Corn Sugars 101: What You Might not Know about Corn Sweeteners

What do you do when you have a corn allergy and you want something sweet to eat? After keeping careful watch and reading labels for a year, I have come to the conclusion that our only best bet is to make our own ‘on the go’ snacks from scratch. And drinks? Just forget about them. As a matter of fact, I challenge anyone in America to read the ingredient listings on every snack product in their favorite vending machine. It would not surprise me if every item had some association with corn, however odd or far removed as it may seem. Heck, even the water bottles are more than likely made from a corn byproduct! I digress. I really want to focus my attention on America’s romance with sugar, corn sugar to be specific, its prevalence in our lives, and a little history about how we became so addicted to the sweet stuff that grows in abundance over our midlands, and now even clutters the landscape surrounding the rocky mountain region.

Initially I worried about corn sweeteners in processed products mainly to avoid an allergic reaction in my son, but after carefully researching these sweeteners, it became obvious to me that many are less than ideal for, well, pretty much everyone. Many argue that the obesity epidemic in America rose in conjunction with the increased consumption of corn sweeteners.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, America’s Sweet Tooth Increased 39% between 1950–59 and 2000 as the use of Corn Sweeteners, mainly High Fructose Corn Syrup, increased eightfold (Agriculture Fact Book 2001–2002, Chapter 2).

When I took a look at the long list of sweeteners that contain corn derivatives, I found fifteen. This makes finding appropriate ‘convenience’ foods a pretty futile task. They are hidden in nearly all processed foods, and in products you would never think to be sweetened. When we first changed the diet we had a lot of trouble navigating the labels. Thanks to a few good websites like Jenny Connors’ Corn Allergens, we were able to get a good grasp on what we need to avoid, and these days that list is growing ever longer as more GMO corn gets planted across America and continues to monopolize the sweetener industry.

I want to start with the ‘dex’ sugars, that is, any sugar with the syllable ‘dex’ in it. These sugars are made from modified corn starch, so ultimately they are a twice processed end product. Refiners process cornstarch to produce what is referred to as ‘modified cornstarch’. Some of the chemicals we would otherwise consider harmful to ingest are utilized to create it: hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrogen peroxide, and sodium chloride. The Corn Refiner’s Association has documents listing the typical levels of chemical residues in their products and claim that the levels are within ’safe’ amounts for consumers. But it begs the question, at what point does our consumption put us past the level of ’safety’, especially if we are consuming 39% more of the stuff than we did fifty years ago? Arsenic and lead are even listed as residue ingredients often found. Basically this is the base product for which the ‘dextrin’ sugars are further processed before they are added to our medicine and our food. Article continues on next page…

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The editor of Healthy-family.org has a master's degree in English from Northern Illinois University and a bachelor of science degree in special education. She has taught students from early elementary school through college freshman level. Today she enjoys reading and writing about both hot topics and those not so commonly discussed on other websites. Most of her days are spent playing all kinds of make-believe with her three very young and active sons. | All articles by Caryn Talty.