As the title says, why has (especially the United States) created an artificial sweetener that is worse for you than the naturally provided sweetener (sugar cane) that is quite abundant and also grows out of the ground? Almost every nation on the planet besides the US utilizes sugar cane in their food items and this gives them a distinct taste in comparison, why does corn syrup exist? Was it ever needed?
EDIT: I’m delighted to know that I’ve been going at this all wrong, and I’m happy to be educated more on the differences in sugars, the reasons as to why corn is utilized in the US, and general common sense that I didn’t pick up on, so thanks for that.
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Corn is deemed an essential food stock in the U.S., and its reliable production is viewed as a strategic necessity. Because of that, the U.S. government subsidizes domestic production in various ways, mainly through paying a portion of crop insurance (but also through things like buying strategic reserves, and in extreme cases, commodity price supports).
In the existence of this corn abundance, it’s only natural that the stakeholders (producers, processors, government, etc.). would figure out ways to monetize some of the surplus, and HFC is a result of that. *“Hey, we’ve got a million extra tons of corn, and we can concentrate its sugar and sell the syrup. It’s more viable to grow than sugarcane, and it’s cheaper than sugarbeets since we’ve already decided to subsidize corn.”* Over time, food processors recognized the ready availability and relative low cost of HFC as a sweetener ingredient, and replaced cane and beet ingredient sources with HFC.
So, HFC’s dominance in the U.S. is an unintended consequence of the government’s agricultural policy (while it’s not the *only* reason, it’s a significant contributing factor).
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