The solution:

[www.dublindrpepper.com]

I've been avoiding HFCS for years. If I need a sweet drink, it's either Jones Soda or 100% fruit juice. If I'm sweetening a recipe I use Sugar in the Raw.

@mgy:
Beat me to it. Dublin Dr. Pepper is the drink of Kings. Second in the hierarchy is Mexican Coca Cola. Both are wonderfully delicious and infinitely superior to the HFCS versions.

Whole Foods has quite a large selection of non-HFCS products, if you're wondering.

I don't touch the stuff unless I can't avoid it (fast food sauces, for example - including the dressing you get for your salads!).

Agave nectar is the bomb!! It is comparatively low on the glycemic index and as sweet or sweeter than honey.

@Dobernala: You shop at Whole Foods? I hope you never try to run for president, because you are clearly elitist. (sarcasm)

@Frank_Trapasso: If I'm sweetening a recipe I use Sugar in the Raw

Raw sugar or turbinado sugar is natural sugar but it is still refined white sugar. It's just refined white sugar with a little of the molasses left on. It's not any healthier for you than white sugar but it is better for you than HFCS. Just wanted to point that out.

We eliminated HFCS at our house about a year ago and it's not as hard to do as people think but it does take a little work and it takes accepting the fact that there are foods you simply cannot eat anymore. Some staples of the processed kitchen do not have alternatives in nature.

We coupled getting rid of HFCS with reducing processed foods as much as possible, organic or not, and my kids struggled with the fact that toaster pastries were a thing of the past. They are better about it now and much more savvy about nutrition than when we started but it was a really hard sell.

@Cliff_Donner: Erythritol FTW. it's not quite as sweet as sugar, but the difference is really imperceptible in practice. Its glycemic index approaches zero, and it tastes naturally sweet. It's a natural product made by a sort of fermentation and has no harmful waste products in manufacturing. You can cook with it one-for-one in sugar recipes and you don't have to allow for wetness as you do with honey or agave or brown rice syrup. It does not degrade to toxicity when heated as does aspartame. It does not cause gastric upset like mannitol and sorbitol. Best of all, you can actually make hard candy with it... if I didn't use it as a sugar substitute, I would use it for the superior taste it gives my homemade peppermints.

Yes! I have a corn allergy and it really bothers me how HFCS is added to unnecessary products (baby carrots! did you know those were packed in corn-sweetened water? Why do vegetables need additives?) Anyway, I am welcoming the anti-corn-syrup backlash with open arms. It will make it so much easier for me to eat out! And I really think that all of these fake chemicals in modern life are contributing not just to obesity but to allergies. I never had food allergies as a child and developed them all in recent years.

Sure, I'm trying to eat local/organic/less-processed food, and that includes avoiding HFCS when possible, but not out of some fear that "chemicals are going to kill me". HFCS or cane sugar sweetened, soda is still junk food.

I think we'd be better off getting a 12 oz. drink instead of a 48 oz., rather than getting worked up over which sweetener is used. Moderation is more sensible than this series of "fat free!" --> "sugar free!" --> "no trans fat!" --> "no HFCS!" advertising declarations we've been subjected to for the past twenty years. We still, as a country, keep packing on the pounds....

Yes! But I one-up it and avoid carbonated beverages as well. Makes me a real fun date when I can only drink like one beer when going out.

I would imagine that Erythritol taste great in peppermints especially since it has a naturally cooling effect.

I'm not a lover of sweet things, drinks or otherwise so going HFCS-free wasn't too hard for me. However, one of the hardest things to find without HFCS is bread and bagels. I would love to see what Alton Brown has to say about the science of baking with HFCS. Ew.

Bread.

Yes bread. It took me ages to find bread without sugar being the main ingredient (or the second ingredient after flour) let alone HFCS. I dabbled briefly with baking my own but I usually just buy "Bread Alone" products now.

