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Does the Sugar Quota make you Fat?
I don't know whether High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) acts more like fat than does sugar (compare here and here) but it's worthwhile pointing out that HFCS is a child of the sugar quota. The import quotas raise the US price of sugar well above the world price (~24 cents per pound compared to ~9 cents per pound) and encourage consumption of HFCS. Reflecting this fact, the main defenders of the sugar quota are no longer Florida sugar growers but rather mid-West corn growers.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on August 8, 2006 at 07:05 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
ADM would be the poster boy for midwestern sugar quota lobbyists. If you're determined you can avoid most of the HFCS (just not drinking soda helps a lot), which I highly recommend.
Posted by: bbartlog at Aug 8, 2006 9:30:59 AM
The movement of chemicals across cell membranes changes when the isotopes of the substances changes. If you were to switch to heavy water, for example, instead of regular, light water, you'd die because the difference in the weights of the isotopes H-1 (regular hydrogen) and H-2 (deuterium) would screw up the rest of the enzymes and cellular reactions that you depend upon for life itself.
Corn, like sugar cane (but not sugar beet) use the C4 photosynthesis process. C3 photosynthesis plants (about 95% of all plants) have a strong preference for the isotope C-12, where C4 plants do not. Measuring the C-12/C-13 isotope ratios in food tells you how much of the food is based on corn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation
>"In order of diminishing corniness, this is how the laboratory measured our meal: soda (100% corn), milk shake (78% corn), salad dressing (65% corn), chicken nuggets (56% corn), cheeseburger (52% corn), french fries (23% corn). What in the eyes of an omnivore looks like a meal of impressive variety, when viewed through the eyes of the mass spectrometer, to be the meal of a far more specialized kind of eater. But then this is what the industrial eater has become: corn's koala."
page 117 of Omnivore's Dilemma
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594200823/
My hypothesis, which I'm not able to test, is that the rise in allergies, as well as the rise in obsity, are linked to the rise in corn in our modern, western diet.
On a side note, Pepsi used to advertise a "taste test challenge" some years ago, back when they still used sugar instead of HFCS to sweeten soda. Coke had already switched to HFCS by then. Most people can't conciously tell the difference between sugar-sweetened products and HFCS-sweetened products, yet the sugar-sweetened ones "taste better" which was the point of the advertising. Nowadays, about the only way to get sugar-sweetened Coke or Pepsi is to go shopping for kosher Pepsi and Coke around Passover, since it turns out that corn (and thus high fructose corn syrup) isn't kosher for Passover.
Posted by: Peter at Aug 8, 2006 9:35:31 AM
You can also buy a sugar-sweetened Coke or Pepsi if you buy it imported from Mexico.
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at Aug 8, 2006 10:35:34 AM
Actually, HFCS is now competitive with sugar, even on the world market.
Mexico had a trade dispute with the U.S. recently when it tried to ban HFCS imports to protect it's domestic soft drink industry. HFCS is conducive to longer shelf-life, and since manufacturing technology has improved, it would likely be the standard for packaged foods, even without the tarrifs.
Of couse this situation wouldn't have developed without years of protectionism, the the picture has changed.
Posted by: joe at Aug 8, 2006 11:00:26 AM
We'll it's also clear that corn subsidies are to blame as much or more than sugar quotas. The USDA publishes tables of spot sugar and HFCS prices. Despite the price support from the sugar quota, pound-for-pound, the price for corn syrup is below the world price of sugar. (Prices have increased recently: July World Raw sugar was $.1661/lb, US raw sugar was $.2244/lb, and HFCS was $.1620/lb.)
Ultimately, that's why HFCS makes people fat; it's really, really cheap and demand curves slope down...
http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/sugar/data.htm
Posted by: Adam at Aug 8, 2006 11:11:25 AM
I don't know about fat, it certainly makes me angry. As I post in blog comments whenever the opportunity arises, soda made with cane sugar is infinitely superior to soda made with corn syrup, yet this delicious commodity is denied to American consumers by our distorted sweetener market. Simply contemplating the flavor of a Coca-Cola bottled in South America or Europe, and the fact that I can't get it here due to the corn and sugar lobbies, pretty much makes my blood boil.
Posted by: Noah Yetter at Aug 8, 2006 11:14:00 AM
Joe writes: "Actually, HFCS is now competitive with sugar, even on the world market."
Do you mean HFCS is "competitive" in the sense that we can manufacture it with fewer resources, or in the sense that its price, after taking into account government subsidies and other bad things, is lower?
