I wish I didn't use it!

Recently I was brave enough to read the ingredient list on Blue Bell ice cream and HFCS was a main ingredient. Waaaa!

Gotta find another ice cream now.

Is this because it's cheaper and more readily available?

Yes, by US govt. policy, which subsidizes corn growers. Here are two articles, one from the left and one from the right, that discuss the issue:
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/07/the-secret-history-of-why-soda-companies-switched-from-sugar-to-high-fructose-corn-syrup/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/farm-subsidies-waste-money-on-junk-food

Of course! And sometimes they put it in things you wouldn't suspect. America has a sweet tooth that's for sure. At our local McD, sweet tea outsells unsweetened tea 3 to 1!

This is an annoyance I've known about for years. It's an outrage. Yay for bookwoman for providing a balanced explanation.

The condensed version is that the US government's ag policy has artificially created the world's highest sugar prices in the US. This benefits high fructose corn syrup makers (because it's cheaper to use as an ingredient) and the small US sugar industry by keeping out otherwise plentiful and cheaper foreign sugar. Quotas and tariffs limit how much foreign produced sugar can enter the country and at what price. Sugar users switched to other sources to save money.

I think the consumer markets have tired of high fructose corn syrup in products and you're seeing more and more products prominently labeled as being made with sugar instead. In addition to some domestic sweetened drink products so labeled, some stores and outlets in California (and maybe elsewhere) sell Coke from Mexico - it's a bit sweeter but also made with sugar.

Of course when I was young I loved Coke but gradually disliked it, could be just that I outgrew it but when it was made with sugar seems like it was better. A few years back there was some Mexican coke at the store for some reason and it did seem like it tasted like the good ol' days but it could have been my imagination, too. I can't remember the last time I drank a coke, it's been years for sure.

From your body's point of view though, sugar is sugar whether from beets, cane, honey, or corn. The primary problem with HFCS, as with all sugars, is its ubiquity though it is starting to come down in recent years.

Sometimes when I sit at a train crossing, tanker car after tanker car of HFCS goes by. The volume is mind boggling. I imagine what it would look like if it spilled in a derailing. Food (or facsimiles thereof) considered in vast quantities can be horrifying.

I just finished this essay by Michael Pollan, which talks about our current food supply issues and the scourge of HFCS and the like: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/covid-19-sickness-food-supply/

“Only when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett observed, “do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” For our society, the Covid-19 pandemic represents an ebb tide of historic proportions, one that is laying bare vulnerabilities and inequities that in normal times have gone undiscovered. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American food system. A series of shocks has exposed weak links in our food chain that threaten to leave grocery shelves as patchy and unpredictable as those in the former Soviet bloc. The very system that made possible the bounty of the American supermarket—its vaunted efficiency and ability to “pile it high and sell it cheap”—suddenly seems questionable, if not misguided. But the problems the novel coronavirus has revealed are not limited to the way we produce and distribute food. They also show up on our plates, since the diet on offer at the end of the industrial food chain is linked to precisely the types of chronic disease that render us more vulnerable to Covid-19.

I know Michael Pollan is successful and has quite a following but I dislike him.

He's a phony, an English teacher whose schtick involves being a charlatan about food and science matters. He "investigates" and writes about things he really has no education or training to discuss. He panders to a particular audience that wants to hear certain things and he tailors his writing to hit those targets. He's not unlike the media people (think Fox News) whose fans think they're presenting factual content when it really is politicized propaganda. Pollan does the same but on the other side of the political spectrum.

I've twice started different books he wrote and had to discontinue before long. I found his comments were far too personally subjective and unbalanced to be worth reading.

No offense from your quoting him, everyone has different views and that's okay. Those are yours and I've explained mine insofar as this guy is concerned.

No offense taken. I've never read his books, just various articles, and I do like his pithy saying about what our diets should be like: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

It also prevents sugaring in jams. The sugar content of a jam or jelly can crystalize and High fructose corn syrup makes that unlikely.

When we say sugar we generally mean cane sugar which is a combination of glucose and fructose. Sugars. High fructose corn syrup has corn starches converted to glucose and then that converted to fructose to yield glucose and fructose. So it is simply more processed. People believe it is bad for you. I think too much sugar is bad for you. I suspect it doesn't matter where it comes from.

It increases shelf life though I don't know how. I just remember reading that.

"When we say sugar we generally mean cane sugar "

I think refined sugar beet sugar is chemically and physically indistinguishable from the same made from cane sugar but I'm not certain enough to say that definitively.

I believe sugar from sugar beets has been the historic source in Europe, before slavery and colonization in the tropics became a source for some countries a few hundred years ago. And locally grown sugar remains an important source in many European countries.

I don't eat anything with HFCS in it. The food we buy in Europe is not sweet, as it is here. Even bread here has sugar, which our go-to brands 'across the pond' do not.

Re Mexican Coca Cola....Often available during Passover.

Anyone else like Polaner All Fruit? It's sweetened only with fruit juice. I don't eat jam often, but when I do, this is it. I'm sure there are other good brands that do this too.

Fruit juice has the same "sugar" as sugar.

Elmer, of course it does. But might be a bit less processed than hfcs.

Why does a fruit product even need to be sweetened? Well, some do, I suppose. DH was so happy when I found 100% cranberry juice, until he tasted it. Peach juice needs a bit of sweetening. But Unsweetened applesauce tastes more like apples, and why even put any kind of sweetener in peanut butter?

