Cane Sugar or HFCS (corn sugar) = Sugar!

Business is business, profits are profits, but morals are still morals and the growing shift of many food companies from HFCS to sugar from cane is plain disingenuous and morally suspect.  The latest entry to the marketing fray is PepsiCo with the announcement Sierra Mist will change its sweetener to cane sugar and its name to “Natural.”

Nobody seems to know who started the anti-fructose ball rolling but a minority of folks in the Foodie Community has managed to keep it rolling. In recent years they have convinced a growing segment of the public that HFCS is behind the US obesity epidemic and make cane sugar seem superior. (Ask a chubby Australian if they are buying this stuff…yes they have the same growing waste line we do and use primarily cane sugar).

In his 1595 play King John William Shakespeare called this practice of over embellishment “Gilding the Lilly.” Ask an advertising account representative about this practice and they will say “they aren’t lying; they are just testing the limits of the truth.”

Enough of this quibbling and splitting hairs. Here is what you need to know:

High Fructose Corn Sweetener is sugar. Sugar cane is sugar. Honey is sugar. The apple you ate yesterday is full of fructose/sugar. Eating a lot of it is not healthy. That is the plain and simple unvarnished truth. Most of us need to eat less and better to avoid obesity and diabetes.

Our focus on HFCS as the Devil’s Sweetener is a huge mistake. In fact it is formulated precisely to imitate table sugar in its sweetness and function. There is absolutely no difference in the number of grams of sugar in each, or calories for that matter. The same goes for every other product that has abandoned HFCS for cane.

And in the words of a PepsiCo VP regarding the Sierra Mist switcheroo… “There’s not a strong reason to choose one [lemon-lime] brand over another…. And when we asked consumers what would re-engage them in soda, ‘natural’ was the No. 1 concept.”