Seeing the sugar lobby take up the Corn Refiners Association is amusing. Each peddles empty calories in the form of sugar or high fructose corn syrup. HFCS should be appropriately avoided as it-s artificial construct and introduction in the early 80s correlates too closely to the rise of obesity and the diabetis epidemic. It is downright dishonest to call HFCS natural, as the refiners aim to do.
But it is also true that "˜an empty calorie is an empty calorie- and while some sweet in moderation can add to our taste, people aiming for a healthy diet should focus on wholesome ingredients that have nutritional depth. Hence KIND.
March 21, 2009
Sugar Is Back on Food Labels, This Time as a Selling Point
By KIM SEVERSON
Sugar, the nutritional pariah that dentists and dietitians have long reviled, is enjoying a second act, dressed up as a natural, healthful ingredient.
From the tomato sauce on a Pizza Hut pie called "The Natural," to the just-released soda Pepsi Natural, some of the biggest players in the American food business have started, in the last few months, replacing high-fructose corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar.
ConAgra uses only sugar or honey in its new Healthy Choice All Natural frozen entrees. Kraft Foods recently removed the corn sweetener from its salad dressings, and is working on its Lunchables line of portable meals and snacks.
The turnaround comes after three decades during which high-fructose corn syrup had been gaining on sugar in the American diet. Consumption of the two finally drew even in 2003, according to the Department of Agriculture. Recently, though, the trend has reversed. Per capita, American adults ate about 44 pounds of sugar in 2007, compared with about 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup.
"Sugar was the old devil, and high-fructose corn syrup is the new devil," said Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior analyst at Mintel International, a market-research company.
With sugar sales up, the Sugar Association last year ended its Sweet by Nature campaign, which pointed out that sugar is found in fruits and vegetables, said Andy Briscoe, president of the association. "Obviously, demand is moving in the right direction so we are taking a break," Mr. Briscoe said.
Blamed for hyperactivity in children and studied as an addictive substance, sugar has had its share of image problems. But the widespread criticism of high-fructose corn syrup - the first lady, Michelle Obama, has said she will not give her children products made with it - has made sugar look good by comparison.
Most scientists do not share the perception. Though research is still under way, many nutrition and obesity experts say sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are equally bad in excess. But, as is often the case with competing food claims, the battle is as much about marketing as it is about science.
Some shoppers prefer cane or beet sugar because it is less processed. High-fructose corn syrup is produced by a complex series of chemical reactions that includes the use of three enzymes and caustic soda.
Others see the pervasiveness of the inexpensive sweetener as a symbol of the ill effects of government subsidies given to large agribusiness interests like corn growers.
But the most common argument has to do with the rapid rise of obesity in the United States, which began in the 1980s, not long after industrial-grade high-fructose corn syrup was invented. As the amount of the sweetener in the American diet has expanded, so have Americans.
Although the price differential has since dropped by about half, high-fructose corn syrup came on the market as much as 20 percent cheaper than sugar. And it was easier to transport. As a result, the sweetener soon turned up in all kinds of products, including soda, bread, yogurt, frozen foods and spaghetti sauce.
But with sugar newly ascendant, the makers of corn syrup are fighting back. Last fall, the Corn Refiners Association mounted a multimillion-dollar defense, making sure that an advertisement
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