I was replying to Alisande's intimation that sweetening from fruit juice was anything different than from sugar. And of course it's not different but exactly the same.

It's easy enough to find jam and preserves with no HFCS and with sugar only - the Bonne Maman brand from France discussed recently in another thread is one example.

I agree with what you cite - we prefer peanut butter made with peanuts and salt only (what a concept!) and unsweetened applesauce. Even better than unsweetened applesauce is to cut apples into slices and microwave them in a covered container or bake in the oven. Mash them or not, fresh anything is always better than "canned".

Yes, fresh anything is way better than canned... That is why I was glad to be able to go to the grocery store again, after my 2 weeks quarantine.

I cut out ice cream from the grocery store/ice cream place here, called BRAUMS. It has HFCS in it. I started making my own about 6 or 7 years ago. Love it soooo much better.

I get the part of sugary sweet here in the USA. I grew up with Nutella. It wasn't as sweet as it is here. I really don't like what you can get here, that is called Nutella.

Cakes and pastries are not as sweet there either...

Guess, I am still German at heart. ;)

Moni

Moni, thank you... I fell in love with Nutella when I was an exchange student to Germany. I was so excited when I found out they were finally making it available here but, no, it didn't taste as I remembered it. I thought my memory was faulty!

Bpath, I have to mix apple juice when DH comes home from the store with 100% cranberry juice. Talk about pucker power!

Sugar beets are a big crop in Michigan. Or at least used to be. I grew up in Saginaw where Pioneer had a big facility. We used it pretty exclusively. But in baking and jam making it seems to me that cane sugar dissolves better. Anybody else find that?

I think cane and beet sugar products are the same.

My "intimation" was that fruit juice is healthier than high fructose corn syrup. I don't remember why HFCS is supposed to be particularly unhealthy, but it apparently is. Unless I'm wrong, in which case I'm sure Elmer will point it out.

The All Fruit line tastes lighter to me than regular jams and jellies, although I use so little at a time that I can't be certain of this. I don't do well with sweets.

We have cultural prejudices. For the moment that is corn. Corn is mostly starches and they have been converted from starch into sugar. Sugar just like starch is a carbohydrate. Our bodies are capable of doing this magic of converting all by itself. It is the percentages and juxtapositions that some people think make a difference. Living through chemistry. People are fond of talking up natural diets. I will point out that living as a primitive person gets you maybe 45 years tops. Living as we do today we average 78 years or more. Not a bad testament for High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Another reason to avoid HFCS is that it is made with genetically modified corn. I can buy some organic at the food coop because I have ONE recipe that calls for it and I haven't found another substitute that works.

I buy cane sugar because it is vegan/vegetarian and beet sugar is processed some animal byproduct. I have lots of friends who are vegan or vegetarian, so I avoid it.

Living as we do today we average 78 years or more. Not a bad testament for High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Our increased lifespans are due to medical and hygienic advances, not our current diets. We would do better to eat as our grandparents (in my case, people born in the 1890s) did.

Mexican Coke is made with sugar. It has a fresher taste--not cloyingly sweet. Mexican restaurants usually sell it by the bottle.

Bookwoman, add that we'd also do better to exercise like our grandparents did! as part of their daily life, not as a health routine -- they'd be too tired for that after a full day's labor.

m-l

... I imagine what it would look like if it spilled in a derailing.

imagine the boston molasses disaster of 1919...

*idiot note to self* it likely was caused by the Spanish flu in its second iteration!! J/K

the great molasses flood

I think I have a book about the molasses flood. (Or maybe it is just a chapter in a more general book.) Yes, people were killed.

Olychick I read that it's the opposite way.

Bone char is used in whitening and as a filter for cane sugar. Beet sugar however has no animal products used during processing.

I also read that not all companies use bone char for their cane sugar. On the linked below article there is a list of companies that do not use bone char. Many companies do not use bone char but these ones specifically are animal product free.

https://ordinaryvegan.net/vegansugar/

Bragu, thanks. That was an interesting read. I'd never heard of it before.

yeonasky, I buy Costco organic sugar because it is vegan and cane sugar. I am confused now by your post!

eta: but thanks for straightening me out. I think I must have mis-remembered the bone char aspect.

People are fond of talking up natural diets. I will point out that living as a primitive person gets you maybe 45 years tops. Living as we do today we average 78 years or more. Not a bad testament for High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Now that's what I call spurious correlation....just as there is a spurious correlation between per capita consumption of cheese and the number of people who have died from entanglement in their bedsheets.

We average 78 or more years today *despite* HFCS because of vaccinations, antibiotics, access to a steady food supply, clean drinking water, sanitation engineering and so on.

Very interesting discussion. I read that The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan quite a few years ago and was really quite amazed. I thought it made a lot of valid points, the key one that I took away is that the foods our grandparents and great parents ate; the beef, the chicken, and yes the veggies.... is NOT the same as we are getting now. In particular I had summarized the book to someone saying "corn is the devil". That is a bit flippant but still.

As mentioned above, people didn't go to the gym, didn't need to, because their every day lives were so physical. The feed given to livestock and the method of raising them is so different from what was.

I don't think HFCS is a good thing. For sure, everything is moderation is still a valid way.

Elmer, every so often there's a discussion on the Cooking Forum where people report that they get different results in (can't recall whether it's baking or candymaking or preserving or whatever) their familiar recipes if they use beet sugar instead of cane sugar.