High Fructose Corn Syrup
Posted on Jan 24, 2010 - 1:05am by Wayne Weisser in Health
In case you’ve been busy driving or away from the TV the The Corn Refiners Association has been busy trying to reverse the bad publicity High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has been getting. My opinion is their publicity campaign is going to backfire on them. If you never heard of HFCS before, you have now. Youtube is full of parodies of the commercials and websites and news organizations are now filled with information trying to defend or slam the Corn Refiners. Any search on Google, (try this one High Fructose Corn Syrup )
Arguments in Favor of HFCS
Sweetsurprise.com is the Corn Refiners whose arguments are that HFCS has the same number of calories as sugar, taste the same and is fine in moderation, it’s natural, the body treats it the same as sugar and it’s cheaper than sugar.
Arguments Against HFCS
The calorie count may be the same, but the kind of calories are different. HFCS has been shown to be treated differently than sugar and blocks the signal from your brain telling you’re full, cause you and kids to eat more and is linked to obesity, childhood obesity and diabates in children and all of the other diseases that are caused by being too fat.
It’s fine in moderation, the problem with that is no one knows what a moderate amount of HFCS is. Since HFCS is in almost anything we eat and drink it’s hard to take in any kind of moderation.
It’s cheaper than sugar only because the government subsidizes corn and not sugar, making any corn products artificially cheaper than sugar. Can the government do anything right? Rhetorical question, no need to answer.
It’s as natural as sugar. Even sugar is processed and it’s not exactly like all they’re doing is crushing corn and getting HFCS.
The Facts and Studies
Which facts are the right facts? I don’t know. Everyone has their study and can make the numbers say what they want. It’s tough to avoid it as if drivers have a hard enough time with their diets. This stuff is in everything and unless you stick to unprocessed meat, raw vegetables and water it’s tough to not ingest this stuff.
I’m sure it’s nothing like cigarettes that have added ingredients to make it addictive. If you just smoked raw tobacco would it be so hard to quit? Or as comforting when you lit up? Everyone needs food and the easier food is to eat, the more HFCS is probably in it and it makes us want more and we’re addicted without even knowing it. The government makes it cheaper, but complains we’re a bunch of fat tubs of lard lined up like corn-fed hogs and cattle, but they want to provide us health care so they can control our lives when they already control far too much of our lives as it is.
Here’s a link to one of the real commercials to get you started in case you haven’t seen them you need to watch before you check out all of the parodies, Youtube search for High Fructose Corn Syrup will pull up most of them
And a couple of news links to get you started in case you want to know for yourself.
MSNBC, Mayo Clinic, Slate – very indepth and leads to other sources, LA Times about the switch by Pepsi to real sugar.
What does all this mean to drivers? Just be aware of what you’re eating and drinking, as if you didn’t have enough to worry about.
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Agree 150%! AND, if that corn they make the HFCS out of is genetically modified, you may have even created MORE problems with your diet! We arent hearing much in the news about the studies in other countries (the ones that have outlawed GM foods-which is most of them) that show DNA changes in animals that are fed GM corn and feed, and the allergies and digestive problems in humans that they believe originate from eating GM foods. It’s not a stretch to see that this massive push on GM foods could actually change the human DNA in unexpected ways. What’s genetically modified? “Round-up Ready”, 90% of soy, a great deal of corn. It’s all about letting Montsanto and their counterparts OWN food crops, seeds, etc. And you cant avoid it because it’s in nearly every prepared food-and the big producers have successfully fought to make sure there is no labeling required. People seem to think that genetic modification is like hybridization; it’s not. It’s gene-splicing, like putting salmon genes in tomatoes to make them handle the cold better. Or spider genes in goats for ‘spun milk’ (no lie).The USDA ‘food pyramid’ will do you no good because it doesnt differentiate between HFCS or real sugar, or GM vs organic. The FDA needs a major overhaul of the way they do business – we’re paying for being poisoned!
I know if I quit eating HFCS, I lose weight. Is it because my diet is so limited or because I removed the HFCS? Nobody really knows.
This is a great reason why the government shouldn’t subsidize food or many other things. There’s no way to tell if there is no harm being done if you just listen to our highly paid government. Who’s to say that the FDA isn’t bribed or coerced? There is BIG money involved with these corporation that we know have lobbyists supporting their position. The opposition has no chance when they are up against this type of money and power.
If there is nothing wrong with HFCS, it’s a great substitute. I would rather support our own farmers than the sugar can growing countries. Unfortunately, there is much hard evidence that is proving otherwise.