Focusing on corn syrup suggests that you think we'd be in any different of a situation if junk food were made with cane sugar which is just as palatable as any other sweetener.

Corn vs sugar is not the problem.

Anti seed oil memers make the exact same mistake. Since we use seed oils in junk food, it must be the seed oils making us fat instead of how we guzzle down junk food. Therefore replacing canola with butter in junk food would somehow make junk food less appetizing or something?

It makes no sense.

I believe for seed oil (a controversy about I know right about nothing) that the idea is that if it were replaced with butter that would cause the end product to be less harmful, thus reducing the overall health impact of eating a lot of it.

I didn't mean to start an overly hashed discussion, but butter is high in saturated fat. So we would expect junk food consumption to stay the same but now also have a larger atherogenic effect.

For the sake of argument though, let's just say they are noninferior to each other. The point is that it's a red herring compared to our junk food culture and the ubiquity of junk food.

> butter is high in saturated fat. So we would expect junk food consumption to stay the same but now also have a larger atherogenic effect.

Isn't the danger of saturated fat a longrunning myth, given the "France paradox" and the fact that high consumption of coconut oil (even higher in saturated fat) in places like Fiji doesn't have the negative effects that would be predicted if it were real?

I see I was down-voted, I was not trying to argue anything about the relative merits of different kinds of fats in food.

I was just trying to explain how I interpreted the people who did argue that replacing seed oil with butter would be good. I don't know what they base that opinion on, since (again) I'm not read up or engaged in the matter. It could be that butter is felt to be "more natural" than seed oil, and thus "healthier".

Again, I'm not arguing that standpoint, I'm just trying to explain (for some reason), hence the quotes. Oh well.

What does corn syrup cost vs real sugar cost? Does that change the equation?

Does it matter when sugar is already dirt cheap? In bulk it costs 18 cents per pound. Given that a person is unlikely to eat even half a pound of sugar per day, the price is unlikely to be a factor. Even if for some reason corn syrup is free, the budgetary hit is less than a dime per day. I doubt that's going to change anyone's eating habits.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/sugar

Look it up. They are both dirt cheap. We just happen to subsidize one and artificially raise the price of the other.

Now, maybe caloric sweeteners should be much more expensive and maybe that will have a positive impact on society (like incentivize zero-cal sweeteners). But if that's what you're getting at, you shouldn't be arguing for that through a proxy argument about corn vs cane sugar.

> Since we use seed oils in junk food, it must be the seed oils making us fat instead of how we guzzle down junk food.

My low effort recollection is that seed oil memers go on about how consuming a lot of seed oil leads to inflammation, and inflammation is bad.

Indeed, it looks like they are right on that particular datum:

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/seed-oils-are-they-actual...

Now, their low cost makes them associated with ultra-processed foods, and overconsumption of those foods is what generates the significant digits of inflammation/health risk (as it appears you are pointing out above).

As the article points out, another problem with seed oils is that they themselves are also highly processed. So "seed oils bad" isn't orthogonal to avoiding highly processed food-- it's just a limited and error-prone approach subject to occasional exploit (e.g., some "healthy" alternative to cheezits that uses olive oil instead of seed oil).

Still, a memer's dogma to avoid seed oil probably cuts out a supermajority of the junk food found at the average supermarket. There's a good chance a memer gets bored and leaves before they even find the "healthy" cheezits! (Or, more likely these days, they scoff at the price.)

Edit: clarifications

Edit 2: I guess to be realistic, seed oil memers probably meme about any amount of seed oil leading to inflammation. Even so, seed oil saturates so much fast food (heh) that the memer dogma almost certainly would have a positive effect on overall health.

> you think we'd be in any different of a situation if junk food were made with cane sugar

That's pretty much the main difference between soft drinks inside the US and outside the US. Soft drinks are a big part of the problem. You see lots of people getting addicted to the sugar rush and drinking that stuff by the bucket load (conveniently supplied in huge containers at your favorite fast food place).

Obesity is a growing problem in many places; but the US is where it all started and where the problem is the largest. The correlation between excessive corn syrup consumption and obesity is not something that needs a lot of arguing.

Correlation is not the same thing as causation of course. But still, if you want to run an experiment where all the corn syrup gets replaced by regular sugar, leave the US and observe people around you. Most things are the same. But you'll have hard time finding anything that contains corn syrup. It's just not a common ingredient anywhere outside the US. There are other differences. But that would be the big elephant in the room.

Sorry about the bad puns here.

I don't disagree with your conclusion; I am only disagreeing with the premise that high fructose corn syrup is biologically or chemically dangerous or can otherwise be differentiated from cane sugar wrt how it tastes or how it behaves when used in food. Personally, I think dwelling on these kinds of things distracts and weakens the discussion, just as it seems to be doing here.

