Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Corn Syrup Marketing Campaign

I've been seeing television commercials lately urging folks to visit a website and get the real facts about high fructose corn syrup (as opposed to those terrible stories that nutritionists and food policy radicals have been spreading.)

I was curious, so I checked it out. It was pretty much what you'd expect: experts reassuring us that corn syrup is perfectly natural, doesn't cause obesity, and that it's no worse for us than table sugar.

If there's any truth to these assertions, are there still good reasons to avoid corn syrup? For me its cheapness makes it suspect. Having a highly refined sweetener available so inexpensively offers manufacturers a reason to overuse it, and that's going to cause health issues for folks who eat a lot of processed food, even if they're eating something that our bodies assimilate in much the same way as table sugar.

And yet I found it encouraging that corn syrup manufacturers are being forced to run commercials trying to dispel these "myths" about its unhealthfulness. Sounds like the word is actually getting out there.

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