Sugar farmers sue over 'corn sugar' campaign

[OhioChick]

Thursday, April 28, 2011, 5:27 PM

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The sugar industry is seeking some sweet revenge. A group of sugar farmers and refiners have filed a lawsuit against several corn processors and their lobbying group for their effort to rebrand high-fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar".

The Western Sugar Cooperative, Michigan Sugar Co. and C&H Sugar Company Inc. are asking the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to end the corn industry campaign that markets high-fructose corn syrup as a natural product that is equivalent to sugar.

They say the campaign constitutes false advertising and are seeking compensation for lost profits and corrective advertising. The corn industry say the case has no merit.

The lawsuit is part of larger debate surrounding the sweetener among consumers, regulators and the food industry.

More: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/04/sugar_farmers_sue_over_corn_su.html

[robinlynne]

1. GOOD. I hate those ads.

[TK421]

6. They really DO take us all for a bunch of fucking fools, don't they?

[robinlynne]

8. well....................(look at our country...)

[KittyWampus]

2. This is really pretty darned interesting. Did anyone post the NYTimes article about Toxic Sugar?

[ohbill]

10. Sugar is sugar.

I read that.

Is Sugar Toxic? - NYTimes.com

As far as the corn industry says, sugar is sugar, no matter the form — and no matter the form, too much is deadly.

[cui bono]

15. No, it's not.

HFCS has to be processed by your liver where as real sugar can be processed by any cell in your body. Sorry I don't have the links handy but I posted about this in another thread a week or two ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=890637&mesg_id=905554

In the current study, Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D., conducted chemical tests among 11 different carbonated soft drinks containing HFCS. He found “astonishingly high” levels of reactive carbonyls in those beverages. These undesirable and highly-reactive compounds associated with “unbound” fructose and glucose molecules are believed to cause tissue damage, says Ho, a professor of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. By contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar, whose fructose and glucose components are “bound” and chemically stable, the researcher notes.

<snip>

The processing industry argues that fructose is just another form of sugar and does no more damage than sugar. However, High Fructose Corn Syrup is an extremely refined version of the fructose naturally occurring in nature. High-fructose corn syrup is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a high percentage of fructose. Three different enzymes, two of which have been genetically modified, are needed to break down cornstarch, which is composed of chains of glucose molecules of almost infinite length, into the simple sugars glucose and fructose.

<snip>

The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy--that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young.

“The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar,” says Dr. Field, “but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic.”

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3934.shtml

[Odin2005]

3. They refered to it as "liquid sugar" on the Food Network show "Unwrapped".

[KittyWampus]

4. maybe we can tag this a real "Food Fight"?

[PVnRT]

14. Ummm....wouldn't that be called "caramel"?

[enki23]

5. they aren't allowed to call it what it actually is?

yay. go cane/beet industry. kick the crap out of the corn industry. rah. rah. rah.

[alittlelark]

7. Are you serious?

:eyes:

[enki23]

18. yes. and i'm not stupid.

.

[alittlelark]

21. Wow! I'm glad you informed me you are not stupid.

Your capitalization skills were confusing me.

[enki23]

23. the emphasis was on the the first part of the sentence.

.

[cui bono]

16. They aren't doing that. It's not the same as sugar.

Why do you think they're going crazy with their ad campaign?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=982397&mesg_id=988331

[eShirl]

9. sorry, the name "corn sugar" is already taken

http://www.breworganic.com/organiccornsugardextrose1lb.aspx
http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/priming-sugar.html

[MrScorpio]

11. Go Cane sugar!

Get those evil, lying"corn sugar" sons of bitches

[tomm2thumbs]

12. Refiner's Assoc vids getting swamped with neg's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyj2N-AspqU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5TkstcgLYQ

comments are also correcting them - sounds like their campaign is only making them look worse

[Spinny Liberal]

13. Good for them!

HFCS is some serious crap. Don't they get that having an ad pushing the crap makes people question it even more? It's already been shown that the stuff doesn't alert your body that it's full. Which makes you consume more product. Yuck! That stuff should be gone.

[progressoid]

17. Like the dairy industry wanting to change the name of soy milk.

[GKirk]

19. Except the fact that the dairy

industry waited too long to complain about soy milk I would say they are right.

"Milk comes out of a teat not a bean."

Maybe they might want to use that for an ad campaign. :)

[Bluenorthwest]

20. HFCS is garbage food

I side with sugar.

[blogslut]

22. I bought a cone of piloncillo today

I'm going to try to use it in place of sugar, of which I consume very little.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panela