(NaturalNews) Big Food is at it again, fooling us with false advertisements to make us buy food we don't want to consume. Most of today's consumers are increasingly health conscious and want to avoid products that contain health-damaging ingredients. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is one of the substances that has made a bad name for itself.

This questionable sweetener – which is much cheaper than regular sugar, and extends the shelf life of processed products – has been linked to many health problems such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes, cancer and liver failure. For this reason, many consumers have begun to check food labels and steer away from foods containing HFCS.

But manufacturers have come up with a sneaky way to fool their customers so that they don't have to change their money-making ways. Instead of removing this cheap, harmful ingredient, they have just changed its name on packaging to conceal it within their products.

What's in a name?

For years, the corn industry has tried to mislead us. In 2010, the Corn Refiners Association sought to improve the image of HFCS. Thankfully, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stepped up and turned down their request to rename HFCS to the more natural sounding term "corn sugar."

Nonetheless, they succeeded in changing the name of a form of HFCS called HFCS-90 to fructose or fructose syrup. Since fructose makes up the sugar content in fresh fruits, it sounds much healthier than HFCS, however, when we consume fructose in fruits, we consume it along with fiber, enzymes, minerals and vitamins.

The toxic ingredient now called fructose, or fructose syrup, contains even higher concentrations of harmful HFCS, making it more of a health risk than regular HFCS. Regular HFCS (HFCS-42 or HFCS-55) contains either 42 or 55 percent fructose, while HFCS-90 contains 90 percent.

The Corn Refiners Association stated, "A third product, HFCS-90, is sometimes used in natural and 'light' foods, where very little is needed to provide sweetness. Syrups with 90% fructose will not state high fructose corn syrup on the label, they will state 'fructose' or 'fructose syrup.'"

Big Food is taking advantage

Food companies are taking advantage of the name change to hide even more HFCS in their products. That box of General Mills' Vanilla Chex cereal you're buying may say "no high fructose corn syrup" on the front of the box, but HFCS will be hidden in the ingredients list under the name fructose, which is the most concentrated form of HFCS.