High Fructose Corn Syrup is natural, right?

There is a current media push to dispel the rumor that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is bad for you. You've seen the full page ads in popular magazines, with one person saying,

"My hair dresser says that sugar is healthier than HFCS."

And the other in response,

"Wow! You get your hair done by a doctor?"

And then at the bottom is a cutesy little graphic telling you to visit www.sweetsurprise.com to learn the facts. So you go there and find out that HFCS is natural, so it must be fine, right? It comes from corn.

Well the truth of the matter is that sure, it's natural and seems very similar to sugar. But here's why HFCS should be avoided;

1. Sugar is composed of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. HFCS is like the high-test version of sugar, when consumed it is like main-lining sugar into your bloodstream, overburdening your system and over time can lead to type II diabetes.
   
   
2. If HFCS were the only sugar ingredient, it would be fine. But usually food marketers don't want people to find out that the #1 ingredient in their food product is sugar. Since ingredient labels are listed in order of amount in the product, they break sugar up into lots of different ingredients like "sugar," "corn syrup," "high fructose corn syrup," "fructose," etc. so that these are lower down on the ingredients list and you don't realize that your food product is pretty much all sugar.
   
   
3. HFCS on an ingredient label is an INDICATOR of highly processed food. It's like a red light warning you of a highly processed food product. Why is highly processed food bad? There are books written on this subject, but look at it this way, humans have been around for thousands of years. Fluff and "Light" mayonaise have not. Does your body know how to break down all the chemicals in these processed products? Probably not, hence the rampant western diseases.

Just these 3 insights alone should keep you away from HFCS. Living in today's world it is almost impossible to stay away from HFCS completely (heck, you can even find it in natural ice cream!), but if you are aware of it and the damage it can do, you will be more likely to keep your intake of it down. Look at those ingredient labels!

Today's 1 Small Change:

• Look at ingredient labels for HFCS and avoid as much as possible.
  

PS -Turns out the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy just found that nearly half of the samples of the commercial HFCS they tested contained mercury, which is highly toxic. (See article on Washington Post.) We'll make this an honorary #4 reason to keep it out of our diet...