Touting Health, Soda Maker Substitutes HFCS with Sugar

[Guest guest]

All

I'm sure this is meant to be an expose on the ridiculous. How to make drinks

healthier? Take out the HFCS and use healthy, natural sugar instead.

Cheers

Arturo

A Soda Maker, Touting Health,Moves to Sugar

By BETSY MCKAY

Wall Street Journal

December 5, 2006; Page B1

In their quest to reach health-conscious consumers, some beverage companies are

turning to a surprising ingredient: sugar.

Soda Co., a Seattle maker of quirky soft drinks sold by Target Corp. and

other retailers throughout the U.S., plans to replace high-fructose corn syrup

-- a ubiquitous but demonized sweetener -- with cane sugar in its drinks,

starting in January. The move by , which churns out Blue Bubble Gum and

Twisted Lime sodas, along with an energy drink called WhoopAss, aims to

capitalize on the bad publicity surrounding high-fructose corn syrup, which some

scientists have linked to rising U.S. obesity rates.

Sweetening its sodas with cane sugar instead of HFCS " truly differentiates

and provides the consumer with a healthier alternative, " van Stolk, the

company's president and chief executive, said in announcing the switch. Unlike

HFCS, he said, cane sugar is a " natural ingredient " with a " positive perception

in the consumer's mind. "

HFCS sweetens Coca-Cola, Pepsi and many other drinks and foods. It has also

become a lightning rod in the search for causes for the sharp increase in U.S.

obesity rates. Some scientists have pointed out that its prevalence in the

American diet rose along with obesity over the past two decades.

But many of those critics have since backed off, acknowledging that the

sweetener isn't metabolized by the body any differently than table sugar -- and

that neither one is particularly healthy. The two sweeteners are similar in

their makeup: Despite its moniker, HFCS contains 55% fructose and 45% glucose

when used in soda, while regular table sugar, also known as sucrose, contains

50% fructose and 50% glucose. Switching to sugar from HFCS " is going to have at

best a trivial effect " on health, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at

the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health in Chapel Hill and an

author of a 2004 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that

proposed the link between obesity and HFCS