High Fructose Corn Syrup Can Run But It Can’t Hide

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has been blamed for a host of ills including the obesity epidemic and the increase in people with diabetes. So the makers of HFCS tried to do what many manufacturers of problematic products try to do: Change its name.

Sorry, but the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has turned down the idea to change HFCS’s name to corn sugar. The FDA’s answer is that sugar refers to a substance that is “solid, dried and crystallized.”

HFCS is none of that. It is, says the FDA, “…an aqueous solution sweetener derived from corn after enzymatic hydrolysis of cornstarch, followed by enzymatic conversion of glucose to fructose. Thus, the use of the term ‘sugar’ to describe HFCS, a product that is a syrup, would not accurately identify or describe the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties.”