I am fortunate to live near enough to Mexico that if i want a REAL Coke, I can purchase a bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola--still made with real cane sugar. The taste difference is evident. The rest of the time, it's Diet Coke (otherwise I'd begin to look like a large pile of 2 liter bottles).

I try to cut down on HFCS. My only weakness is Ketchup :(

It's only anecdotal, but a friend of mine moved here from Europe and says she didn't change her diet at all, but since we put HFCS and preservatives in everything, she gained a lot of weight.

My parents are HFCS free because it causes my mom terrible headaches. They buy a lot of all-naturally sweetened, super-expensive, and often very strange looking healthfood sweets. I'm cheap, but I have to admit that a lot of them are worth $7 a packet. They are really good. Other sweeteners seem to bring a lot more flavor and complexity to foods.

Honey is pretty incredible stuff. My family has been baking a honey cookie recipe similar to the one below for almost 20 years. Sprinkling cinnamon sugar on top makes them even better.

[www.cooks.com]

One of the huge problems with HFCS is that it doesn't trigger your stomach to feel full. It lets you stay hungry - and then you eat even more. Evil, really.

From the Seattle Times

"Bray says the problem with HFCS is not only that it is sweeter than other forms of sugar, but also that it does not affect appetite. Fructose adds to overeating because it does not trigger chemical messengers that tell the brain the stomach is full and no longer hungry, like food and drinks that contain regular refined sugar do."

@Pylon83: soda is probably the only thing i end up consuming with corn syrup in it. it's actually really disappointing that they don't make stuff with real sugar because it tastes a lot better. there's a little mexican place around here where they sell coke with real sugar in it and to me it's sweeter and tastier. it's actually the only place i drink soda when going out, it's tea for me otherwise. and weirdly enough, in put that pink crap in iced tea because actual sugar doesn't desolve and splenda tastes funny.

kinda makes me wonder though if it had actual sugar in it if i'd drink it more often.

@VA_White:

....my kids struggled with the fact that toaster pastries were a thing of the past

Nature's Path Toaster Pastries. The are organic, whole grain, and use real sugar. Better flavors than the HFCS Kellogg's junk too. They have them at Amazon if you can't find them locally. I highly recommend trying Wildberry Açaí.

"HFCS is entirely natural. I live in a very rural part of Michigan and across from my house is a 200 acre plot of dent corn. This is the time of year when the farmers prepare to harvest HFCS. They take little plastic buckets and go out to the field and tap into the stalk, letting the very natural HFCS drip into the plastic buckets.

The buckets are emptied each morning and the highly sweet, pure and natural sweeter is carefully filtered and transported under precise 52.3 degree refrigeration where it's turned into the products you know and love."

I thought I'd help the Corn Refiner's association make their story a little more believable. I figure if they're going to BS their way through this, might as well go for the gold.

I really do live across from a 200 acre plot of dent corn. It fills me with joy to see corn futures going for $8 a bushel because it's going to drive the price of HFCS right to the point of cane sugar. The economic reality of HFCS versus sugar and consumer tastes will finally drive a nail into the coffin of this horribly engineered food substitute.

also has anyone mentioned stevia? i mean it's not as tasty as sugar but it's natural.

I started Weight Watchers a few years back and naively started buying their WW products.

Then I started looking at the ingredients in the WW products. High fructose corn syrup in most of the bakery products and nearly all of the products overall were extraordinarily high sodium. I mean, seriously.

I try to buy mostly ingredients instead of unprocessed food but it's not always easy. The HFCS really is in practically every boxed, bagged, or frozen thing you buy at the supermarket.

I think people are overreacting here. There really is no definative evidence if it is really harmful. If you try to show me studies on how it is so much worse, I'll show you equally credible ones that found no difference.

Hell, HFCS is comprised of the two monosaccarides of sucrose, only broken apart and in slightly (or sometimes not so) different ratios.

