High Fructose Corn Syrup is Everywhere!

Image taken from Google Images.

By now, everyone is familar with HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and the dangers associated with consuming it on a regular basis. Many years ago when I used to be a waitress, I would often encounter health conscious customers who would say "I will have either brewed iced tea or water, I dont want any HFCS." I would oblige and bring them their beverage of choice and then they would go on to order something healthy like a salad or some grilled vegetable skewers. It wasn't until many years later that I realized that those customers were still getting HFCS, it was in their salad dressings, their meat marinades and their desserts.

I decided to dig a little deeper and see what else usually contained HFCS as an ingredient. I found out that HFCS is the number one consumed food ingredient in America and the reason is because it is hiding in everything! It's in meat marinades, salad dressings, boxed stuffing, juices, sports drinks, breads, breakfast cereals, candy bars, ketchup, mayo, pop tarts, cookies, cough syrup, crackers, pickles, relish, jams, jellies, syrups and more!!!!!! That is a ton of food that many people would never realize had any sweeteners, let alone HFCS.

So, why is HFCS in so many things? Well for starters, its cheap to make and tastes good which is why it became so popular in the first place. Even as people become more aware of its dangers and try to avoid it, it is still going strong thanks to the thousands of corn growers, subsidies and backers who care very little about what it's doing to your health.

Now the problem with HFCS is two fold. If you look at fruits and vegetables, they contain fructose and glucose. If the only fructose you got was from fruits and vegetables, you would only be consuming roughly 15 grams per day, when compared to the 75 grams per day the typical American gets from the typical American diet. Fructose in any form isn't really all that great in the first place, regardless of where it comes from. The greatest harm however is when you are consuming it in massive amounts. The reasons why fructose isn't all the great is because (info was taken from Dr. Mercola's website):

• Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way from glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.

• People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound. This means that your liver is working overtime to process this stuff. Your liver is also your biggest detoxifying organ, so if your liver has a heavy burden that means it is going to be less efficent at filtering out toxins.

• After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.

• Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is "burned up" immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.

• The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.

• Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.

• When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!

• The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

• Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.

Anyone who tries to tell you that HFCS is perfectly safe and is just sugar from corn is very misinformed. Now, I'm not a huge fan of sugar in general, but it I would rather consume that than HFCS (I really wouldn't want to consume sugar either though). Another key thing to keep in mind is that 99% of all HFCS comes from GMO corn which already has a whole host of health issues on it's own.

Not to sound like a broken record here, but this is another example of why you really have to read your labels or just make it yourself. If you make most of your food from scratch, then you have complete control of what is in your food. If you have to buy store bought pasta sauce or salad dressing than you just have to make sure that you know what is in there. To many of you it is no surprise that the world of healthy eating is almost like a game. You have to know where to look, what to look for and what questions to ask. In the beginning it can be confusing, but eventually you will find your groove and find a way to take care of your health and your famalies health in a way that doesn't seem so overwhelming.