Just So Sweet: High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Health, and Sustainable Food

I'm dreaming of sweetness these days. March is bookended by holidays that involve candies, after all. Stuck between Valentine's Day and Easter, it's a time of sweet things. The trees are making maple sugar, the sugar cane and corn crops are being planted, the bees are waking up. This week I'm exploring sugar in many of its forms, sustainable and less-than-sustainable.

When you think of corn, where do you begin? Waving fields of green stalks, complemented by the brown ears of ripening yellow corn? A farmhouse, perhaps, with a few cows and horses grazing in the pasture. Those of us who are avid label-readers will know that corn syrup is in so many different items: a surprising number, really. Salad dressings have corn syrup. Soups have corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup is a universal sweetener, it seems.

Why corn? In the United States, high fructose corn syrup is inexpensive. Corn is subsidized, while many other sugar products are imported and subject to tariffs. Since the 1970s, the amount of corn-based sweeteners consumed by Americans has gone up, while the amount of cane and beet-based sweeteners has gone down. Is this a good thing? After all, if Americans are growing more of their own sweeteners and eating fewer imported products, that's reducing food miles.

Well, perhaps. However, talk about corn syrup and you'll get an earful of controversy. To create high fructose corn syrup, regular corn syrup is processed to convert glucose into fructose, then it is mixed with regular corn syrup to create a sweetener that can be used as a body-double for sugar, almost. There is a wild and impassioned debate about the health impacts of eating this corn concoction. There's concern about rising obesity rates and the possibility that eating large quantities of fructose leads the liver to produce fatty triglycerides and sends the body into a state of insulin resistance, increasing the rates of diabetes.

The American focus on corn syrup is also responsible for the creation of agricultural monocultures, and growing any crop to excess can be detrimental to the environment. Corn crops that stretch for miles are not a diverse environment for pollinators and for wildlife. Corn crops that are not rotated regularly deplete the soil. When the soil is depleted, do people turn to organic methods of renewing it, using cover crops and manure and compost to enrich the soil again? Well, when there is a feeling of urgency to grow, grow, grow, there is a temptation to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to artificially bolter the corn plants.

Corn is not the embodiment of evil, nor is corn syrup the worst food in the world, if it is organic and eaten in moderation. This Easter, a challenge to you: add diversity to your diet and to the sweets that you consume, and make some of this diversity organic. Your ecological footprint will thank you.

Do you avoid high fructose corn syrup? Which sweeteners do you use?