I KNOW MONEY DOESN’T GROW ON TREES, BUT WHAT ABOUT SUGAR CUBES?

Corn, corn production, corn farmers, corn factories, and everything else with the word “corn” in its name is under the microscope these days. Nothing is sacred, which is really a travesty because in case you didn’t notice, America is really great a growing corn and isn’t specializing in your competitive advantage what this whole “global marketplace” thing is about?

For today though, I focus on one small piece of our new anti-corn puzzle: High Fructose Corn Syrup. Propaganda pushing media tell us HFCS is killing us and causing an obesity and diabetes epidemic within our country. I’m tempted to blame people who eat too much fast food and don’t exercise, but what do I know?

I know that studies show HFCS and sugar cane sugar are basically the same. They contain the same calories, they are metabolized the same, and they are nutrionally the same. I can appeal to the common sense portion of your decision-making facilities and ask you why a sugar made from a sugar cane plant would be different from the sugar made from corn plant. A sugar is a sugar is a sugar, no matter what vegetation we pull it from.

But some are still critics.

So, in order to combat the latest criticism I’ve heard – that HFCS is more highly processed and thus, somehow worse for our bodies – I submit Exhibit A:

How It’s Made: High Fructose Corn Syrup



And then, Exhibit B:

How It’s Made: Cane Sugar



Granulized sugar doesn’t just magically burst from the cells of a sugar cane plant as you might have thought. You won’t find sweet little sugar cubes as low hanging fruit when you walk the sugar cane field. Sugar cane has to be crushed, heated, cooled, mixed, added to, and a host of other processes I’m sure I don’t understand in order to become the sugar that we know and love.

Just like HFCS.

But there is one important way that HFCS is different from sugar cane sugar. It is made right here in the United States offering jobs to Americans and money to stimulate the American economy.

That’s a distinction I’d love to see a few more media focus on.

For more information on HFCS and sugar cane sugar:
http://www.sweetsurprise.com/
http://sweetscam.com/

And if you’d like to download and print some facts to carry around in your pocket or share with your neighbors, click here.

By: Lindsay Mitchell
ICGA/ICMB Project Coordinator