Devil or Angel: I'm so Confused

I'll open with a Seinfeld line:

So what's the deal with high fructose corn syrup?

I have had at least three people advise me to avoid all foods with this substance. I went to the grocery store, and lo and behold EVERYTHING (well, lots of things) have that stuff in it. Peanut butter, granola bars, crackers, strawberry jam, etc. etc. etc., all had HFCS in the ingredient list. This "avoid" task is harder than it sounds.

Well, why should I avoid that stuff? I had no idea other than a couple of thin people recommended it so perhaps there is a correlation between my desired state of healthily thin and this avoidance. But I wanted more information so I went where all of the good, bad and ugly information lives: on the internet. There was a ton of information out there. I picked the stuff from the American Medical Society, the Mayo Clinic and then one other kind of generic looking site. What I got was this: HFCS is cheap to make (though maybe not so much since it is made from cornstarch and that price is rising like crazy) and is a good preservative for foods produced commercially. There are some that say it is more readily converted to fat (ack!) than sucrose (natural sugar). But the AMA and Mayo both say that there is no solid scientific evidence that would suggest this. I am wondering if it not so much the HFCS, but just restricting the calories from all of the foods that contain the stuff. So, I don't know if HFCS deserves the bad press and taboo, but perhaps I will try to avoid it and this will decrease calories. Either that or it will be a new way for me to justify homemade baked goods - hey, no high fructose corn syrup!