High Fructose Corn Syrup

When I, Megan A. Sherlock, passionate care-er about all things, learned about high fructose corn syrup in middle school I was furious. The American Industrial Agriculture beast relies on food science to make foods addictive and in this battle the best kind of warfare is to avoid ingesting it. To be fair to my childhood self or my innate libra tendencies towards justice I had lots of BEEF(pun intended) with the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, how could anyone literate allow what is happening in food. Now we also have a literacy crisis in addition to an obesity epidemic.

One battle at a time and as all my grandparents have told me; “you can’t fight everyone” to them I say; “Let me try!”. In truth they were all on my side in this battle and I am so blessed to be loved by people who share my vision and take action in the direction of a better future. Before we get into the thick corn-syrupy evil I want to remind you my beautiful, powerful, reader who is a manifestation of generations falling in love and capable of manifesting a better reality that you have the power to change this. The best moves we have as a public is to change how we eat and become knowledgable about nutrition. This is a one bite at a time, one meal at a time, do the best you can fight for our lives. We can live better by doing our best. Focused energy of a collective creates change and there will always be hope.

Beyond our personal plates we also need to change the systems that have created the problem. There really is something about a name because what an amusing blessing it is to have Sherlock as a last name and have a loathing for bad government, laziness, and adoring data. Let’s begin:

“Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.”

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I want to go in depth into why we use so much high fructose corn syrup and with the short answer being it is super cheap corporations love being cheap. There's a good chance that right now, somewhere in your kitchen, you have a bottle, can, or package with high fructose corn syrup listed somewhere in the fine print. It might be the ketchup. Probably the soda.(PLEASE stop drinking that) Could be the bread, yes, the bread. This stuff is everywhere, and most Americans have no idea how it got there or what it's quietly doing to their bodies and it isn’t even their fault, it’s the duplicitous companies obsessed with money. Let's back up and figure out how a corn derivative became the backbone of the American food supply.

It Started With Too Much Corn

The story of high fructose corn syrup, HFCS for short, doesn't begin in a food lab. It begins on the American plains, with decades of agricultural policy that created a corn surplus nobody quite knew what to do with. If the grocery store was a yard sale high fructose corn syrup would be the day old baked goods on discount they’re practically begging you to take off their hands. It isn’t inedible but it isn’t ideal and no one would be delusional enough to believe it’s healthy.

After World War II, the U.S. government heavily subsidized commodity crops, corn chief among them. The idea was food security: produce more, keep prices stable, feed the nation. It worked. Maybe too well. By the 1970s, American farmers were generating staggering amounts of corn, far beyond what could be consumed as food. The government paid farmers to keep growing it. Corn prices dropped. The question became: what on earth do you do with all this cheap corn?

Enter Dr. Yoshiyuki Takasaki, a Japanese scientist who in the 1960s and early 1970s helped develop the enzymatic process that could convert corn starch into a sweet syrup, one that rivaled sugar in sweetness but cost significantly less to produce. American food manufacturers were paying close attention. With sugar prices spiking in the mid-1970s (partly due to trade policy and a sugar shortage), HFCS became the obvious, cheaper alternative (Pollan 86).

The FDA gave it the green light for general use. The food industry didn't need much convincing after that, it never takes much to convince the FDA because they are underfunded to keep them powerless. A lot of organizations experience being thwarted by companies willing to spend so laws don’t apply to them and my favorite anecdote about this is that the car manufacturers lobbied against making seatbelts mandatory due to cost. We are never truly powerless, we’re not foie gras ducks with this corn(this is a great joke because foie gras ducks are fed corn and in some more cruel farms force fed corn.) we have choice when it comes to what we put in our mouths and knowledge here is always power. I know that it’s daunting when systems feel against you but that’s by design. You are in reality very powerful and billions are spent in propaganda to convince you otherwise

The Food Industry Saw a Golden Opportunity

Here's the thing about cheap ingredients: food companies love them. When Coca-Cola switched from cane sugar to HFCS in 1984, it wasn't making a nutritional decision. It was making a financial one. The cost savings were substantial enough to improve margins without raising prices. Other beverage companies followed almost immediately. Then came the processed food manufacturers.

By the mid-1980s, HFCS had infiltrated the food supply at a pace that now seems almost hard to believe. Bread, crackers, yogurt, salad dressings, soups, breakfast cereals, energy bars, condiments; the list just kept growing. Food scientists found that HFCS did more than sweeten. It extended shelf life, improved texture, prevented freezer burn, and gave baked goods that appealing golden-brown color. From a purely functional standpoint, it was kind of a miracle ingredient.

And consumers? Most had no idea any of this was happening. Ingredient labels existed, sure, but nutrition literacy was nowhere near where it is today. People trusted that food companies were, broadly speaking, acting in their best interest. It was a different era.

