What's in a name? A lot, if you've got an inconvenient one and you want to change it. Would John Denver ever have become beloved, or even reviled, as Henry John Deuschendorf?

Thus you can understand the disappointment of the makers of high-fructose corn syrup this week after the U.S. Food & Drug Administration rejected a request by the corn-refining giants to allow them to change the name of their product to "corn sugar."

The agency said that it defines sugar as a solid, dried and crystallized food — not a syrup. Plus there's already something that technically is a solid corn-based sweetener, dextrose. Thus, the corn refiners are stuck with the moniker — better known by the acronym HFCS — that might as well appear as a skull and crossbones on nutritional labels, the way many American mothers see it.Continue reading...

When the news came out of the state of California a year ago that the stuff that makes your cola beverage brown has been linked to cancer, there were a number of consumers that likely didn’t put their change into the vending machine that day.

The amount of that compound (4-methylimidazole, or 4-MEI) in soda would cause the state to need to put warning labels on all of its cans, NPR reports. This, in turn, led to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) to lobby the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “ban ammonia-sulfite caramel color,” according to NPR. Coke Clear, anyone?

While the cola companies and caramel manufacturers are obviously stating that there is no validity to these claims, the FDA is also chiming in that this could be much ado about not much. In any event, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which account for almost 90% of the U.S. soda market, have tweaked their formulas in compliance with the Californian law — averting the need to add a cancer warning label.Continue reading...

The Zagat review might read: With an alarming rise in “food integrity” from “profit-hungry corporations” targeting consumers with “deceptive packaging practices,” Citizens for Health, a consumer advocacy group, is "fighting back" online.

Unfortunately, there is no Zagat-style review of labels on food products on US shelves, only user reviews of the food found on menus in restaurants, so a new website — FoodIdentityTheft.com — is looking to alert consumers to potentially (or actual) mislabeling of food, and rally them to lobby the government to take action.

According to the press release issued by the site's owner, Citizens for Health, “Some food companies are trying to steal consumer’s rights to know what’s in the foods they eat. FoodIdentityTheft.com provides facts to consumers about food ingredients and package labels so they can make informed decisions about the food they purchase.” It's also a consumer advocacy site, urging visitors to take action on the issues it raises.Continue reading...

Boston isn't the only US city that's not sweet on sugar these days. In what seems to be a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, sugar producers are suing corn processors in Los Angeles for peddling unhealthy products.

C&H Sugar and other groups of sugar-cane and beet farmers sued in Los Angeles this week to block Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland and other members of the Corn Refiners Association who produce high-fructose corn syrup from rebranding their product as "corn sugar."

The court battle kicked off today, with sugar farmers claiming they want to save nutrition-minded Americans from the companies' false advertising and efforts to undermine good ol' American healthy eating. 

It's no surprise that even sugar producers would want to keep their distance from the HFCS Complex these days.Continue reading...