Saturday, June 2, 2012

What's in a name? FDA, on high fructose corn syrup, says lots

It appears high fructose corn syrup will still be called high fructose corn syrup.

On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration denied a petition by the Corn Refiners Assn. (filed in 2010) to allow “corn sugar” as an alternate name for HFCS.

The letter, sent to Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Assn., rejected the petition for a variety of reasons. Some seemed a little pedantic -- syrup, in the public’s mind, is liquid, whereas sugar is generally deemed solid and crystalline, the FDA said -- but others more significant.

For example, some people have fructose intolerance and they use dextrose as a sweetener, noted Michael M. Landa, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the FDA, in the letter. Guess what another name for dextrose is on food labels? Corn sugar. The Corn Refiners Assn. wanted that name prohibited for dextrose so that they could use it for HFCS instead.

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