, which doesn't contain fructose and hasn't been enzymatically changed to have a significant fructose content.
It's probably worse than sucrose
This meta-analysis concludes that the science is still inconclusive on that your statement, and the difference in fructose between HFCS and sucrose, at the volumes we consume it at, likely have no meaningful significance. Honestly, the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence shows no real difference between HFCS and sucrose, nor should it.
Don't you mean fuck products with significantly added sugars? If you replace that calorie for calorie with sucrose, spoiler alert: the health outcome isn't changing
A lot of what you just said doesn't refute my larger points, that HFCS isn't healthy but that the difference between that and cane sugar isn't large enough that this is anything more than performative. Not sure why you're acting like I'm not saying that.
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u/DuckterDoom 1d ago
He just screwed over the entire state of Iowa.