Posted by Janet Harriett on May.18, 2010

ⓒ iStockPhoto - CagriOner

More food manufacturers are bowing to consumer pressure to remove high fructose corn syrup from packaged foods. Crackers, ketchup, bread, soda and cookies are now available loudly proclaiming themselves “Corn Syrup Free.” Is this really a good thing, though?

On the one hand, corn syrup has no redeeming nutritional qualities, and the less of it we eat, the better off we are. The best the corn growers’ association can come up with is that corn syrup is (possibly) no worse than sugar, by which they appear to mean refined table sugar. That overlooks that sugar, though a naturally derived sweetener, isn’t that great for people, either.

Corn syrup did serve one useful function in food when it was ubiquitous, though. The presence of High Fructose Corn Syrup on a food label was a handy red flag for unhealthy food. “Don’t eat corn syrup” was a handy rule of thumb to guide healthy eating. It made avoiding junk food a no-brainer, since corn syrup was in pretty much every junk food.

However, the “no corn syrup” rule was more of a shortcut than a statement of nutritional principles. Corn syrup was a commonality, not the root problem. Very few processed foods are unhealthy solely because they contain high fructose corn syrup. Take the corn syrup out of cookies, and you’re still left with a cookie. Corn-syrup-free lunchmeat still has high levels of sodium and nitrates. Microwavable macaroni and cheese without the corn syrup solids is still refined flour pasta and a conglomeration of salt, artificial flavors and colors with a smidge of cheese as the second-to-last ingredient to make you think you’re eating something cheese-like. Sugar-sweetened sodas aren’t any lower in calories than corn-syrup sodas.

Companies that are reformulating their products to be corn syrup-free aren’t necessarily making the products any healthier. Most often, they’re replacing the corn syrup with sugar, matching their PR line that HFCS isn’t any worse than sugar. Though sugar is marginally closer to nature than HFCS - check out Twinkie Deconstructed for a nice, gut-wrenching description of how corn syrup and several other industrial food additives are made - neither one of them would pass muster as a health food, especially not in the quantities used in commercial food processing and manufacture.

Lest there be any confusion, I’m in no way in favor of corn syrup. Owing to a food sensitivity in my family, I had a remarkably, though not completely, corn-syrup-free childhood. I reasonably healthy, if not athletic, but I wasn’t anyone’s definition of skinny growing up. I gained about 50 pounds when I left home and started eating corn syrup-containing foods with abandon, though at least a few of those pounds probably had at least as much to do with the amount of fried foods as the sudden uptick in corn syrup consumption. Following a strict regimen of exercise, monitoring my food intake and instituting a No Corn Syrup rule, I’m back down to the more or less healthy weight I was before the Corn Syrup Years. However, there were a lot of things that packed the weight on, and merely getting rid of corn syrup itself didn’t take the pounds off again. I feel healthier not eating corn syrup, but I also don’t eat the types of foods that corn syrup was ever in to begin with.

While corn syrup is definitely unhealthy, let’s not confuse “Corn syrup free” with healthy.

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Posted under Food Facts, Food, Nutrition & Recipes.