some of the glucose sugars into fructose,
which is much sweeter and therefore gives the
syrups a higher sweetening power. The solids
in standard high-fructose corn syrup are
around 53% glucose and 42% fructose, and
provide the same sweetness as the syrup’s
equivalent weight in table sugar. Because
high-fructose syrups are relatively cheap,
soft-drink manufacturers began to replace
cane and beet sugars with them in the 1980s,
and Americans began to consume more corn
syrups than cane and beet sugar. Today
they’re a very important sweetener in food
manufacturing.
Making Corn Syrups To make corn syrups,
manufacturers extract starch granules from
the kernels of common dent corn (p. 477), and
then treat them with acid and/or with
microbial or malt enzymes to develop a sweet
syrup that is then clarified, decolorized, and
evaporated to the desired concentration.