The Numbers Tell a Startling Story

U.S. consumption of HFCS went from virtually zero in 1970 to about 62.6 pounds per person per year by 1999 (Bray, Nielsen, and Popkin 537). Let that sink in for a second, because that's a per capita figure, which means it accounts for everyone: infants, the elderly, people who never touch soda. For actual soda drinkers and processed food enthusiasts, the numbers were even higher.

This coincided almost perfectly with the beginning of America's obesity epidemic. In 1970, roughly 15% of American adults were classified as obese. By 2000, that number had climbed to over 30%, and it has continued rising since (Flegal et al. 1723). Now, correlation doesn't equal causation, and that point will come up again, but the timing is hard to ignore.

What Actually Makes HFCS Different From Regular Sugar?

This is where it gets biochemically interesting. HFCS is made by converting some of the glucose in corn syrup into fructose, resulting in a mixture that's typically either 55% fructose and 45% glucose (the kind used in sodas) or 42% fructose (used in many processed foods). Table sugar, sucrose, is a 50/50 glucose-fructose molecule that has to be broken apart during digestion before the body can use it.

The fructose content matters enormously. Unlike glucose, which can be metabolized by virtually every cell in the body, fructose is processed almost exclusively by the liver. When fructose floods the liver in the quantities that come from drinking multiple sodas a day, the liver starts doing something problematic: it converts the excess fructose into fat.

Specifically, fructose metabolism bypasses several key regulatory steps that normally tell your body to slow down and feel full. Glucose triggers insulin release, which triggers leptin (the satiety hormone), which tells your brain you've had enough. Fructose doesn't trigger this cascade the same way. You can drink 300 calories of soda and still feel hungry twenty minutes later. That's not a willpower failure. It's basic biochemistry (Lustig 1034).

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco, became one of the most prominent voices making this case. His 2009 lecture "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" went viral before "going viral" was really a phrase people used. His argument, that fructose is metabolically toxic in the doses modern Americans consume, was controversial then and remains debated now. But the underlying metabolic mechanisms he described have substantial research backing.

The Health Consequences Are Stacking Up

Let's walk through what the science says, not alarmism, just evidence.

Obesity and metabolic syndrome. A 2004 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Bray, Nielsen, and Popkin drew one of the first direct connections between rising HFCS consumption and obesity rates. They argued that the unique metabolic pathway of fructose contributed to increased fat storage, higher triglyceride levels, and resistance to insulin, a cluster of conditions now called metabolic syndrome (Bray, Nielsen, and Popkin 537–38).

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This one doesn't get enough attention. The same fructose-to-fat conversion in the liver that contributes to weight gain can, over time, cause fat to accumulate in the liver itself, even in people who don't drink alcohol. NAFLD has become the most common liver condition in the United States, affecting an estimated 80 to 100 million Americans. Research has consistently linked high fructose intake to its development and progression (Ouyang et al. 711).

Type 2 diabetes. The connection here is partly direct, through the insulin resistance that fructose consumption promotes, and partly indirect, through the weight gain and metabolic dysfunction that often precede a diabetes diagnosis. The U.S. diabetes rate has roughly tripled since the 1980s, tracking uncomfortably closely with the rise of HFCS (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Cardiovascular disease. Elevated triglycerides (a direct result of heavy fructose metabolism), higher LDL cholesterol, and increased uric acid levels all raise cardiovascular risk. Studies have found that diets high in added fructose are associated with elevated blood pressure and increased risk of heart disease (Johnson et al. 1838).

Gut health disruption. More recent research has started examining how HFCS affects the gut microbiome, and the picture isn't pretty. High fructose diets appear to disrupt the intestinal barrier, potentially increasing gut permeability and contributing to systemic inflammation (Jang et al. 217). It's still an emerging field, but the early signals are concerning.

Wait, Isn't Sugar Just as Bad?

This is a fair question, and the honest answer is: kind of, yes. The sugar industry has spent considerable money and lobbying power arguing that HFCS and cane sugar are metabolically identical, and in some narrow technical sense, they have a point. Both contain fructose and glucose in similar ratios. A 2012 review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that in controlled studies matching caloric intake, HFCS and sucrose produced similar metabolic outcomes (White 1716).

But here's where that argument gets slippery: it ignores the dose. HFCS, precisely because it was cheap and functionally versatile, enabled food manufacturers to put sweetener in places they never would have used expensive cane sugar. It wasn't just that people were swapping one sweetener for another. They were consuming far more total sweetener than before. The sheer volume of HFCS in the food supply increased Americans' total fructose load dramatically. So even if the two sweeteners are equivalent calorie for calorie, the systemic effect of flooding the food supply with a cheap version of one of them is anything but equivalent.

