Sugar May Be Bad But This Sweetener Is Far More Deadly

Study after study are taking their place in a growing lineup of scientific research demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all it's myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll.

And fructose in any form -- including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose -- is the worst of the worst!

Fructose is a major contributor to:

• Insulin resistance and obesity
• Elevated blood pressure
• Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL
• Depletion of vitamins and minerals
• Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout

There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:

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

2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/sugar-may-be-bad-but-this_b_463655.html



It seems the best thing Americans can do to protect their health is not buying health insurance, but to stop buying crappy food.

I have often thought if people saved the amount they usually spend on insurance, and instead used the money to buy healthier foods, vitamins, take a few days off of work to lessen stress...preventing illness in the first place would go much further than expecting untrustworthy money grubbing insurance companies to come through when you need them.

A non profit health care system would encourage the government to look at the cause of our illness as part of a cost reduction plan. If the government had an interest in saving money on health care, we might just have a functioning FDA and EPA again, and things like BPA and high fructose corn syrup would be permanently removed from our food supply.

Need to get better in this country. K&R for health!

this guy is also a member of the ultra rightwing Association of American Physicians and Surgeons

n/t

Just more crazy.

(self-delete)

for sugar metabolism, turns glucose into fructose. This happens very quickly. In fact all metabolizable sugars and starches are converted to fructose by enzymatic processes in your body. The only other biochemical pathways for sugars and starches are elimination or storage as fat. Yes, I did take and make "a" grades in biochemistry and human and cell physiology. (I once thought of going to med school, before becoming a wetlands ecologist)

If there are impurities in HFCS, these could be a problem. The other problems would arise from rapid consumption of large quantities of sugars, which is generally known to challenge our biochemistry, regardless of how consumed.

Off topic, but I'm thinking your job as a wetlands ecologist is both fascinating and challenging.

'The only other biochemical pathways for sugars and starches are elimination or storage as fat.'

If I recall, your entire body can metabolize Glucose, but only your liver can metabolize Fructose. That creates a burden on your liver organ. And the excess creates issues such as fatty liver.

When you switch a diet from sugar to requiring your body to convert everything there are consequences.

and tell them if you want to sweeten it, use sugar. Then I don't buy it.

Even when it is not needed, it's there. It's almost as if they know it is addictive or something...

i remember a LONG time ago (30 years maybe?) looking at a restaurant package of salt and being astounded that it also contained.......SUGAR! unbelievable...

It is used as a filler because it is cheaper than dirt.

I think one of the biggest reasons HFCS got popular is it cuts down processing time when they make food. Instead of running the stirrer trying to get the sugar granules to go into solution, HFCS blends right in.

Sugar is in bread to give the yeast something to eat so it can raise the bread dough. I don't know what kind of chips you are eating, that have sugar in them, probably the flavored ones. Regular potato chips are Potatoes, oil and salt.

Sugar is not used as a filler. Non-fat dry milk is. Granted, that has a lot of lactose, which many people cannot digest....but it's put into things like hot dogs and bologna and such because it increases the protein available and it's dirt cheap.

If you ask 100 people to name 10 ingredients in Spaghetti Sauce most won't name HFCS.

The poster who replied to you is exactly right.

Dirt would be a healthier filler.

...and the ultimate corporate welfare. The topic is summarized well in "FOOD,INC."

If I'm remembering my chemistry class correctly, sugar (sucrose) is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. HFCS is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Is that really that much of a difference in composition to make a difference in health?

I think HFCS is dangerous simply because it is cheaper than sucrose and can be hidden in a lot of seemingly innocent foods like salad dressing, crackers, etc.

However the prices of cane sugar, beet sugar, and HFCS have been rising rapidly in the past months. Sugar and salt are both among the cheapest ingrediants that food manufacturers can use, so the economics dictate that they use as much as they can get away with. See for example, sweetened breakfast cereals. Sugar makes them crunchier, a nice toasted color, and gives them a sweet taste, plus, it doesn't cost as much as putting the equivalent weight of grain flour into the box. Besides, sugar doesn't spoil and has an indefinite shelf life.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Sugar/Data.htm

always!

...rather than the ratio of fructose to glucose, although that might be different for REALLY high fructose sweeteners like agave syrup, which is up to 90% fructose if I'm not mistaken. But since HFCS and sucrose are so close to one another in fructose content it's hard to understand what the mechanism is for making HFCS "worse" than sucrose.

I hear that repeated over and over again-- that HFCS is worse than sucrose-- but no one seems to know why. And it certainly isn't obvious from the chemical composition of HFCS. I suspect the mechanism has more to do with absolute consumption of simple sugars more than it has to do with intrinsic badness of HFCS.

Some of the "data" suggesting that HFCS is bad come from rather tight correlations between the increasing consumption of HFCS and disease statistics for obesity, diabetes, heart and liver disease, other metabolic disorders, etc. But the assumption is that HFCS is the culprit, while I wonder if consumption of that much of ANY sugars might not be the real problem. Certainly, access to cheap HFCS has driven more and more food manufacturers to use it, and to use more of it all the time. I'm not convinced that consuming equivalent amounts of sucrose would be any better, frankly.

google that. i was thinking of buying some as an alternative for my D, but did an about face!

...is responsible for some of the problems correlated with HFCS consumption, I'd avoid agave syrup.

agave syrup has far more fructose than HFCS.

And she recommends it (in small amounts.)

