Sugar Kombat: Sugar Industry Files Suit against Corn Industry
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
Who likes semantics? Everyone likes semantics. Semantics matter. That’s why two major sugar producers, Michigan Sugar Company and C&H Sugar Company, filed suit last week against six corn processors and the corn lobbying firm The Corn Refiners Association for false advertising, thanks to the corn industry’s attempts at re-branding the increasingly maligned sweetener high fructose corn syrup under the more sunshine and picnics name “corn sugar.”
The President and CEO of Western Sugar Cooperative, Inder Mathur accused the corn industry of smoke and mirror tactics as they try to run away from their tarnished image, telling PR Newswire “If consumers are concerned about your product, then you should improve it or explain its benefits, not try to deceive people about its name or distort scientific facts.”
No doubt you’ve seen the controversial “corn sugar” ads by now, which hit the air before getting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval–approval that’s still pending today. The ads feature good looking people walking through crop circles shaped like a question mark or a maze (see what they did there?) in the middle of an eerily large corn field, and spouting on about “doctors” and “research” without citing any actual doctors or research—they’re uncannily like outtakes from a dystopian sci-fi movie.
Of course, all of this fuss stems from a popular movement rejecting high fructose corn syrup in the face of some heavily publicized, damning studies, which suggest that high fructose corn syrup contributes to obesity. As a consequence, we’re starting to see things like “Throwback Pepsi” which uses cane sugar instead of corn syrup, and a general suspicion of the corn industry as a whole—what with its billions in government subsidies and it being in pretty much everything.
Still, the trial should be interesting, and hopefully it will shed some more light on the battle between things that are bad for you.
Now if only the sugar industry can just get the New York Times to stop saying that eating sugar gives you cancer.
There’s just no winning in this world.
Kris King
Tags: corn, health, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, Sugar