Summary
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has been attacked for causing the current obesity in th US, containing mercury, causing diabetes and many other evil. It remains the major sweetener for sweetened sodas. HFCS also remains the largest prime product produced by the wet corn milling industry. If sugar displaces sugar, what happens to the industry?
Analysis
When the New York Times carries a front page article about sugar replacing HFCS on food labels, there must be something happening in the food industry. The list of companies reverting to sugar as their preferred sweetener from HFCS is growing and includes "retro" versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, Snapple, Log Cabin syrup, Kraft's salad dressings, Pizza Hut's tomato sauce, and ConAgra's Healthy Choices among others.
Our First Lady, Michell Obama, has said she will not feed her children processed foods containing HFCS. In fact sugar consumption is once again above HFCS, a lead it lost in 2003 and regained in 2007. Sugar has the image of being natural and maybe even healthy when compared to the attacks that HFCS has endured as the cause of America's obesity, containing mercury and promoting diabetes. While none of these claims has stuck, clearly food companies can make their product look better by replacing HFCS with sugar.
The wet corn milling industry, whose major players are Cargill, ADM, Tate & Lyle and Corn Products International, is not hurting yet from this slow shift back to sugar. They have the advantage of shifting their production to other higher valued products that can come out of the same basic production stream.
ADM last year announced they would be producing more lysine from their stream, and this year announced they were continuing major investments to increase the production of other new products from their wet corn milling plants. Cargill has been producing plastics and Tate & Lyle through a partnership with DuPont is producing fibers for carpets, again from the wet corn milling process. All the millers have also been expanding their polyol (a sugar alcohol) production. There are thousands of products that can be produced from the carbon building blocks, so it might be good that he industry is looking beyond the commoditized HFCS and to higher valued ingredients.
Let sugar take the blame for our over eating.
