Corn syrup producers want sweeter name: corn sugar

Yes, I'm going to rip the AP headline straight up as it frames the stupid quite succinctly.

The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten its image with a new name: corn sugar. The Corn Refiners Association applied Tuesday to the federal government for permission to use the name on food labels. The group hopes a new name will ease confusion about the sweetener, which is used in soft drinks, bread, cereal and other products.

Ease confusion. Indeed. They've even launched a site called cornsugar.com.

It's a bit of a change from their previous effort which explained it's "natural", and "fine in moderation", just like anything else. What the campaign failed to explain was how one could intake HFCS's "In moderation" when it's present in everything from bread to spaghetti sauce, nor how they figure how cornstarch chemically or enzymatically degraded to glucose and some short polymers of glucose, tricked out with another enzyme to convert varying fractions of glucose into fructose is "natural" when the process doesn't exist in nature.

Still, name-changing worked for prunes, which became "dried plums", and "estate tax" which became "death tax". But these ads are so bland, I doubt they'll make a dent in perception.

They began their campaign in 2008, with picnic, where a man fears his lovers lolly, and birthday party, where a mom scoffs at the other moms choice of beverage.