High Fructose Corn Syrup: Getting the Black Eye it Deserves

This is neither my first post about High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), nor is it likely to be the last. I have been lay researching anecdotal stories and information about HFCS for the past few years, especially since I discovered that I am the first in my non-diabetic family to be diagnosed with the disease. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE BOTTLED CORN SYRUP YOU BOUGHT AT THE STORE TO MAKE YOUR PECAN PIE.

Something besides fast food is making people the planet over gain weight in great numbers, along with an unimaginable rise in diabetes. I'm not a food scientist or chemist, but many of those who are have been telling us that HFCS is the primary culprit, although the makers of HFCS disagree. Personally, I don't believe the latter group.

A recent article in the U.K.'s The Sunday Times even said that a study found that Fructose syrup (HFCS), a sweetener derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease. It has increasingly been used as a substitute for more expensive types of sugar in sodas, yogurts, cakes, salad dressings, cereals, and, well, just about any food that was once sweetened with sugar. Even some fruit drinks that should be healthy contain fructose. Experts now believe that the sweetener HFCS — which is found naturally in small, benign amounts in fruits — could be a factor in the emergence of diabetes among children. HFCS is increasingly being used as a substitute for more expensive types of sugar - the real sugars like cane, beet, and maple sugar. The article went on to claim that volunteers on a strictly controlled diet, including high levels of fructose, produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar - table sugar - replacing fructose, did not have these problems. I don't think it takes a PhD to make the connection. The study said that people in both groups put on a similar amount of weight. However, researchers said the levels of weight gain among the fructose consumers would be greater over the long haul because of what HFCS does to the body. Look, the body recognizes and knows what to do with sugar. It is a simple metabolic process to convert sugar to energy and fat. Conversely, the body doesn't know what HFCS even is and doesn't know how to metabolize it, so it just beats up on the body. And the companies that make it know it. They've always known it. Don't think for one minute that food chemists are smart enough to bastardize our food, but not smart enough to know the effects of doing so. And the FDA just let 'em pollute our foods. Fructose bypasses the digestive process that breaks down other forms of sugar, the study said. It arrives intact in the liver where it causes a variety of abnormal reactions, including the disruption of mechanisms that instruct the body whether to burn or store fat. And HFCS manufacturers were allowed to assault the consuming public all for money. Asshats.

Now that HFCS is getting the black eye it deserves, how are HFCS makers going to get theirs?