The corn syrup In high fructose content (HFCS, for those who love the acronyms) is not there by chance, nor why someone woke up one morning thinking it was more “American”.
It is there because it works: it is cheap, sweet at the right point, stable and produced at home. It is the ideal ingredient for a drink that must always know the same as any latitude.
Starting from the 70s, when importing Zrod ucchero It has become expensive because of geopolitical duties and dynamics, in the United States it started looking at corn as an alternative.
Also because the corn was not lacking: cultivated in monstrous quantities thanks to state subsidies, it became the base to produce this sweetener which, although deriving from a cereal, ended up replacing a tropical sugar in hundreds of products.
The process behind the dessert
The corn syrup was born from the processing of corn starch, which is a complex carbohydrate. Through an enzymatic process, these long sugar chains break to obtain glucose and fructose in free form, that is, more “sweet”.
In the 1960s, the way to artificially increase the percentage of fructose, which has a higher sweetening power, was also found. And it is precisely here that the HFCS 55 enters the scene, the one used for drinks. The number, trivially, indicates the amount of fructose present: higher, sweeter. Sweeter, less need it. The less it takes, the more those who produce it and those who use it earns.
Why corn syrup?
For the food industry, the advantage is not only cheap. Corn syrup is technically comfortable: it is preserved well, does not crystallize, mixes easily with liquids and lengthens the life of the product. A can of Coca-Cola made with HFCS does not have the same taste as a made with sucrose, but the average user probably does not notice it. Indeed, according to several experts – including many food technologists – there is not even a perceptible difference on the palate, unless you have a direct comparison Mexican glass bottle.
But does it hurt? The truth without filters
The real question, the one that everyone is doing: does it hurt more than normal sugar? The short answer is no. On a molecular level, HFCS and sucrose end up providing the same type of sugar to the body: fructose and glucose. Change the shape, not the substance. What really hurts is excess. Too many simple sugars in the diet, regardless of the source, are connected to an increase in cases of obesity, type 2 diabetes and metabolic disorders.
A study published on Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism He showed that fructose in liquid form can have negative effects on the liver and insulin resistance if usually consumed in high doses. But the problem is not only the HFCS: it is how much total sugar throws itself down, and how often.
The hypocrisy of the Trump case
In all this, Donald Trump’s request is filed, who said he wanted to remove corn syrup from Coca-Cola. The paradox is all here: the corn syrup is American, it is a product of the US industrial culture, created precisely to replace imports considered “foreign”.
Asking to return to brown sugar, tropical and imported, it is like promoting Made in Italy by proposing to make Parmesan with Danish milk. In addition, the transition to sucrose would result in an increase in not indifferent production costs, which would inevitably reflect on the price. At that point the consumer would pay more for a product that, in fact, would not even know how to recognize blindly.
A mirror of our food system
The case of corn syrup in Coca-Cola is only a pitches of the puzzle. It is the symptom of an industry that has optimized everything: taste, yield, conservation and costs. It is not absolute evil, but not even a neutral choice. It is the result of a system that has put convenience in front of everything. The taste we know today, that of Coca-Cola in can is the product of these logic. And every sip confirms it, whether we like it or not.
