Janet Miles

Chemically, fructose is a sugar. It's not sucrose ("table sugar") and it's not glucose, but it is a sugar. There are plenty of other sugars. HFCS is a combination of fructose and glucose in varying proportions, with a small amount of other sugars included.

When sucrose is in a weakly acid environment (eg your digestive tract) it breaks down 50:50 into fructose and glucose and these are actually what are digested. Commercial HFCS tends to be 42:53:5 fructose:glucose:other_sugars (HFCS42) or 55:41:4 (HFCS55 - used in carbonated drinks).
For comparison, honey is around 50:44:5:1 (fructose:glucose:other:sucrose)


So, from a chemical perspective, HFCS is a combination of sugars, and the same sugars already present in your existing "sugar" (brown sugar has a 1% fructose, 1% other sugar component).

This is the claim made by HFCS marketing; your body breaks down the sucrose into fructose and glucose and that's what is actually digested; HFCS just has the same stuff in it. They don't comment that the proportions are different...

Note: I make no comment as to whether HFCS is good or bad for you; that's a different argument entirely. I also make no comment about marketing and brand relaunches; these are also different arguments. I'm merely pointing out that chemically, there could be an argument for marketing HFCS as "sugar".