Are you worried about high-fructose corn syrup in your diet?

If you answered yes, you’re not alone. Today, about 55 percent of Americans list the infamous corn sweetener among their food-safety worries, right behind mad cow disease and mercury in seafood, according to the consumer research firm NPD Group.

As a result, food makers are reworking decades-old recipes, eliminating the corn syrup used to sweeten foods like ketchup and crackers, and replacing it with beet or cane sugar. To counter the backlash, the Corn Refiners Association last week suggested changing the name of the ingredient to “corn sugar,” hoping a new moniker would help rebuild the product’s image.

But most nutrition scientists say that consumer anxiety about the sweetener is misdirected. Only about half of the added sugar in the American diet comes from corn sources. All added sugars, they say, including those from sugar cane and beets, are cause for concern. Today, sugar calories now account for 16 percent of the calories Americans consume, a 50 percent increase from the 1970s. High sugar consumption has been linked to obesity and other health concerns.

“I think consumers have been misled into thinking that high-fructose corn syrup is particularly harmful,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. “Chemically it’s essentially the same as sugar. The bottom line is we should be consuming a lot less of both sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.”

High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose, also known as table sugar, are made up of about the same amount of glucose and fructose. The American Dietetic Association says the two sweeteners are “nutritionally equivalent” and “indistinguishable” once absorbed in the bloodstream. The American Medical Association has said it’s “unlikely that HFCS contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose.”

But there are some differences. To make table sugar, the sugar from beets and cane essentially is squeezed out of the plants. Corn syrup, meanwhile, is heavily processed using enzymes to turn cornstarch into glucose and then fructose.

In high-fructose corn syrup, the glucose and fructose molecules are chemically separate. In table sugar, the molecules are chemically bonded, forming a disaccharide that is broken apart inside the body.

“We know from our measurements that after a few months, the high-fructose corn syrup drinkers weighed more,” said Bart Hoebel, a psychology professor and a senior author on the research. “That’s what makes this interesting and surprising.”

But critics of the Princeton study say the findings are inconsistent — some of the rat groups, after all, showed no differences in weight gain.

“It allowed us to see a rapid rise in its use and opened up the discussion about rising fructose intake,” Dr. Bray said. “Sugar is one of the commodities of which we’ve never had a surplus. We’ve always consumed all that’s ever been produced.”

Source: well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/in-worries-about-sweeteners-think-of-all-sugars/