Public-health officials and policymakers across the United States have been talking a lot lately about tackling the epidemic of obesity through smaller nudges like a per-ounce tax on soda. Not surprisingly, as enthusiasm for this idea expands, so too has soda-tax scholarship. “Our take on this was basically that everybody is talking about a soda tax, so we stepped back and said, ‘Wait a minute, this is not very well targeted,’” said John Beghin, an economist at Iowa State University. “If you want to impose a tax and reduce calorie intake from sweeteners, there is a better way to ... Read More
Sweetener Death Match: Sugar vs. Syrup
October 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The idea that high-fructose corn syrup infuses lots of our food has left a bitter taste in many consumers' mouths. So the corn industry has started a public relations campaign on behalf of its beleaguered syrup in an attempt to rename the additive as "corn sugar." But a civil lawsuit in federal court seeks to stop the renaming. An effort from public health advocates to try to keep the corn industry honest? Nope, the suit was filed by the giants of the sugar industry to protect their brand. The squabble has pitted sugar producers and processors like American Sugar Refining and Imperial Sugar ... Read More
High-Fructose Corn Syrup’s Health Risks Remain Sticky
January 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
High-fructose corn syrup generally gets a bad rap by the health community. The sweetener has been blamed for everything from obesity to diabetes, heart attack to stroke. But what do we really know about it? During the 1970s, the American food industry introduced high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, as a sweet substitute for sucrose (which we recognize as table sugar). Processed from corn — it gets its “high-fructose” name because its fructose content is higher than the corn from which it originates — the syrup contains about the same number of calories as sucrose or honey but has a ... Read More
Bee Healthy for Your Honey
February 13, 2010 • By • 5 Comments
High-fructose corn syrup is a hot topic in the national debate on diet, with opponents attacking it, as Daniel Engber has suggested, as unhealthy, unnatural and unappetizing, while corn refiners have volleyed back that it's safe, natural and tasty. Now the food additive has been implicated in the decline of another maker of sweeteners — honeybees. Although researcher Blaise W. LeBlanc agrees that colony collapse disorder in honeybees probably results from a variety of environmental stresses such as mites, pesticides and infections (like Nosema ceranae), his recent, published experiments ... Read More