Posted by: Jeff Brown at Aug 8, 2006 12:02:03 PM
I just finished a sugar-sweetened bottle of Coca-Cola Classic, which is sold at the local corner store near my house thanks to a large Hispanic population in my neighborhood. In addition to conducting my own blind taste test, I've had many of my friends try the imported soda and the overwhelming consensus is that HFCS just doesn't cut it. "The Real Thing" in the US is really just a poor substitute.
Posted by: IanK at Aug 8, 2006 12:03:10 PM
Jeff:
I mean that taking into account the advantages over cane sugar in processed food storage, HFCS compares favorably to the price of sugar on the "world market." That's at the current price, which includes the effect of corn subsidies.
I've been told by folks in the food industry that even if the U.S. dropped all barriers to imported sugar, we probably wouldn't go back to using it in soda and snack foods. Whether that would be true in the case that corn subsidies ceased, I do not know.
Posted by: joe at Aug 8, 2006 12:11:45 PM
Did Coke really switch to HFCS before the pepsi challenge? I've heard that some bottlers had switched, but the switch wasn't universal until New Coke/Coke Classic.
A corn isotope test is cool, but, IMHO, if it can't distinguish between sugar cane and corn it won't help American consumers separate their sucrose from the HFCS. What I'd really like to know is how much of the chicken and beef is "1st-generation" corn eaten by the animal, and how much is from the reprocessed animal byproducts of other animals which actually got to eat the corn.
Posted by: DK at Aug 8, 2006 1:08:18 PM
Putting taste aside, HFCS *is* better for soda, since it is easier to mix and control, compared to sugar. Including subsidies in "competitiveness" is silly, however, since enough subsidy could make an SUV competitive in a yacht race.
Another irony of the Sugar protectionism is that corn is used to produce ethanol for fuel. In Brazil, where neither corn nor sugar are subsidized, sugar is used for ethanol. Sugar may have a comparative advantage there, but those subsidies ensure that corn does here.
See this image from the Economist (http://www.economist.com/images/20060715/CIN060.gif)
On the price competitiveness of HFCS vs. sugar, I am not sure if you can compare one to the other on weight. Since HFCS contains a lot of water, the price must be even cheaper than sugar to result in an equal amount of "sweetness". Check the USDA to be sure they are using dry-equivalents...
Posted by: David Zetland at Aug 8, 2006 2:53:27 PM
Soda recommendation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Cane_Cola
Posted by: Adam Vandenberg at Aug 8, 2006 3:40:38 PM
When I spent summers in Jordan with my grandparents I used to think the soda was much better than it was at home. At the time I assumed it was the glass bottles instead of aluminum cans, but I guess the real sugar makes a real difference.
Posted by: nelziq at Aug 8, 2006 3:46:10 PM
Since coke tastes better with real sugar and they use real sugar elsewhere in the world this would suggest that sugar really is cheaper in a free market (i.e. without the quota and the corn subidies.) On the other hand, sugar is subsidized elsewhere so we still don't know for sure!
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Aug 8, 2006 3:54:22 PM
Boylan isn't bad, but Red Rock and Whooppee are better, as far as indie cane-sugar colas go. Sadly, Whooppee seems completely unavailable at the moment and I've been waiting weeks to get a case of Red Rock from popsoda.com...
Posted by: Noah Yetter at Aug 8, 2006 6:45:06 PM
Adam notes that sugar prices have increased on the time-scale of months. This is because of Brazil using sugar in gasoline, right?
Posted by: Douglas Knight at Aug 8, 2006 9:17:13 PM
I have to agree with Peter's allergy hypothesis. I once suffered from brutal allergies all spring, all summer, and most of the fall. I became interested in "paleo" dieting through Atkins, Prof. DeVany, PaleoFood.com, and a few other sites. I switched to a low-carb diet in order to lose weight. What surprised me is that, after a few days, my allergies dried up and did not return. I can run an easy experiment on myself now: eat breakfast cereal in the morning and a sandwich for lunch, and my throat runs all afternoon. Eat eggs and fruit for breakfast and a salad with meat for lunch, and my nasal passages and throat remain clear.
I think it may be more than corn, though, because it can also happen with wheat and rice. I think that I, like the vast majority of humans, am actually allergic to the main source of dietary calories: grains.
And yes, I dropped the 15 pounds I didn't want.
- Josh
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Posted by: levan at Sep 12, 2006 3:16:59 AM
Its not just soda, its lots of things. Candy has HFCS. Heinz Ketchup has HFCS. Even some Campbells soups have HFCS.
Posted by: jonboy at Sep 23, 2006 7:32:36 AM
Corn prices have now DOUBLED and sugar prices are at multiyear lows due to
a glut in India. Are people switching back to sugar yet?
-Viraj Shah
Posted by: Viraj at Sep 13, 2007 1:18:39 PM
