HFCS Versus Sugar: A Modest Proposal for a Solution

One of the joys of this blogging with the big boys here at Forbes is that I get bombarded with information and press releases by people who want to get me to write about something. Most of it goes into the round filing cabinet under the desk of course, or the electronic equivalent. If someone wants me to write about something it's almost certainly not worth my writing about it.

However, an exception today. I was sent links to these two pieces. Essentially, Big Sugar is suing Big High Fructose Corn Syrup for having the temerity to think about changing the name of HFCS to "corn sugar".

There's a lot of babbling about how HFCS, being higher in fructose, has a different effect on the body than glucose and how this is driving the obesity epidemic.

I have to admit I don't believe it for a moment. Not because I am well versed in matters dietary nor nutrition. It's partly that it sounds like the sort of hair splitting that lawyers would come up with to confuse matters. But much more importantly, obesity is rising in my native England just as fast as it is in the US. And we just don't use corn sugar....sorry, HFCS.

The reason we don't use HFCS is that we don't have a near insane system of subsidy (we do indeed have a near insane subsidy system for sugar in the EU but with one major difference which we'll come to) and quota limits on imports which keep sugar twice, sometimes three times, the world price. That's the difference by the way. The US does have an internal sugar price two to three times the world price.

Now HFCS...sorry, corn sugar... is indeed cheaper than sugar internally in the US. That's why people use it. But it isn't cheaper than sugar on the world market, which is why anyone with access to sugar at the world price doesn't bother to use corn sugar...sorry, HFCS.

Which leads us to a very interesting position. Let's say that Big Sugar is incorrect about HFCS being worse for people. In which case they should lose their case and HFCS can be called whatever people want to call it.

But let's say that they're right, that HFCS really is dangerous to health by turning everyone into fat lardbuckets. In which case we really do want to stop people using it. And the easiest way to do that is to dismantle the system of trade protections that Big Sugar gets so that sugar is cheaper than HFCS and so no one uses the latter.

In which case Big Sugar wins their case and loses their business.

I have to admit I prefer the latter for the simple reason that I'm an inveterate free trader: never yet seen a trade restriction I wouldn't blow up in a heartbeat.

But the implication of Big Sugar's case, evidence, is interesting, no? If they're right then we have to abolish Big Sugar. Something which, I submit, means that they haven't quite thought through their case properly.

