Around 1970, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) entered commercial food production in the United States following the development of an enzymatic conversion process that transformed corn starch into a cheap liquid sweetener functionally equivalent to sucrose. The Clinton Corn Processing Company in Clinton, Iowa, was among the first to produce HFCS commercially, offering food and beverage manufacturers a sweetener significantly cheaper than cane or beet sugar due to federal corn subsidies and tariffs on imported sugar. HFCS would gradually replace sugar in most American soft drinks and processed foods by the 1980s, a transition that public health researchers would later link to rising obesity rates and metabolic disease.

HFCS became a symbol in contemporary food justice poetry and ecopoetry for the industrial food system's capacity to transform a subsidized commodity crop into a health-damaging sweetener, appearing in the work of poets like Camille T. Dungy who write about the environmental and human costs of corn monoculture. The invisible presence of HFCS in virtually all processed foods made it a powerful poetic metaphor for the hidden structures of corporate power that shape what people eat without their knowledge, a theme that resonates through the work of poets addressing food deserts, agricultural policy, and the politics of sweetness.