Putting Lipstick On The Pig At The Trough

High fructose corn syrup is used in a lot of foods. Whether deserved or not, it also has a bad rap. So agribusiness is doing something about that. They're petitioning the FDA to use "corn sugar" in place of high fructose corn syrup. To help educate the masses, they've created a web site called cornsugar.com.

They want to clear up all our confusion.

Navigate the maze. Get it? Maze.

After the main page finishes loading a variety of quotes from presumably reputable people are displayed one after another.

The cornsugar.com domain name is owned by the Corn Refiners Association. Why does corn need to be refined?

Along with cornsugar.com there's another site called sweetsurprise.com which also serves to "educate" us about high fructose corn syrup. That domain name is owned by DDB, an advertising agency with the highest revenue in the world. I'm sure they make for fine educators, too.

Why is all this important? Because corn is one of the most heavily subsidized foods in America. With billions of our tax dollars at stake and the health considerations being raised about high fructose corn syrup it's important for agribusiness to reframe high fructose corn syrup as corn sugar. With corn so heavily subsidized and tariffs applied to imported sugar, "corn sugar" sounds much more natural and remains much cheaper.

Other than the agribusiness welfare queens what bothers me about "corn sugar" is that it tastes like crap. Compare a Coke with a Jones Cola made with cane sugar. There's no comparison. Jones Cola tastes so much better. But it also costs so much more.

And we pay to have it that way.