Earlier this year, buyers of Hunt’s brand ketchup probably noticed a conspicuous change to their bottle of America’s favorite condiment: a bright yellow banner running across the label with the words “NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP” proudly displayed.

Hunt’s, however, is only part of a growing trend of foods and drinks that have reformulated to exclude this greatly maligned, corn-derived sweetener that seems to have found its way into everything from bread to peanut butter.

It seems that the consumer is getting what he wants by refusing to buy anything with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and forcing companies to make the switch to traditional cane sugar (sucrose) or risk losing customers. Despite this apparent populist victory, the fact remains that there is no conclusive research to back up the claims that HFCS is any worse for people than the table sugar replacing it, yet according to websites like sweetdisguise.com and several Facebook groups, it’s responsible for everything from cancer to organ failure.

Much of the controversy surrounding HFCS began with a paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published in 2004 that suggested a link between skyrocketing obesity rates in the U.S., and the prevalence of HFCS in Americans’ diets. That article has since been contradicted by many others—including one by an author of the 2004 paper—affirming that HFCS is no worse than the sucrose replacing it.

But, what was seen—and what led to the suspicion that HFCS might be responsible for America’s growing waist line—is a correlation between the proliferation HFCS in our diets since the 1970s and a surge in obesity rates that began around the same time.

The authors of the 2004 paper noticed this correlation, and proposed that the different composition of HFCS compared with sucrose was partly responsible.

The problem is that HFCS and sucrose vary only slightly. The two sugars are what are known as disaccharides, or a sugar composed of two simpler sugars—in both cases fructose and glucose.

While it’s true that fructose is metabolized differently from glucose and could contribute to weight gain, the difference between the ratio of fructose and glucose in HFCS and table sugar is small.

According to the University of Maryland, the two most commonly used forms of HFCS have a fructose to glucose composition of 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose, and 42 percent fructose and 53 percent glucose.

Compared with sucrose, which is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose, there is only a bit more fructose in the first variety and actually less in the second.

The issue at hand is not whether one type of sugar is worse than another, but how much sugar we are consuming in the first place.

According to the USDA, no more then 267 calories from added sweeteners like sucrose or HFCS should be consumed daily for a 2000-calorie diet.

Obesity is a problem that will not be resolved by simply swapping one sugar for another, but will require a reevaluation of our entire diet as well as our lifestyle.