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Just Say NO to No HFCS

Cindy Zimmerman

The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is urging the food industry to stop the anti-high fructose corn syrup marketing “scam.”

In recent letters to food marketers, NCGA called on them to stop marketing products as not containing high fructose corn syrup, implying there is something especially unhealthy or unnatural about corn sugar.

“Such innuendos are not scientifically supportable and they are offensive to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. consumers that grow corn as well as the many others in rural communities,” NCGA CEO Rick Tolman wrote in letters to the chief marketing officers at Welch Foods and Dean Foods, producers respectively of Welch’s Natural Spreads and TruMoo Chocolate Milk, just two examples of anti-HFCS marketing. “Your focus on health and nutrition are commendable and supportable. Those points can all be well made without the reference to HFCS.”

While the March 21 letters did lead to a dialog with Dean Foods, their response to-date has been unsatisfactory, Tolman noted in a follow-up letter.

“As you pointed out, you are a significant user of HFCS in other products and are familiar with the science supporting the manufacturing, safety, and functional properties of HFCS. Therefore, you know there is no scientific basis for the preference you see from consumers. It is a misperception. A big part of that problem is that the type of advertising you are doing with respect to HFCS perpetuates this misperception. That is our concern. You are using a misperception to differentiate your product and therefore helping to perpetuate that misperception.”

Read the letters here.

Corn, Food, NCGA