This is why Mexico is the world capital of satisfying carbonated beverages.

Seriously, the Senate of Satisfying Carbonated Beverages meets in Matamoros.

I don’t get it.

But come on, it’s not just being persnickety. HFCS is really f’ing poisonous, and at the root of a whole host of social problems, from health care costs to corporate welfare.

I have the opposite problem and wish I had Girl’s.

It’s not a fable about being persnickety, but about having a unsullied existence.

Or in this case, an unsullied taste bud.

It’s the marketing that makes you think if you don’t like HFCS, you’re being persnickety.

I do not recall having seen any marketing telling me to consume high-fructose corn syrup. Who needs marketing when its in everything already?

But I love HFCS. Unnatural and inauthentic things are delicious. Natural things taste like polio.

Yes, it is in everything.

And you just declared me persnickety.

HFCS isn’t quite in everything, but the things it’s not in are few, so those of us who try to never consume it come across as persnickety. But what if you went to your friend’s house and everything in their fridge & pantry had arsenic in it. Would it be persnickety to balk at that? What’s the difference?

Copacetic said:
“I do not recall having seen any marketing telling me to consume high-fructose corn syrup.”

Well, the corn industry has put out a few TV ads that come pretty close. They usually go something like this:
* Person A walks in on Person B, who is innocently enjoying their food or beverage.
* A asks B how he/she can eat that stuff, ‘cuz it’s loaded with HFCS. A’s derision of B always ends with, “You know what they say about that stuff.”
* Person B asks what, exactly, they say.
* Person A stammers for a few seconds while managing the best DURRRR! expression they can manage.
* B extolls the virtues of HFCS, saying it’s all natural and exactly the same as any other sugar.
* Off-camera, chemists and dieticians spontaneously begin to convulse and speak in tongues, even those who weren’t watching at the time.

Brendan, the difference between the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Come 2067, salt water will be in everything, except taffy, which will be illegal because irony will have been declared a Class 6 Infectious Substance.

Cane sugar would be nice. But Passover is only once a year and no matter how much I try to stock up, Customs always intercepts my package and kills it with fire. (Seriously, what could live in Coke? So much acid and sugar that anything that fell into it would probably die.)

I don’t really get the point of HFCS, but it’s better than all those shitty sugar substitutes like Equal. That stuff is why I won’t drink diet soft drinks – it tastes like poison and it sort of is. At least HFCS doesn’t make its intent obvious by tasting like it’s killing you.

Yamara: I live in Brazil and there’s sugar in everything and corn syrup in nothing. Am I in the 19th century?

Is there even any other country that uses corn as extensively as the US?

dartigen,

But of course! The point of border control is to stop people transporting coke.

Pea flavored soda?!?

HFCS is some old gay shit.

HFCS, in America, is cheaper than cane sugar. This is due to taxes, subsidies, and varous other things to thank your congressman for.

But really, what’s so bad about it, besides it not being quite as good as cane sugar? Please don’t say genetically-modified corn. “Natural” corn is a far fucking cry from its wild ancestor.

@Leonardo well it’s cheap there because you guys grow the sugar, so nobody has an excuse to use HFCS.
But that makes no sense in relation to Australia because we also grow sugar cane (not as much as Brazil, but still a lot) and yet we don’t get cane sugar Coke here. As I understand it, the only reason Americans might get access to cane sugar Coke is because apparently HFCS violates the rules of Passover for Jewish people, and America has a lot of Jewish people who must have complained at some point.

@Severn as I understand, it’s because HFCS behaves differently to normal sugar, and therefore causes Problems, like cancer. (I’m not sure how.)

Between 1970 and 1990 American soda consumption doubled,and the average American diet increased by 200calories. During that same period American obesity increased.

Therefore, it’s fructose’s fault. QED.

(Oh, also the amount of children’s fast food consumption has increased about 300%, but the problem is still fructose.)

Back on-topic, I wonder if Princess Girl has tasted HFCS in her drink or if she’s somehow developed a sense of taste that can detect the difference between cane and beet sugar.

There IS a difference in flavor.

So, the odd thing is, nobody raised cane sugar to survive in Mesopotamia until civilization had been around over 10,000 years. As ancient hunter-gatherers, humans had fructose for breakfast, and fructose for dinner, and maybe sucrose on rare occasion when they ate the right flower.

Sugar as the natural alternative strikes me as viewing 1800A.D. as more natural than 5,000B.C., which I guess is one of many possible definitions of natural.

I must agree that there is a difference in flavor, and I like the cane sugar better. But I prefer diet soda water to either sugar, so I might be insane.

I think it’s Natural to rather live an 1800 AD lifestyle than 5000 BC.

Uh, Cane sugar will give you just as much diabetes as corn syrup. Flavor be damned.

THIS ISN’T MADE WITH HUMAN FINGERNAILS!

I am still wondering why feeling a pea under X number of mattresses was considered a good thing.

Oh Mexico! These days, I only ever drink soda when I go visit my granfather. (that is half a lie)

This gives me an odd sense of pride being from the west side of my midwest town that has Mexican Coke widely available.

It’s like being a wine snob. Congratulations! You no longer enjoy inexpensive wine.

Sugar be damned, it’s all about the caffeine anyway. I recognise that bottle’s shape.

It seems to me that we need to get back to the old ways. Way back when, a “soft” drink was something that didn’t make you go blind after three shots. Beer for every meal, I say!

in a the future version of this comic, girl finds a soda made with something even more lethal than hfcs, and complains: “this isn’t made with high-fructose corn syrup!”

alas, cane sugar does not like being cloned or messed with genetically, so it will possibly just disappear someday. i’m a big fan of c&g, i’ve read them all- this one makes me the saddest.

La la la, I can’t hear you here in aspartame-land.

Dartigen said: “As I understand it, the only reason Americans might get access to cane sugar Coke is because apparently HFCS violates the rules of Passover for Jewish people, and America has a lot of Jewish people who must have complained at some point.”

Not the only reason. Yes, approx. 2.5% of the US population is Jewish, and for many of us, corn is unkosher for Passover, so savvy shoppers can find cane-sugar Coke in the supermarket each spring. Beyond that, ethnic grocery stores are a good source of sugar sodas; I frequent a Mexican market where they sell sugar-Coke in 8 oz. bottles all year. It’s made in Texas and mostly sold to northern Mexico, but Coca-Cola Corp. is also smart enough to realize that recent Hispanic and Caribbean immigrants would go off Coke completely before they’d settle for the sickening sweetness of HFCS-Coke, so they sell some sugar-Coke domestically.

“I am still wondering why feeling a pea under X number of mattresses was considered a good thing.”

It’s good to have someone around that can tell things are not as they should be simply by feel, and not be completely ignorant of things around or in the case of the pea, underneath you. It’s like those of us who can tell somethings not working right with a high degree of accuracy just by listening to or touching it. In the Princess & the Pea, that sort of sensitivity could prevent assassination attempts – noticing a lump that turned out to be a snake or dagger or a rusty nail beforehand would be a boon.

Also, it freaks people out, which is fun.

@Brian, fructose eaten as fruit is different from an injection of HFCS directly into the waistline. (And, yes, so is a spoonful of sugar.)

thats nothing… do people realise what GELATINE is?!