Is cane sugar healthier than high-fructose corn syrup?

(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday that Coca-Cola volition power from high-fructose maize syrup to cane sweetener has shaken up the satellite of sweeteners, raising questions astir their wellness value.

While Coca-Cola officials person yet to corroborate the look switch-up, CNBC reports that shares of high-fructose maize syrup shaper Archer-Daniels-Midland person begun to fall.

As companies hold for sweetener quality to settle, here’s a person look astatine the quality betwixt the sweeteners.

What’s the quality betwixt cane sugar, high-fructose maize syrup?

According to the Department of Agriculture, cane sweetener is derived straight oregon indirectly from sugarcane, a gangly perennial writer that grows successful tropical and semitropical climates.

High-fructose maize syrup is simply a sweetener derived from maize starch that is breached down into glucose, according to the Food and Drug Administration.  

Is cane sweetener oregon high-fructose maize syrup healthier?

Some studies person linked high-fructose maize syrup to elevated abdominous accumulation and inflammation.

However, the FDA notes connected its website that portion it receives galore inquiries asking astir the information of high-fructose maize syrup, the bureau is not alert of immoderate grounds that determination is simply a quality successful information “between foods containing HFCS 42 oregon HFCS 55 and foods containing akin amounts of different nutritive sweeteners with astir adjacent glucose and fructose content, specified arsenic sucrose, honey, oregon different accepted sweeteners.”

Overall, health experts counsel against consuming excessively overmuch of immoderate benignant of sweetener oregon added sugars arsenic wellness risks tin see value gain, Type 2 diabetes and bosom disease.

How does the terms comparison for cane sugar, high-fructose maize syrup?

High-fructose maize syrup is cheaper than sweetener cane. It’s been 41 years since U.S. Coke switched from sugar to cheaper high-fructose maize syrup, resulting from the Ronald Reagan-era sweetener import quotas that caused home sweetener prices to spike.

“The authorities intervened during the Reagan medication and signed a instrumentality that placed precocious tariffs and quotas connected imported cane sugar,” Ben Michael, lawyer astatine Michael & Associates, told Reader’s Digest. “And U.S. commercialized policies inactive bounds sweetener imports to this day."

According to the USDA, astir of the sugarcane produced successful the United States comes from Florida, Louisiana and Texas.