Summary
High fructose corn syrup is in many Canadian packaged foods, but it appears on labels as glucose-fructose. This guide explains how this unbound sweetener is processed in the liver, its link to fatty liver disease, and practical ways to spot it on grocery labels.
There is an ingredient in a significant portion of the packaged food you buy at Canadian grocery stores. It is in your bread, your salad dressing, your granola bar, your yogurt, and almost certainly your favourite soft drink. It has been quietly making its way into the Canadian food supply for decades, and most Canadians have never heard its Canadian name.
In the United States, it is called high fructose corn syrup. In Canada, you will find it on the ingredient list as glucose-fructose.
Same substance. Different name. And a growing body of evidence suggesting it may be doing more harm than ordinary sugar.
How It Got Into Our Food Supply
High fructose corn syrup is a liquid sweetener made from cornstarch, produced by converting a portion of its glucose into fructose, making it sweeter and cheaper than cane sugar. It became dominant in the American food supply in the 1980s as corn prices dropped due to agricultural subsidies. Canada followed, particularly after NAFTA lowered tariffs on the ingredient.
A study published in CMAJ Open found that NAFTA was strongly associated with a marked rise in HFCS supply in Canada, and that even a seemingly modest change to product tariffs in a free trade agreement can substantially alter population-wide dietary exposure. In other words, a trade deal helped put glucose-fructose on Canadian shelves, and it has been there ever since.
A separate study published in CMAJ Open that examined the ingredients of 40,829 packaged foods and beverages sold at a major Canadian grocery retailer found that two-thirds of packaged foods and drinks in Canada contain added sugars, with glucose-fructose listed among the 30 added sugar terms researchers searched for.
What Makes It Different From Regular Sugar
This is where it gets important to understand the biology, because the food industry often argues that glucose-fructose is metabolically equivalent to table sugar. The reality is more nuanced.
Table sugar (sucrose) is composed of equal parts glucose and fructose, bound together. When you consume it, your body breaks the bond and processes both. Glucose-fructose in Canada typically comes in a form that is 55% fructose and 42% glucose, with the sugars already separated. That distinction matters because glucose and fructose are metabolized differently.
Glucose is used by every cell in the body. Fructose, by contrast, is metabolized almost exclusively in the liver. When fructose arrives at the liver in large amounts and in its free, unbound form, it is rapidly converted to fat through a process called de novo lipogenesis. Research published in the Journal of Hepatology identifies high fructose corn syrup as a significant factor in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, finding that diets high in HFCS not only increase the risk of NAFLD but also its more serious progression, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). A 2025 systematic review published in Frontiers in Nutrition further confirmed that HFCS is repeatedly cited as a risk factor in the development of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and liver disease.
The Canadian Health Context
This matters more now than it ever has in Canada, because Canadians are getting less healthy in precisely the ways that excess fructose consumption is associated with.
According to Statistics Canada’s most recent Canadian Health Measures Survey (2022-2024), more than two-thirds (68%) of Canadian adults aged 18 to 79 are now classified as overweight or having obesity, up from 60% before the pandemic. Obesity alone increased from 25% to 33% in the same period, with the sharpest rise seen in young adults aged 18 to 39, whose obesity rate jumped from 20% to 31% between 2019 and 2024.
Diabetes Canada has called for the government to update nutrition labelling to better identify added sugars, noting that large amounts of free sugars are commonly found in highly processed, high-calorie foods, and that excessive calorie consumption from these foods leads to weight gain with downstream effects on diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The Liver Problem
The link between glucose-fructose and liver disease is one of the less-discussed but most significant concerns in the research.
NAFLD, which involves the accumulation of excess fat in the liver in people who drink little or no alcohol, affects between 25% and 40% of the population worldwide, with prevalence rising in obese patients to 57-74%. Canadian research from the University of British Columbia, published in the Canadian Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, found that among patients at a tertiary care centre presenting with NAFLD, 37.7% were obese and 28.6% had type 2 diabetes.
Fructose is a direct driver of this process. Research in PMC found that fructose consumption in patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD was nearly two to three times higher than in matched controls, and concluded that increased fructose consumption contributes meaningfully to NAFLD development through the liver’s conversion of fructose to fat.
How to Find It on a Canadian Label
This is where Canadian consumers face an unusual challenge. Because Health Canada requires glucose-fructose to be listed by its Canadian name rather than the American term most people recognize, many Canadians do not realize they are consuming it at all.
Health Canada’s updated labelling rules require all added sugars to be grouped together under the term “Sugars” in the ingredient list, followed by each type in brackets. This means glucose-fructose will appear in the ingredient list, but may be buried among other sugar types. Some labels also use the terms “glucose,” “fructose,” or “corn syrup” separately.
- Soft drinks and fruit-flavoured beverages
- Bread, buns, and packaged baked goods
- Flavoured yogurt
- Salad dressings and condiments
- Granola bars and breakfast cereals
- Flavoured crackers and snack foods
- Canned soups and pasta sauces
Where the Science Stands
It is important to be fair about what the evidence does and does not say. The science on glucose-fructose is not settled in every direction. Diabetes Canada acknowledges that large systematic reviews and meta-analyses have not detected an independent risk for type 2 diabetes from total sugars or fructose alone, and that any association is largely mediated by excess calorie consumption leading to weight gain.
What the evidence does consistently support is that the specific way fructose is metabolized, particularly in large quantities and in its free, unbound form as found in glucose-fructose, places a distinct burden on the liver that ordinary sugar does not replicate to the same degree. At population scale, where two-thirds of Canadians are already overweight or obese and processed food makes up a large portion of many diets, that distinction has real public health consequences.
What You Can Do
None of this requires a wholesale rejection of every packaged food in your cart. But a few practical steps can meaningfully reduce your exposure:
- Read the ingredient list, not just the nutrition facts. The nutrition facts panel shows total sugars. The ingredient list is where glucose-fructose appears by name.
- Limit sugar-sweetened beverages. Soft drinks, sports drinks, and fruit-flavoured beverages are among the highest sources of glucose-fructose in the Canadian diet.
- Choose whole or minimally processed foods where you can. Foods without an ingredient list contain no added glucose-fructose by definition.
- Check condiments and sauces. Ketchup, barbecue sauce, salad dressing, and pasta sauce are frequent sources that many people overlook.
The Bottom Line
Glucose-fructose is not a poison. But it is not simply equivalent to sugar, either. The evidence points toward a specific metabolic burden, particularly on the liver, that is worth understanding, especially in a country where obesity, metabolic syndrome, and fatty liver disease are all rising. The fact that most Canadians have never heard the name of the ingredient they consume daily is a labeling problem as much as it is a health problem.
Knowing it is called glucose-fructose on Canadian labels is the first step to actually being able to make an informed choice about it.
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