Naming squabble continues over "corn sugar"

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I'm fresh out of a dark L.A. courtroom. Huge courtroom, murals of judges, reporters scratching notes.

On one side, the people suing -- a bunch of sugar companies like C and H -- you know, those the little pink sugar packets you see at Denny's.

The other side, the Corn Refiners Association, the CRA. You may know them by the bad press they've been getting about links between their High Fructose Corn Syrup and American obesity.
The CRA want a fresh start.

Forget "High-Fructose Corn Syrup."

"Corn Sugar" -- That's the name of choice, now.

You may have noticed the new ads.

[ad] ("If you're like me, you care about the food your family eats...Learn more at cornsugar.com")

Well, C and H thinks these ads are tricky -- that the CRA's essentially re-labeling damaged goods. So, they're calling the Corn Company out on it.

But the deeper questions with this whole thing are bigger than the courtroom debate today.
Does High Fructose Corn Syrup even deserve its soiled reputation?

The ad the CRA put out , surprisingly, clarifies the whole thing -- but not in a good way.

("I learned that whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar.")

Sugar is sugar. High Fructose Corn Syrup, the stuff in Coke and Poptarts, isn't any better than the C and H you dump in your coffee every morning.

It all comes down to how your body processes the sugar.

When you drink that daily Coke your body's hit hard via your overwhelmed liver.

And the same happens with table sugar, just in your muscles instead of your liver.

Sugar, is indeed sugar.

And this corporate courtroom debate, it's a testimony to how troubled the Cane sugar companies are by this fact.

What it boils down to is grouping. To the Sugar companies, corn is corn, cane is cane. And C and H, it doesn't want the public equating the two.

And with a product name like "Corn Sugar," it's a lot easier for the public to think "Yeah, it may be sugar, but at least it's not High Fructose Corn Syrup."

To test this, ask yourself, does having "Corn Sugar" at the top of the ingredients on the Coke bottle instead of "High Fructose Corn Syrup" make you any less thirsty for an icy, delicious Coke on a scorcher of a day?

Probably not. And for the rest of America, probably not, either.

http://www.corn.org/

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