Why corn syrup is used in so many drinks?
Less expensive
“Corn production (also maize production) plays a major role in the economy of the United States. The country is the biggest producer of the worldwide corn leaders with 96,000,000 acres (39,000,000 ha) of land reserved for corn production. Corn growth is dominated by west/north central Iowa and east central Illinois”. Wiki.
Sugar cane annual production is only 17.6 million tonnes comparing with the largest world production and exporter of sugar cane, Brazil which annual produce 721.07 million tonnes
So we know that corn is a better choice financially to be the sweetener of choice for so many drinks.
How about the science of food for reasoned of taste of corn used in drinks?
Our tongue typically can’t taste large amounts of food molecules. Corn syrup for example isn’t that sweet at taste comparing with other sugars because is made out of large chain molecules and it shows in it`s thick consistency. As far as calories are concerned, just because we cannot taste it to be sweet like fructose, corn syrup has not fewer calories than other sugars. Digestions process and absorption is the same with any other sugars. To increase the sweet taste in corn, commercial is treated with enzymes to transform some of the glucose in fructose. Another reason why corn is added may be that corn syrup is more neutral in taste than sugars from fructose or other sources like sugar cane
Cost and taste is all that make corn syrup a choice into lots of drinks. When someone is saying that because is made with real sugar drinks are better…. I think they refer to the taste and not calories 🙂
We can study and understand better the effect of different sugars and those relation may change in the future by new information, but for now we think is the quantity of sugar we consume that we need to worry Vs where the sugar comes from
We don’t cross our pathway to often… like we did in the past, so we call corn syrup an old friend.
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