High Fructose Corn Syrup

What do you want a heath label like cigarettes. Eating this item may make you fat. This label would have to be place on every thing. Just about everything you eat can make you over weight if you eat too much of it.

They are already listing the ingredients and calories whether they come from fats proteins or carbohydrates.

I do think there is a problem. That people don't watch what the eat or don't care. I think more attention should be placed on why they eat the way they do.

The answer is fairly simple. Don't eat processed food.

Fructose not needing insulin to be metabolized is a good point. This does not let one off in not watching their calorie intake.

Then it could be said that if other sugars were use the amount of sugar would need to be increased. Fructose being the sweetest to the palate almost twice as sweet as sucrose. If companies were forced to make the change the public would demand it taste the same. So they would dump more of the other sugars in it to please the palate increasing the calories.

I think they only way to find 'all natural' is to pick fruits from the wild and smash them between rocks for the juice, no label required

Do you really mean to say we should all start picking our own home grwn fruit, etc and give up on being engineers. Perhaps we should all go back to being cavemen?

No, I believe the point is where do you draw the line on calling something 'all natural'?

I could claim that any process, other than what happens in nature is not natural. Therefore, your bleached flour can only be bleached in sunlight to be categorized as all natural. Even refined sugar is out, clearly that process is not natural. Homogenized and pasteurized milk is not natural. I could go ad nauseam.

The term has little truth, even in places like Trader Joes and other emporiums catering to those yearning to return to basics and eschewing additives, preservatives and so on that are believed by some to be harmful.

A valid point. HFCS is extracted from corn, not synthesized like artificial vanillin is, so is as natural as "natural" vanilla flavoring extracted from the beans.

Normally, I dont patronize the organic and all natural food stores. Today, I realized afresh why this is as I went with my daughter to such an establishment. If I were forced to eat such foods and pay the prices being charged for such vittles, I would have to grow my own or moved to the poor house.

Looking at the food prices, they are routinely twice that paid for in the normal marketplace for non-organics foods. NO THANKS!!!

If less people thought the way you do and bought organic and natural food then it would be less expensive. I have seen the prices of organic foods drop considerably in the last few years.

Why do you think food that is fake and cheaply produced is so cheap anyways? Next time you buy a 5 lb. bag of Cheetos for 75 cents think about it:

• Journalist Greg Critser lays out a compelling case against high fructose corn syrup in his 2003 book, "Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World." He argues that federal policies that aimed to stabilize food prices and support corn production in the 1970s led to a glut of corn and then to high fructose corn syrup. With a cheaper way to sweeten food, producers pumped up the size and amount of sweet snacks and drinks on the market and increased profits.*

http://menstuff.org/issues/byissue/highfructose.html

You aren't getting a "good deal". You are being fooled by smart marketing.

Shop for natural food like you would any other, look for sales, buy smart. It won't be much more expensive. Even if you find one or two things you like to start off, eventually the prices will come down. I actually saw organic banannas cheaper in the market the other day!

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2008/06/judge_dismisses_all_natural_la.html

Looks like Snapple wins

edit (better article):

http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=86029-hfcs-natural-snapple

We should simply reduce the sweet tooth habit. There is a very high correlation between drinking pop (diet or not) and weight.

I travel regularly to many countries and find that I always gain weight when I am in the USA. It is not that I eat more there than in Asia or Europe. It is simply that the food in the USA is more fat, has more sugar, and more salt.

In Canada, Mexico and Europe, my weight is stable. In Asia it goes down, in USA it goes up. That seems to be consistent all around the year. Since I basically do the same work everywhere and have all these business meals, the type of food seems to be the main reason. I actually have more big meals in Asia since the people there find me "different and entertaining"... Engineers are not always boring, especially when struggling with chop sticks...

"It is simply that the food in the USA is more fat, has more sugar, and more salt."

Hence, MORE FLAVOR!!!

6^)

Hi,

obesity is not a problem of natural versus processed food

but a problem of much too high carbohydrate input in most processed food in conjunction with bad fats.

So if you like big amounts of sweet food, do not limit the fat input but switch your fat intake to olive-oil and sesame-oil and nut-oils and take the same amount in calories as oil as you take as carbohydrates.

This will limit your greed to carbohydrates!

Add a vast amount of green and red vegetables!!!!

The scientific background on the necessity to mix carbohydrates with good fat is in the fact that carbohydrates are quickly giving a peak in blood sugar that is followed by a peak in insulin level (as long as this regulation is in good order). This will result in low blood-sugar and renewed appetite to carbohydrates.

If you add fat then the reserve sugar in our liver is activated and replenishes the blood sugar if too low. This is a rare and unusual servo mechanism: stabilising a necessary level (blood-sugar): two very different and counteracting mechanisms that have to be in balance.

In early cultures before the invention of agriculture there was almost never the need for limiting carbohydrates and having a high enough fat input at the same time.

Look at the old recipes of trappers: Pemmican (fat, dried meat and dried berries (blue, black and cranberries, others?)).

Further good reading: Starch madness, by Richard L. Heinrich, Blue Dolphin Publishing, ISBN 1-57733-027-7

Try yourself, you will succeed.

RHABE

"The scientific background on the necessity to mix carbohydrates with good fat is in the fact that carbohydrates are quickly giving a peak in blood sugar that is followed by a peak in insulin level"

You say "good fats" but neglect to distinguish between good and bad carbs. HFCS is metabolized in a different way then other carbs, there is no realease of insulin. You seem to be a real expert in the science of how this works. Is there a difference?

http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/2/1/5

"obesity is not a problem of natural versus processed food"

If there is a difference in how HFCS is metabolized then it would seem to me that the two things do relate. Unless you work for snapple and think that HFCS isn't processed.

Also there is a socioeconomic apsect as well in addition to the science of it all, when you can get 10 double cheese burgers for 99 cents a piece or a bottle of olive oil. Most people go for the 10 burgers.

I personally do not. I said in a previous post if more people supported natural food the price would drop. However, some people simply can't afford it.

Maybe they should stop having kids, or maybe it all boils down to the fact that processed food is cheap, and marketed amazingly well. Most advertising is for big brands, like Dorritos, McDonalds, ect. all of which have the money to do so.

Unless you are immune to advertising, cheap foods = processed food. Relatively expensive foods with olive oil, sesame oil, natural sugars are more expensive.

Hi Rhabe,

Let's not forget that in early culture, they'd be up at the crack of dawn, doing physical labor until the sun went down. They were also getting all the sleep they needed. In today's hectic world, we're (mostly) overstressed, have a lack of sleep and are under worked (physically). Let's face it, sitting in front of a pc all day and then going home to do some more sitting in front of a tv is NOT physical exercise.

Between the internet and cable tv, I have to be extra-creative to get the kids outside to play and get them moving.

Hi Rick,

I agree totally, but what are the consequences?

There is no way back.

Changing habits seems to be impossible.

Will we kill the society, community, state, culture?

Will we mutate into a new species that can survive "modern" habits?

RHABE

Hi Rhabe,

As a society, maybe, but changing habits is what I'm trying to teach my kids. In the summer months, I ride my bicycle 32 kilometers to work (there and back) instead of taking the car to do it in 10 km (I can take the highway with the car). Although high gas prices are a good motivation for the mornings when I don't feel like it, I do it to get rid of my pot belly and give the old pump a workout. On the weekends, the whole family saddles up and we go for a leisure ride and whenever possible, I asked the kids to walk to the store (or bike) instead of me dropping them by car. It seems to be working....

It doesn't take too long before you start feeling energized again (provided you eat healthy, of course...:)