Remember the catsup commercials played to the tune of Carly Simon’s “Anticipation,” about the tomato- based condiment emerging from its bottle with the reluctance of molasses? Remember too the regulatory attemt to categorize catsup as a vegetable? Which was it? Why were we impressed that a brand name ketchup would bottleneck like glue instead of flow out with the juiciness of ripe tomatoes? That uniform viscosity bore another similarity to sweet and sticky: High Fructose Corn Syrup!

Remember too the test of a proper spaghetti sauce being its resistance to leaking through a filter? TV audiences were shown that inferior sauces dripped, while the thicker, richer brand clung. That was probably the sweeter brand too. Thanks to High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Now hold on a minute. What’s wrong with HFCS? After all, the corn refinery industry assures us that HFCS is like anything, perfectly fine, in moderation.

But how do you consume HFCS in moderation, when the muck is IN everything?

The old catsup commercial’s subversion of our concept of what constitutes good food, didn’t occur to me until I pondered the uniform syrupy essence of nearly all processed food products today. When you look upon today’s supermarket aisles, colored by their uniformly bright products, you can practically choke on your anticipation of corn syrup congealing at the back of your throat.

I swear the otherwise transparent corn syrup has become aesthetic too. HFCS is present in the visual design of the cardboard cases of soda. It’s in the same triple stroke typefaces of pop and candy bars.

HFCS became so popular because unlike many natural foods, it didn’t have an aftertaste. The sweetness lingered, because it sticks.

What were we thinking was taking so long up inside that bottle, for which we were salivating with such eager anticipation? I’d like to think the hesitation was the food industry’s unconscious reluctance to reveal its poisonous mendacity.