The Marketing Didn't Help

For years, the Corn Refiners Association ran a campaign arguing that HFCS was "natural" (it comes from corn, after all) and "fine in moderation." They even petitioned the FDA in 2010 to allow HFCS to be relabeled as "corn sugar" on ingredient lists, a request that was denied in 2012. The FDA's reasoning was essentially that "sugar" refers to a solid product, not a syrup (U.S. Food and Drug Administration).

The campaign was slick. It aired television commercials showing concerned parents being reassured by other, apparently more informed parents that HFCS was no different from regular sugar. The subtext was clear: you're being irrational. This is fine. Stop worrying.

That kind of messaging, backed by industry money, delayed meaningful public awareness by years. It's the same playbook the tobacco industry used decades earlier: sow doubt, reframe the question, buy time.

So What's Actually Changed?

Consumer pressure has done some work here. In the late 2000s and through the 2010s, as awareness grew, many food companies started reformulating products to remove HFCS. Hunt's ketchup switched back to sugar. Gatorade removed it. Some Pepsi products brought back cane sugar as a selling point. High-end food brands made "no HFCS" a marketing badge of honor.

HFCS remains pervasive, especially in lower-cost food products. And this raises a genuinely uncomfortable point: the people most exposed to HFCS are often those with the least access to fresh, whole foods. Food deserts, tight grocery budgets, and the sheer convenience of cheap processed food mean that low-income communities bear a disproportionate share of HFCS consumption and, consequently, the health burdens that come with it. This isn't just a nutrition issue. It's a public health equity issue.

The Bigger Picture

Stepping back, the HFCS story is really a story about what happens when agricultural policy, corporate incentives, regulatory gaps, and consumer unawareness all converge. No single actor is entirely responsible. The government subsidized the corn. Industry found a use for it. Regulators approved it without long-term health data. Consumers ate it without knowing. Now, fifty years later, those who were trusting enough not to read labels are living with the metabolic consequences.

The good news, if there is any, is that the body is resilient. Reducing added sugar and HFCS intake, even without dramatic dietary overhauls, produces measurable improvements in triglycerides, liver health, and insulin sensitivity within weeks (Stanhope et al. 2425). It doesn't require a perfect diet. Just a more informed one.

Reading labels is a start. Cooking more food from scratch, even occasionally, helps. And pushing for stronger food policy, transparent labeling, and reduced agricultural subsidies for commodity crops is the kind of structural change that might actually move the needle at scale.

HFCS didn't take over the American diet overnight, and it won't leave overnight either. Understanding how it got here is the first step toward making better choices, for yourself and, honestly, for the food system as a whole.

Works Cited

Bray, George A., Samara Joy Nielsen, and Barry M. Popkin. "Consumption of High-Fructose Corn Syrup in Beverages May Play a Role in the Epidemic of Obesity." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 79, no. 4, 2004, pp. 537–543.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "National Diabetes Statistics Report." CDC.gov, 2022, www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html.

Flegal, Katherine M., et al. "Prevalence and Trends in Obesity Among US Adults, 1999–2000." JAMA, vol. 288, no. 14, 2002, pp. 1723–1727.

Jang, Cholsoon, et al. "The Small Intestine Converts Dietary Fructose into Glucose and Organic Acids." Cell Metabolism, vol. 27, no. 2, 2018, pp. 351–361.

Johnson, Richard J., et al. "Potential Role of Sugar (Fructose) in the Epidemic of Hypertension, Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome, Diabetes, Kidney Disease, and Cardiovascular Disease." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 86, no. 4, 2007, pp. 1838–1849.

Lustig, Robert H. "Fructose: Metabolic, Hedonic, and Societal Parallels with Ethanol." Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 110, no. 9, 2010, pp. 1307–1321.

Ouyang, Xiaosen, et al. "Fructose Consumption as a Risk Factor for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease." Journal of Hepatology, vol. 48, no. 6, 2008, pp. 993–999.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Press, 2006.

Stanhope, Kimber L., et al. "Consuming Fructose-Sweetened, Not Glucose-Sweetened, Beverages Increases Visceral Adiposity and Lipids." Journal of Clinical Investigation, vol. 119, no. 5, 2009, pp. 1322–1334.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "FDA Response to Corn Refiners Association Petition to Rename High Fructose Corn Syrup." FDA.gov, 2012, www.fda.gov.

White, John S. "Straight Talk About High-Fructose Corn Syrup: What It Is and What It Ain't." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 88, no. 6, 2008, pp. 1716–1721.

Megan Sherlock is a wellness professional passionate about somatic movement and holistic healing. She combines her expertise in fitness, yoga, and nutrition with the transformative power of energy work to help clients reconnect with their bodies and emotions. Megan holds certifications in NASM CPT, RYT 200, CGFI, CNC, BCS, CF1, ViPR, TriggerPoint SMR, Usui Reiki Master, and PN1.