When they have a national news report on how public schools should deal with so many kids with food allegories, how come no one is asking why food allegories along with diabetes in children are at epidemic proportions in this county?

Sure we have all heard that we have become a sedentary society and I agree that is part of the problem but only to a point. The real problem is no one wants to or they do not have the time to prepare meals anymore and eat fresh food; we want to just take it out of the box. The problem is not only HFCS, its corn in general. Almost all refined packaged products in the U.S. have corn in them, why? We think it’s normal now to keep a loaf of bread for two weeks and not have it go stale. Remember, basic bread has only four ingredients…humm we have strayed of the course a bit on that one.

Here is the answer, if you read the ingredients of something and it takes a chemist to figure it out…don’t eat it. If it sounds bad, it is bad.

The real detriment of HFCS is in your third paragraph…it’s cheap and is added to *everything*. It’s not HFCS per se, it’s that there’s just…so…much…sugar in our diets. Of course, HFCS is highly processed, but then again, so is sugar.

I wrote a post awhile back on my site about the various sweeteners.

Cheers
Scott Kustes
Modern Forager

My husband and I really enjoy your site!

On HFCS — I heard it really contributes to abdominal fat. Is that why we see so many people (including young people), who are otherwise not particularly chubby, but have a pronounced spare tire encicrling their entire waists? It’s such an odd body type and seems to be becoming very common.

Yes, but HFCS is only roughly 50% fructose–the other half is glucose, which *does* set off the hormanal chain of events etc etc.
Fructose and *glucose* differ, which is what the linked article says.
HFCS = fructose + glucose.
Sucrose = fructose + glucose (bonded together). Once sucrose gets into the mouth and stomach, the bond gets broken (by saliva and stomach enzymes) and becomes fructose + glucose.

They make fructose sound so bad, but in nature, fructose almost always comes with fiber, water, and a load of micronutrients/antioxidants (in the form of fruit and veggies). If you process out the fiber and micronutrients, then, well, fructose by itself is usually pretty bad. But pretty much the same can be said of sugar, and starch.

I agree that both HFCS and sucrose should be avoided, but HFCS isn’t neccessarily less “natural” than sucrose–they’re both processed pseudo-foods. Avoid HFCS just as you’d avoid any processed foods that have added sugar.

HFCS in medicine?! For infants?! Unreal.