Jason’s Deli changes sweets in its eats; maybe you should too.

Let’s give a cheer for Rusty Coho. Mr. Coho is the co-founder and co-owner of Jason’s Deli , a chain of some 200 US sandwich shops. Surely you’ve dined there. Or at least driven by.

The enterprise, which was founded by Coho and Joe Tortorice Jr. in 1976 in Beaumont, Texas, serves a fine sandwich. Better, in my palette’s opinion, than those you get at, say, the country’s chief sandwich seller, Subway. But this epistle is not a restaurant review.

Instead, cheers are suggested for Coho because Jason’s Deli has removed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from all the food items on its menu. In fact, Jason’s is, as you read this, in the process of deciding whether or not to do the same with their soda offerings. (To help the company make a decision, cast your vote, yay or nay, here.)

Why should you vote for or against HFCS at Jason’s or even care if you ingest HFCS? Let’s use the full name once again for a second or two here — “high fructose corn syrup.” That’s what the food industry uses on its consumer labeling — the full name, not the acronym. I wouldn’t be surprised if companies do this because “HFCS” sounds like some nasty chemical. (Like, maybe HFCs — anyone a fan of hydrofluorocarbons, those nasty greenhouse gasses killing the planet? Of course not.) On the other hand, “high fructose corn syrup” sounds so innocuous … “How can corn syrup be bad for me?,” you think, scanning a product’s ingredients label. “Mom puts corn syrup in her Christmas cookies.”

Well, as you pull on your “fat pants” — you know, the super baggy ones with the frayed elastic at the waist — consider: Some scientists say that high fructose corn syrup is contributing to the obesity epidemic.

Sweeter (55 times sweeter) and cheaper than table sugar (they’re using bloody great masses of the corn crop for ethanol, so the price of good old sucrose has risen), high fructose corn syrup is not a natural product. It has undergone enzymatic processing. Here’s a partial explanation of how HFCS is made, courtesy of Wikipedia, for the chemically literate among us (even if you’re not, the following sure doesn’t seem to describe the tiny, twinkling, white crystals grandma spoons daintily into her Earl Grey, baby finger extended):

High-fructose corn syrup is produced by milling corn to produce corn starch, then processing that corn starch to yield corn syrup which is almost entirely glucose, and then adding enzymes which change the glucose into fructose. The resulting syrup (after enzyme conversion) contains approximately 90% fructose and is HFCS 90. To make the other common forms of HFCS (HFCS 55 and HFCS 42) the HFCS 90 is mixed with 100% glucose corn syrup in the appropriate ratios to form the desired HFCS. The enzyme process which changes the 100% glucose corn syrup into HFCS 90 is as follows:

1. Cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called oligosaccharides.
2. Glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose.
3. Xylose isomerase (aka glucose isomerase) converts glucose to a mixture of about 42% fructose and 50–52% glucose with some other sugars mixed in.

While inexpensive alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are added directly to the slurry and used only once, the more costly glucose-isomerase is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is then passed over it, allowing it to be used repeatedly until it loses its activity. This 42–43% fructose glucose mixture is then subjected to a liquid chromatography step where the fructose is enriched to approximately 90%. The 90% fructose is then back-blended with 42% fructose to achieve a 55% fructose final product. Most manufacturers use carbon absorption for impurity removal. Numerous filtration, ion-exchange and evaporation steps are also part of the overall process.

OK, enough with the chemistry class. But there is the matter of quantity. Even if the scientific connections between HFCS and obesity are weak (and there are lots of scientists who say it is weak; not to mention the HFCS manufacturers such as Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and Corn Products International, who say nothing is added to the corn syrup during processing, not even coloring), understand that you eat a lot of the stuff.

High fructose corn syrup is used by virtually every food and beverage maker in the US (and Europe; heaven only knows about the Chinese). And it’s used in foods not normally thought of as sweet foods, things like ketchup and bread. It’s in Coke, Pepsi, Snapple iced tea, Dannon yogurt, Chips Ahoy cookies, Ritz crackers, Wonder Bread, Wish-Bone salad dressings, and Campbell’s tomato soup. ‘Nuff said?

Suffice it to say, it’s is really hard to avoid high fructose corn syrup, unless you shop at food co-ops and even then, the going is tough. As for dining out, forget it. Except at Jason’s Deli … the home of HFCS-less (try saying that out loud three times) foods.

I don’t know about you, but, to be on the safe (and maybe even, as per one of my New Year’s resolutions, thin) side, I’m heading out for a Jason’s Ciabatta ‘Bello and maybe a cup of their tomato basil soup.