The difference is, HFCS is almost always a mark of a more highly processed food, and more highly processed foods are going to tend - on average - to be more junk food-tastic, and going to tend to have other highly processed ingredients that can contribute to binging.

This has actually made more sense to me than anything else in these debates, which I've followed closely.

I don't want to compare because a) personal anecdotes are statistically useless, and b) we're talking apples and oranges in too many ways. On a purely emotional level, it's still striking to see all my also-European peers who have been socialised to eat no processed food and drink no or very little soft-drinks and who, despite loving food, are not overweight, despite spanning a spectrum of genetic body shapes.