As a nation that consumes too much sugar, yet is so obsessed with losing body weight, I think I might know why we are (or will be) getting fatter year after year. It’s because of this simple ingredient in our diet that we might never notice: High Fructose Corn Syrup. This is not the only factor for people’s obesity, however it exists amost in every kind of food we eat today.
What’s wrong with corn? or Corn Syrup? There is nothing wrong with eating or cooking corn. However, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a different animal. HFCS is a combination of many different refined sugars, glucose and fructose. One tea spoon of HFCS has double the sweetness of a sugar of same amount. HFCS is cheap to produce than sugar, so it has become one of the main sweetners for food and soft drink manufacturers.
If diabetes runs in your family, like mine, you might want to find out what foods and drinks have HFCS. Kate Hopkins at Accidental Hedonist.com has compiled a partial list of foods that have HFCS.
Cookies, soft drinks, candy, cereal, canned soups, bread and many more foods have HFCS. Here is a good exercise, go to your local grocery store and look at the ingredients of a cookie. See if you can find HFCS in it.
There are number of articles on linkage between obesity and HFCS. According to American Dietetic Association: “The link between beverages, HFCS and obesity can largely be accounted for by their contribution to calorie intake. Current research indicates that HFCS is a major source of excess calories.” In other words, when farmers want to fatten up their cows, what do they do? Feed them lots of corn.
Times Online U.K. summarizes all of the points above neatly in an article titled, “Beware the Devil’s candy.”
Everyday we are faced with a choice of what we want to put in our body.
As famous 1930s nutritionist Victor Lindlahr said, “Ninety per cent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat.”
