It’s everywhere - a single 12 oz can of cola has up to 13 teespoons of sugar, most of it fructose from High Fructose Corn Syrup ["HFCS"].
There is HFCS hidden in almost all fast food and in processed products like ketchup, baked beans, candies, yeast breads, sweetened yogurt, baby food, ketchup, cookies, beer, chicken nuggets, tropical fruit drinks, relish, cookies, and substituted for fat in foods like mayo and salad dressings, which are then labeled diet foods.
HFCS is everywhere because it’s artificially much cheaper than sugar, and that’s because every farm bill since 1938 has subsidized and therefore encouraged the over-production of corn.
The problem is that HFCS is an unnatural born killer; consuming unsustainable amounts of water, and more fertilizer than any other crop, which the bleeds from rivers to the sea, creating huge oxygen starved dead zones like the one at the mouth of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico.
It kills us more directly - When HFCS is ingested, it travels straight to the liver which turns the it into fat, BUT unlike other carbohydrates HFCS does not cause the pancreas to produce insulin; which acts as a hunger quenching signal to the brain. So we get stuck in a vicious cycle, eating food that gets immediately stored as fat and yet never feeling full.
In 1970 the average American consumed less than ½ a pound of HFSC a year, today the average is more than 60-pounds (100 pounds or more in poor communities) during which time obesity has quadrupled along with incidence of diabetes and heart disease and many forms of cancer, which in turn has fueled rocketing healthcare costs.
There is no quicker way back to national health.
Amen brother! And HFCS makes my belly hurt. :)
Posted by: Robertorrh | August 17, 2010 at 11:23 PM