Although pure fructose
has been available in small quantities for decades, its use as common sweetener
dates only from the early 1970s. That's when the Finnish Sugar Co. developed a
method to efficiently synthesize it from cane and beet sugar. Now, Staley and
five other American companies make fructose from corn.
Hanover is right about
the past 40 years. But he sidestepped the larger historical context. Overall
sugar (sucrose) consumption remained very low - a few pounds a year - until the
industrial revolution. Advances in processing made it easy to manufacture from
sugar cane and sugar beets, and people began eating more of it.
Fructose is the natural
sugar found in fruit. Plants absorb the light from the sun and turn it into
sugar for later use. In fruit baring plants, the sugar is put into the fruit.
