I had to dispense a little sense this weekend about corn syrup.

The Older Boy has a bug up his ass about making caramel apples. He’s not satisfied with the idea of buying caramels, melting them, and using them to coat the apples. No, he has to make it from scratch. So, he’s following recipes, which include using some Karo corn syrup in addition to sugar, I believe because pure sucrose is more prone to crystallization than it is when you dope it with a mixture of glucose and fructose.

Mrs. FBW was about to get on his case for buying the Evil Corn Syrup!!! so I had to explain the chemistry.

Corn syrup, even High Fructose Corn Syrup, is not evil, is not poison, will not kill you if you touch a drop of it. The problem is not the chemistry, it’s how fucking cheap it is, and therefore how much of the stuff is in every fucking processed food. It’s a big part of why we’re so fat, and why we have teenage diabetics. It just makes it too easy and cheap to get calories without other nutrition.