School Foods

High Fructose Corn Syrup – Making Healthy
Foods Affordable for America’s School Children

A downloadable PDF of high fructose corn syrup in school nutrition is also available.

Eliminating High Fructose Corn Syrup from school nutrition programs would significantly increase school breakfast and lunch costs and seriously jeopardize and/or eliminate the supply of numerous offerings. For example, removing items that often contain high fructose corn syrup from a sample January middle school lunch menu would reduce offerings by 67%.
See the sample menu.

There is no nutritional benefit gained by replacing High Fructose Corn Syrup with another caloric sweetener. High Fructose Corn Syrup and sugar (sucrose) are equally sweet, have the same number of calories, and are handled similarly by the body.

High Fructose Corn Syrup:

• helps maintain high quality, low cost, reliable food products used in breakfast and lunch offerings for America’s school children.
• is a natural sweetener that keeps food fresh (canned fruits, ketchup, cheese spreads), enhances fruit and spice flavors (yogurts, flavored milks, jams, jellies, maple syrups, canned fruits, marinades, spaghetti sauce), improves flavor by reducing tartness (spaghetti sauce, ketchup, canned tomatoes), and keeps ingredients evenly dispersed (salad dressings, mayonnaise, mustard, other condiments).

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a safe, natural ingredient.

• The American Medical Association concluded that, “Because the composition of HFCS and sucrose are so similar, particularly on absorption by the body, it appears unlikely that HFCS contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose.” (Report 3 of the Council on Science and Public Health (A-08), June 2008 )
• The American Dietetic Association concluded that high fructose corn syrup “is nutritionally equivalent to sucrose. Both sweeteners contain the same number of calories (4 per gram) and consist of about equal parts of fructose and glucose. Once absorbed into the blood stream, the two sweeteners are indistinguishable.” (Hot Topics paper on High Fructose Corn Syrup, December 2008)
• In 1983, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) formally listed HFCS as safe for use in food and reaffirmed that decision in 1996. HFCS contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients or color additives and meets the FDA requirements for use of the term “natural.” (21 Code of Federal Regulations § 101.22.)