BBQ Sauce, hold the HFCS

Yesterday, Natasha and I were at the grocery store.  I was in a downbeat mood following a long week of school and an incident where I had my arms full with three boxes of cereal and our shopping cart had gone missing.  Also, the guy stocking meats told me that they had never sold pre-formed breakfast sausages, even after I explained that I've bought them at this store not too long ago.  Missing shopping carts and non-existing meats can be explained by cart-thieves and uninformed meat stockers, or by stress-induced dementia.  Since I prefer the simple explanation to the complex, I found myself in the BBQ aisle in a bad mood.

I am not a "health nut".  But I'm also not willing to regularly eat stuff that isn't trustworthy.  I don't drink soda (even though I used to like it).  I try to avoid hydrogenated oils.  And I try to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).

I don't like HFCS for two reasons: (1) I've read that it is hard on your liver and body, and (2) political/free-market/economic reasons.  I avoid corn syrup in general and I avoid HFCS in particular.

But, the ingredient is so well-loved by the American food market that I still find it in many of my foods.  It is so well loved by the BBQ sauce industry that I could not find a single brand which did not list some corn syrup as a top ingredient.

That's right, every single BBQ sauce in the entire store had form of corn syrup in their primary ingredients.  Not even one bottle was sweetened only by simple ingredients like sugar and molasses.  Someone out there understands a niche market, why don't they make regular BBQ sauce?

Then it gets worse.  The niche market for un-corned sauce is filled, in part, by corn syrup.  At least one sauce lists "ketchup" as a primary ingredient, and the ketchup is made with HFCS.  They've found a clever way to pass the quick-scanning ingredient test.  Instead of solving the problem by making a clean sauce, they've approached the problem by trying to fool the customer.

I was so disgusted that I didn't buy anything.