And those "healthier" varaities of sugar, (i.e. "Sugar in the Raw") aren't worth it. That cheap, plain-ole table sugar is at least 99.9% pure, the rest mostly being water.
The fact that it came from sugar cane or a sugar beet won't make a difference either, considering its so pure. It's the same thing with salt.

@therethinker: it does change the taste of things though.

Anyone else here old enough to remember doctors in ads for safe and healthy cigarettes? Not sure what reminded me of that now...

@therethinker: I avoid HFCS because avoiding it makes me think more about what I'm eating/drinking. I paint it as the root of all evil in my mind, so I always check labels for it. If the second ingredient is HFCS, I don't get it. If the second ingredient turns out to be old-fashioned sugar, I'll still think twice before getting (that's a lot of sugar).

What bugs me is that almost all beverages these days have HFCS as the second ingredient, not just sodas. I won't drink any of it, fruit juice is the one for me! Healthy, tastes good, and makes a great mixer. What more could you ask for?

I just do the bulk of my shopping at Trader Joe's; they make it easy to avoid HFCS.

I've tried Stevia and the other sugar substitutes, but I just don't like the taste. When cooking, I use plain ole white or brown sugar, but avoid eating sugar for the most part.

I stopped eating HFCS, and I lost 20 pounds in a few weeks. I don't know if there's a correlation or not, but I'm still going to avoid it as much as I can.

Yeah, I'll have to get on the anti-HFCS bandwagon, too, but then again I've been on it since 2003. HFCS is not equivalent to sugar and I've seen enough prima facie evidence that it's bad in households that eat a lot of it.

@EtoilePB: Wow, that's shameful about Weight Watchers putting that crap in their entrees. I have a lot of respect for how effective their diet solution is, but holy cow.

Being a Type I diabetic, I have also noticed the times when I do need something sweet, anything containing HFCS takes longer to react that natural sugar. I can only imagine because it is chemically made. I try to keep Dublin Dr Pepper on hand for those occassions, at least I can have a little of something I love and miss.

Haven't drank soft drinks in 20 years other than as a "treat" like ice cream. Those are empty calories that have to be accounted for. If you want to get sugar cane Coke, go the section of your grocery that has ethnic food. Normally they will carry the Mexican version of Coke in the Mexican/Latin food section. Also, if your store has separate Kosher section, they may have it there. Some day they will treat the people that make soft drinks the same way they treat cigarette makers. We have choice not to drink it, but they know how bad the stuff is for you and tell us to have a "Coke and a Smile" while our bodies fall apart.

Like drinking non-hormone infused milk, I look at HFCS as a check against practices I'd rather avoid. Odds are good if they don't use HFCS (hormones), there are a host of other things that they do that make for better food.

If the organic movement of the past several years has taught me anything, it is this:

Healthier foods are tastier foods.

Milk, eggs, bread, sweets, juice, fruit, veggies, meat... sometimes I wonder if the executives of food companies that first approved HFCS substitution in their products ever bothered to taste the difference for themselves. I feel that HFCS has a distinguishably bad aftertaste, but maybe this is just a manifestation my disdain for it.

I always hated soda and bake for myself and friends the occasional pan of brownies or cookies. I find that homemade is much better, and I control the ingredients, so the desserts come out rich enough that I will only eat them about twice a month. I haven't ever drunk more than ten sips of soda in my lifetime as I always hated the stuff. I don't eat a lot of bread either, and I have always avoided HFCS. I even convinced my mom recently. Dad is taking the path of most resistance, as usual, and he's diabetic.

@therethinker: My objection to it isn't so much that I think it's metabolically hugely different. My objection is that it has become a vehicle by which food manufacturers add unnecessary calories to almost everything. They're adding it to to things for reasons that have nothing to do with taste, like texture and shelf life. I have enough problems trying to not gain weight without having to contend with extra HFCS calories in everything.

The good thing about eliminating HFCS is that it means I eat a lot less processed food in general. Which is much better for me nutritionally.

