A few data point does not equal a close relationship between national average weight and national average high fructose corn syrup consumption. Actual detailed data would have shown that weight is going up in both corn syrup countries like the US and in sugar countries like most of Europe.
Also, empirically, here's something else you or anyone could do if you haven't already is check the ingredients on the packages in your pantry or at the supermarket. You will find High Fructose Corn Syrup in products that you would never think it needed to be in.
Yes, but in Europe the same products contain sugar, and diet soda, despite the lack of high fructose corn syrup, doesn't work to keep people thin. One way or another, most of this stuff has been sweetened for 50 years, just as so many of us have been TV watching couch potatoes for the past 50 years, but only in the past 15 is one seeing so many overweight kids.
I probably should not post these kinds of threads any more because I am just too negative on these issues. It seems that for most people, the idea that diet is a key factor in the health of well-fed people is simply immune to contrary evidence. Even those who believe in evolution seem unwilling to admit that people are constructed so as to achieve their three score and ten on a wide varieties of diets. Could it be that humanity is wired, in the brain, to believe that you are what you eat despite all contrary evidence, and I'm simply missing that gene?