As an Iowa kid at the State Fair in the very early 80s, I remember the fructose table in the Horticulture building (since renamed because nobody knows what "horticulture" is anymore) - it was kitty-corner across from the butter sculptures on the floor below. It was near the honey producers. They both gave out samples. I remember which table the children swarmed around (and it wasn't honey!).

High fructose corn syrup (in a fishing bobber/key chain) was very concentrated sugar. Anyone who's ever made simple syrup knows that can happen with other sugars, too. The source of the sugar might be a useful MacGuffin at best.

In hindsight I should have said that HFCS produced with a fructose:glucose ratio of 1:1 wont taste different than sucrose. It's evident that HFCS can and is often produced with much different ratios and can be anything from pure glucose to pure fructose, both of which would taste obviously different.

The HF is "high fructose" and definitely means that a good portion of the glucose derived from the starch has been converted to fructose.

Pure glucose would be corn syrup, not high fructose corn syrup.

To see that a society with low levels of physical activity and high intake of sugars (of all kinds) and other highly processed foods results in some measurable poor health outcomes?

> you need an open your eyes test

Well that seems unbiased, as I'm sure would the mitigations for the identified problems. /s

> Americans are not healthy and corn syrup is a big factor

I am concerned about Americans' health and I'm not so quick to point my finger at devil-corn. In the 90s we had corn syrup in everything but we didn't experience rapid weight gain until this century. We know that other factors can affect us (see "leaded gasoline" as an example) and we know that we're starting to see lawsuits over things like PFAS. Maybe there was some unexpected side effect like corn syrup plus 64 bit game consoles. And I'm only sorta kidding about that. It could well be a combo of factors.

Getting fat is a global phenomenon, so give me better evidence than unsupported claims that American diets are especially bad, please.

While it’s definitely becoming a global problem, US takes the top spot in terms of obesity rates and actually has decreasing life expectancy. A big part of that is related to what we put into our bodies.

That's only true if you restrict the comparison to obesity rate among adult males and throw out a bunch of pacific island nations because they aren't "major countries" or something.

https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/?age=a&sex=t

> SNAP junk food to push it

The fact that SNAP lets you spend it on twinkies but not on the dirt-cheap (healthy, nutrient-dense) whole cooked chicken breasts that every grocery store sells is one of the greatest failings of the modern welfare state.

Maybe you’re talking about hot prepared whole cooked chicken breasts served hot in a to go container? Because SNAP allows you to buy them cooked refrigerated or frozen to take home and heat or buy raw to take home and cook.

> What Can SNAP Buy?

> Any food for the household, such as: Fruits and vegetables; Meat, poultry, and fish; Dairy products; Breads and cereals; Other foods such as snack foods and non-alcoholic beverages; and Seeds and plants, which produce food for the household to eat.

Households CANNOT use SNAP benefits to buy: Beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes, or tobacco Vitamins, medicines, and supplements. If an item has a Supplement Facts label, it is considered a supplement and is not eligible for SNAP purchase. Live animals (except shellfish, fish removed from water, and animals slaughtered prior to pick-up from the store). Foods that are hot at the point of sale Any nonfood items such as: Pet foods Cleaning supplies, paper products, and other household supplies. Hygiene items, cosmetics

https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items

Correct, I mean the actual, ready-to-eat hot breasts. The whole point is that health shouldn't have to come at the of convenience when there's good options right there. You can't blame a person who's working to make ends meet and doing the labor of childcare on for choosing food that is literally ready to eat over a raw chicken that takes extra work to prepare. Half the reason junk food is so popular is the convenience, and we have to set the incentives so the good stuff isn't worse.

What? You can buy uncooked chicken breast with SNAP.

> Fruits and vegetables; Meat, poultry, and fish; Dairy products; Breads and cereals; Other foods such as snack foods and non-alcoholic beverages; and Seeds and plants, which produce food for the household to eat.

https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items

Saying you don't need blind tests when discussing tastes, and including Coke in the discussion, is rather interesting. Specifically, they are the case study for people preferring a taste in tests, but massively rejecting it by name.

Can always compare the US to Mexico. Mexico uses primarily sugar as their sweetener. We have similar obesity rates and significant percentage of chronic issues is related to obesity.

Europeans also have access to healthcare and there is correlation between health outcomes and access to healthcare. Easiest stat to see healthcare performance is maternal mortality rates as it’s linked to prenatal care.

Real Mexican cuisine (which is delicious by the way) has a lot lot more carbohydrates and fried stuff, especially the further you go down a families food budget. And yeah, they also eat and drink a lot of sugar on top of that and often bring those habits to the US when they immigrate.

Keep it away from breads and other similar foods and you would see a big effect.