Why We Should Celebrate the Corn Sugar Bloggers
The Corn Growers Association is in the midst of a major social media campaign targeted to mommy bloggers to address the concerns over high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). They reached out to bloggers at the Type A Mom Conference as a sponsor. They hired the social media consulting firm Mom Central to organize a mommy blogger brunch. And last week, the Iowa Corn Growers Association invited seven bloggers, including myself, to spend two days meeting with farmers and having various corn-themed experiences (driving in an ethanol-fueled race car and harvesting corn on a combine).
The campaign is tied to the proposal of renaming high fructose corn syrup as corn sugar. As soon as mom bloggers began posting that HFCS is the same as sugar, repeating some of the information released at the various events, the blogosphere erupted in protest with posts by Jessica Gottlieb, Liz at Mom 101, and PhD in Parenting to name a few. There were allegations of blogging without integrity and of a big lobbyist group taking advantage of mommy bloggers.
But is the Corn Grower's Association reach out to mom bloggers really such a great evil? I actually think that by pushing forward their own agenda, by bringing mom bloggers and their readers into the national nutrition debate, they're actually helping educate moms on nutrition. The problem with High Fructose Corn Syrup is not that it is worse for you than sugar, it's that it is in so many products. There are also issues regarding the relationship of HFCS and genetically modified corn as well as environmental concerns, but this is beyond the scope of the HFCS same as sugar debate. There was a recent article in the NY Times quoting well-respected scientists like Dr. Marion Nestle saying that there is no biochemical difference between corn syrup and sugar. If we continue to demonize HFCS, food companies are just going to replace it with cane sugar, like the new Hunt's ketchup mentioned in this Slash Food article.
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