I'm also one of those elitists who shop at Whole Foods, because Whole Foods bans products containing HFCS and a giant list of other food additives. It makes it much easier to find products that don't contain nasty stuff since the whole selection does not. And contrary to popular belief, Whole Foods is actually not more expensive than other higher-end grocery stores. It's usually comparable or cheaper for most products that are identical, although they also stock higher-end products that the other stores don't.

@Frank_Trapasso:

Amusingly I have a bottle of Jones old enough it was made with HFCS. They only did the sugar thing recently.

Oh yeah they also used to have an awesome energy drink named Whoop Ass, it was their only product that used to come in cans then. Good punnery...

Link to the Corn Refiners Association website, defending HFCS.

[www.sweetsurprise.com]

"The Corn Refiners Assn. contends that high fructose corn syrup is just as natural as table sugar and honey."

Hah. That reminds me of the 7-up campaign where they are advertising it as "natural," going as far as to have a woman pulling 7-up cans out of the ground like carrots. Even if it does fit some bizarre definition of "natural," I think carbonated, canned high fructose corn syrup is not what people have in mind when they describe something as being all-natural.

maybe if i could afford organic/natural products, i could avoid HFCS. everything cheap comes with it.

I dunno about HFCS, but if the natural sugar growers used that photo from the top of this post, I bet people would be demanding natural sugar in droves.

@PsychicPsycho3: It's true for me too. I haven't moved over to the US completely yet, but the times I've spent there I tried to eat as I would at home. I was staying at my boyfriend's house, so easy enough to cook and not eat out too much.

I gained about 6 pounds over a 2 month period. About a year ago I found out about HFCS and started paying attention to labels more on my visits. That stuff it in almost everything, it's crazy!

But with a little bit of extra trouble we manage to avoid most of the junk now. I just can't believe they put it in bread and stuff. Here in the Netherlands almost everything is sweetened with regular cane sugar.

I dunno. All this outcry against high fructose corn syrup seems kinda silly.

I mean, it's one thing if you're reducing your sugar intake.... that's healthy. But if you're just replacing HFCS w/ sucrose... that's not really helping anything.

Sugar is sugar. too much is bad, no matter how you look at it. And while HFCS is in fact more processed, it still uses sugars that are found naturally. So, fine, if you don't want to eat as much sugar, avoid HFCS. But don't replace your normal intake with regular sugar and then convince yourself and others that you're somehow healthier for it.

It is pretty much the first ingredient in anything liquid you get from the grocery store. Dressings, drink mixes sauces, etc.

Ill take my occasional true "CocaCola Classic" from Mexico. Although I am waiting for the HFCS lobby and bottlers to get a ban on importing the real deal.

@Carl3000: I was like wait the 7ups all natural!? I looked at a can the next time I was in the store and was disappointed. HFCS is not natural. If it can't occur in nature..how it is natural?

I avoid products with this stuff in it, but it really IS hard to do that on a low budget and not enough time to cook EVERYTHING from scratch.

I don't care about health reasons, I just prefer the taste of real Sugar sweetened products, or honey, or agave nectar and I like the taste of the raw sugar products. There is absolutely no situation I can imagine buying a bottle of corn syrup to sweeten my foods over any of the tastier sugar products so why would I want it in my other foods? That's all I care about, taste. A Coke or Dr. Pepper or any soda made with real sugar seems like more of a treat. The HFCS sodas taste "Blah" and don't feel like a treat to me. Yeah, they're sweet but, meh, i dunno feels like something's missing.

@Aristeia: But people aren't replacing it with normal sugar when they try to eliminate it. The whole point is that HFCS is used in all kinds of things that otherwise wouldn't have sugar at all.

@formatc: Organic toaster pastries are still a processed food. They still contain a small amount of allowable chemical additives to aid in preservation. Not as much as Pop-Tarts but enough for me to say no to when there are many more viable and healthier alternatives than a sweetened breakfast one slides from a box.