My real issue with HFCS is the large farm subsidies that go towards its production. I would prefer healthy fruits and veggies get some subsidies other than corn.

Yay! It's hard to find places that use organic ketchup let alone ketchups that don't use HFCS! Hopefully organic will be the standard sooner than later.

Doing my best to stay FAR away from any weird processed chemicals...
Our bodies don't recognize that freaky lab created crap.

Also, sugar is the devil.

"Simply replacing one sugar with another isn't necessarily going to help with the root problem - the fact that Americans as a whole are consuming far more calories than we need." Thank you! This gets to the heart of what is often ignored by all of the HFCS debate--get rid of corn syrup, fine, but the problem is that there is some form of sugar in almost all foods that average Americans eat. Back to simple food with few ingredients, and back to viewing sugar as a treat, not a basic food group.

I've been eating stuff with HCFS my whole life with no problem. Maybe that's my body, but the article seems to say the whole thing is just a big, misinformed non-issue.

@Plumeria - does your body recognize cornstarch? Cornstarch enzymes = HCFS. Enzymes are of course proteins produced by living organisms which catalyze a chemical reaction - your body recognizes (and produces) these too. Honey has a similar glucose to fructose ratio as HCFS, and it's also produced by enzymes. The main difference is that honey is produced inside bees, and HCFS is produced inside factories. One is freaky, but the other isn't?

@Sousfletch - don't forget the other side of the coin - high sugar tariffs. The combination of farm subsidies and sugar tariffs is what makes HCFS economically appealing.

@Lotusmoss - exactly!

Ack, comment box ate my punctuation. Cornstarch plus enzymes equals HCFS!

@lmrinc, since tomatos were one of the "clean 15" (meaning they use some of the fewest chemicals of any veggie, posted earlier today here or at AT, I think), I wouldn't think it was much of an issue whether ketchup was organic or not. Especially since "organic" just means that they can use certain chemicals but not others. I was shocked when I found out how arbitrary it is.

I have to say I'm with GaryLikesToCook. It seems to me that in the grand scheme of things this isn't much of an issue. The Princeton experiment you linked to looks, at least for the second experiment, to be a "duh" moment. Rats who have access to sweet stuff gain weight! Oh, we TOTALLY didn't see that coming.

Worry about the hexane in soy products or the farm subsidies that SousFletch mentioned. Heck, option 2 would probably make HFCS disappear anyway since it would no longer be cheaper than dirt.

Corn sensitivities and corn allergies are on the rise in the US, and that farm subsidy is the main cause. I can tell you, it sucks being allergic to corn, but HFCS is the least of my worries. It is easy to spot. Modified Food Starch, Maltodextrin, any number of phosphates and sulfates - those are the more difficult ones. Corn is cheap as dirt, as Tiamat said. Until that changes corn is going to be the major ingredient in our food supply - it feeds our livestock and is processed into thousands of chemicals and starches that are in places you'd never expect (my most annoying - the adhesive on bandages). Buying and eating fewer processed foods helps remove the corn from your personal food supply, but only social action will remove it from everyone's (not to mention the bandages).

I've read all I need to know about the evils of HFCS. It's second on my list of taboo ingredients...right behind partially hydrogenated fats.

Maybe I've misunderstood the study, but I thought it was saying that rats that had access to amount x of HFCS gained more weight than rats that had access to amount x of sugar (i.e. equal amounts of either sweetener, but HFCS led to faster weight gain).

If I HAVE understood it correctly, then it IS a great improvement, even if sugar is still being over-consumed. Not to say that I disagree that the "western" diet contains far too much sugar, but getting rid of HFCS is still making us healthier than keeping it, even if we consumed sugar in the same amounts as we did HFCS.

All that is assuming I've understood the study correctly.. which it appears I may not have?

You know how people always say the world works in cycles? It seems to be happening here.
1. Natural food is the norm, but there's just not enough to feed everyone and it's expensive to make
2. We find ways to make food in larger quantities and cheaper so we can feed everyone (yet some poor countries still have starving people)
3. (the step we're on now) People react negatively to the foods we've made and want to get rid of them
4. Who knows. Maybe we'll go back to 1 and it'll repeat all over.

It's like the cycle of rising and crashing industries that's controlled supply and demand, but with more emotions and popular opinion involved. It also seems to be going much more slowly, maybe because of all the misinformation and conspiracies, and that food is regulated by the government.

The post said it way better than anyone in the comments.
"Simply replacing one sugar with another isn't necessarily going to help with the root problem - the fact that Americans as a whole are consuming far more calories than we need."

Step 1. STOP PANICKING. HFCS isn't going to kill anyone more than anything else will.
Step 2. MODERATION.

It's not hard. Nobody is going to die. Just diversify what you eat and you and everybody else we know will survive.

@AlisonCJ - Go back to the study and read the amounts. This is why people need to find the primary source (the article produced by Princeton, NOT articles written about that article). Take a look at the weight gained by the rats in each sample. The "significance" in weight gain difference is truly not significant.

As I understand it, there really isn't much evidence that HFCS is more harmful than sugar. HFCS is simply a marker of a highly-processed food. Removing the marker doesn't make the food any better for you.

We keep looking for the one thing we can change in our diet-- add antioxidants, remove corn syrup, add omega-3s-- but none of these things will replace simply eating better, real foods.

If you suffer from Gout, HFCS is a major contributor to your attacks as well! I cut out as much HFCS as I can and have virtually eliminated my Gout attacks.

http://journalofhealthyliving.com/why-high-fructose-corn-syrup-is-your-worst-enemy.htm

The main issue with HFCS is that our brains don't register it as sugar. This result has been demonstrated in several studies over the past decade, including the one on rats listed above. We consume vast amounts more of HFCS than we do of sugar. Don't believe me? Try it yourself with an easy experiment.

Get two types of food/drink: one with HFCS and one with sugar. Label them and give them to a friend/coworker with a bowl/glass. Ask them to give you a set amount (what you'd normally eat of this item) from bag A or bag B each day for the next week and track how much you eat each day. I used Swedish fish (the ones from Ikea use glucose syrup!) and Coca-Cola and could have as many servings a night as I wanted, but my husband had to get them out so I didn't know which bag they were coming from. I was SHOCKED at the end of the experiment to determine how much LESS I ate of the sugar sweetened article. Especially the Cokes! With sugar sweetened Coke I drank ONE twelve ounce serving an evening versus an average of THREE HFCS tweleve ounce servings! That's 280 calories difference! Every day, that's 30 pounds a year!

I switched away from HFCS after that. My skin cleared up and I dropped 13 lbs the first week (detox maybe? I dunno! Haven't lost much more since.) Mostly though, I crave fewer sweets and am satisfied with fewer when I do eat them. That's a bonus I'll happily accept! HFCS is NOT for me.

{And why is it in cream of mushroom soup, anyway? It's not supposed to be a sweet product! }