In the USA, the Corn Refiners Association has applied to the Food and Drug Administration to rename High Fructose Corn Syrup to "corn sugar" to "clear up consumer confusion about the product". As many have pointed out it's not consumer confusion which is the problem. And confusion is likely to increase as "corn sugar" is already used as a name for another corn-derived sweetener, D-Glucose also known as Dextrose; amongst other things it is used for brewing (to feed the yeast) and body building (to rapidly replenish energy).

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a corn-derived sweetener produced by taking corn syrup (which is 100% glucose), using an enzyme driven process to convert the glucose into fructose, and then blending more corn-derived glucose with the corn-derived-via-reaction fructose to get the desired mixture of glucose and fructose. HFCS 90 (90% fructose, 10% glucose) is the result of the enzyme reaction running to completion. HFCS 55 (55% fructose, 42% glucose) is a common blend, particularly used in drinks, considered approximately as sweet as table sugar (sucrose). HFCS 42 is the opposite mix (42% fructose, 53% glucose) more often used in baked goods. (Table sugar (sucrose) is a fusion of glucose and fructose in a 50/50 ratio.)

As "King Corn" and numerous online commentators point out one of the main reasons that HFCS is a popular sweetener in the USA is that it is very cheap there, and sucrose (table sugar) is relatively expensive. This appears to be a combination of extensive agricultural subsidies on corn growing in the USA, and tariffs on the import of sugar into the USA. So more corn gets grown in the USA than otherwise makes economic sense, and something has to be done with it. Using HFCS as a sweetner where sugar or some other sweetener would be used in other countries is one such thing; making ethanol from corn is another.

HFCS has been linked to various health issues, including obesity and diabetes. But it's not clear (at least to me) whether there is something different about HFCS which makes it worse than other sweeteners like sucrose, or merely a combination of cheaper price and higher consumption. One possibility is that the body could be confused by the unexpected ratio of fructose and glucose (apparently the body's system for regulating digestion is triggered only by glucose levels, but uses both glucose and fructose); another that the fact that the fructose and glucose are separate rather than fused may reduce the energy required to absorb it into the body. (It also appears some suffer from fructose malabsorbtion (on wikipedia), which could cause them to be adversely affected by additional, free, fructose -- dietary recommendations are to avoid foods with fructose in excess of glucose, including honey.)

Since I've long been a reader of food labels (due to food allergies) I kept an eye out for HFCS during my trip to the USA. It did indeed appear in a lot of things, from all the processed drinks through many manufactured foods and including popular brands of chocolate. Since I've mostly weaned myself off sweet foods over the past decade I especially avoided anything with HFCS, but also mostly avoided food with sugar or other sweeteners in it. Lots of foods that I used to seek out are now "too sweet" unless I make them myself and deliberately reduce the sweetener (and often even then). On previous trips to the USA I found that several foods made with HFCS in the USA tasted noticeably different (and almost sickly sweet) compared with the equivalent product (even with the same brand name) made outside the USA using sugar (sucrose) -- and that was before I really started reducing my sweetener intake.

On the "food in USA" topic, the other thing that I went out of my way to avoid was fried potato, particularly of the generic "fries with that" variety depicted in "Supersize Me". Since "fries" are a staple food in the USA, this did somewhat limit my food choices at times. But like travelling by public transport it was an interesting challenge, and led me to trying things that I'd not otherwise have tried, including tamals.

Avoiding fried potato, even in the USA, actually turned out to be less of a problem than I expected. Some "what do I eat at the airport" type issues, due to food allergies ruling out many other common "lunch" foods, turned -- after some investigation -- into discoveries of good salad bars at various airports (I wholeheartedly approve). A few "hungry now, too far from good places" turned into repetitive meals of things I could find that I was willing to eat. But, like public transport, it proved entirely possible to do given a bit of will to make it so, even with only a few days in any given city (and thus limited local knowledge). (IMHO the biggest key to sticking to one's food choices -- be they allergies or otherwise -- is avoiding the "hungry, must eat (anything) now" phase. Which means "eat before you are hungry".)

Even after returning from my trip I found that I didn't really miss fried potato, and have largely avoided it ever since. If I'm cooking myself I make things like baked potatoes. If I'm eating out, I choose restaurants where dishes don't get accessorised with random amounts of fried potato. (It helped that I'd already minimised the amount of friend potato in my diet prior to trying this experiment, so I was only going from "item in every few meals" to nothing, rather than eliminating a staple of every meal.)

Footnote:

Title explanation: Appending "as" to words or phrases is Kiwi Slang, used basically as an intensifier. Sweet As is also used as Kiwi slang meaning "excellent". Here I am unable to resist the pun, in a post about sweeteners.