I don't eat/drink a lot of sweets but my kids like it on pancakes and that sort of thing -- trader Joes has an inexpensive version.

Agave syrup, honey, fruit, and HFCS have lower GI than sucrose because they have more fructose.

Pure fructose has a lower GI than pure glucose.

:evilgrin:

:silly:

You're not giving me a clue what to look for.

here ya go: http://www.living-foods.com/articles/agave.html, http://www.naturalnews.com/024892.html

"If fructose were natural, I would be able to go out to corn field and get a bucket of sweetener"

Well, you could go out and pick a bucket of corn, which is high in fructose. As soon as you pick it enzymes start turning it into starch, which is why freshly picked corn is so much sweeter than corn that's been sitting around while.

"I can go to a beehive and get honey that I can eat without processing it."

Crap, I wonder what they're going to do when they find out that honey is mostly fructose.

"Take water for example. We all know that the chemical formula for water is H2O: two hydrogens and one oxygen. The opposite would be O2H, which is nothing close to water."

:rofl:

"Likewise, man-made fructose would have to have the chemical formula changed for it to be levulose, so it is not levulose. "

Double :rofl:. The chemical formula for fructose is C₆H₁₂O₆. The chemical cormula of levulose is C₆H₁₂O₆. More importantly, the chemical structure is idential, even down to the stereochemistry. Why? Because fructose and levulose are synonyms.

Notes:

1. It's long been grandmotherly advice that eating too much sugar tends to make one fat.

2. HFCS contains molecular fructose, whereas the body is designed to metabolize fructose that is chemically bonded to another type of sugar molecule (i.e. glucose, lactose, etc.). The liver processes fructose only at some rate that probably varies from person to person, and if there's more fructose in the pipeline, the excess gets sent to fat-making pathways.

3. We probably don't know everything about genes and environment affect on metabolism. For example, plastics and chemical pesticides haven't always existed, and the leeching effects thereof are not completely known.

You said:



That's only during digestion in the intestine, and it only applies to the specific disacharidases that cleave dimeric sugars like sucrose (a dimer) into their constituent monosaccharides, like glucose and fructose. Disaccharidases in general are membrane associated enzymes in the villi of the intestinal mucosa, i.e. they are functionally OUTSIDE the body (the lumen of the gut is contiguous with the outside by way of the mouth and anus, and is a barrier protecting the real inside-- the other side of that mucosa). The point is that nothing is metabolized inside the intestine where digestion is occurring-- well, not human metabolism, anyway. In order to cross that mucosa, ALL sugars are typically reduced to monosaccharides, including molecular fructose. The interior of the body does not see any difference between HFCS derived fructose and sucrose derived fructose. They are identical.

I used to like HuffPo, but they're giving space to some of the biggest idiots on the tubes.

Edit:

9 Reasons to Completely Ignore Joseph Mercola

Sid

and Mercola is one of the worst crackpots out there.

However, he's right about HFCS adulterating our foods and its at this point presumed effect on body systems. It's bad shit. If you drink sugared soda, stop. Read labels. Cut down on as much as you can.

Learn to cook.

does not mean he's a quack! The man believes in HEALTH! Big Pharma does not-Period!

So does believing that AIDS is not caused by HIV. And that cancer is caused by fungus, and can be cured by baking soda.

My dear, get a grip. There are millions of people living fully functional lives because of drugs produced by big pharma. I'm one of them. If you live long enough, you will be too. Unless you want to stop living ahead of time.

Exclamation points don't make silly statements any less silly.

Redolent of shrieking hysteria.

Sid Dithers, Fighting to keep America safe for Monsanto.

Bwahahahahahahahahaha. Just kidding.

From the article --

HFCS is either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, and sucrose is 50 percent fructose, so it's really a wash in terms of sweetness.

Cane sugar (sucrose) molecules are a pair of glucose and fuctose molecules bound together. So it is 50% fructose as the article says. The pair is split in your intestines and the glucose and fuctose metabolized separately.

HFCS is a mixture of glucose and fuctose, and the HFCS 55 that is typically used as a sweetner in soft drinks if 55% fructose and 45% glucose. The HFCS 42, which is 42% fructose and 58% glucose, is mostly used in baking.

And even if HFCS were gone tomorrow, people wouldn't change their out of control sweet habits. Drinking 5 cans of "sugar" coke a day is still going to make you fat, sick and toothless. :shrug:

if you eat it in vast quantities, it doesn't matter which one you are ingesting. You will get fat!!!! The problem with HFCS is that they are EVERY FREAKING WHERE. They are in all processed foods. So we are getting more sugar than we need through our consumption of those foods. Hence our being unhealthy and getting fatter.

If we cut them down, then we will do better.

I don't have a problem with using natural sugar substitutes like agave syrup or honey because if you are using them in lieu of corn syrup laden products, you will PROBABLY use less of them than the amounts added to processed foods. If I make my own dressing for a salad, I might sprinkle half a teaspoon of sugar into it. Far less than any bottled salad dressing will use.


There may be some chemistry or biology-laden reason why HFCS are harder to break down in our bodies than pure sugar, but 99% of the problem is quantity ingested. Most Americans don't know quite how much crap they are ingesting when they ingest processed foods. Hint: It's a lot of crap!

Do you think that's BS?

follow the money.

I have baked my own bread over the years, so I can't understand WHY it's necessary to have HFCS in bread you buy at the store??? WHY???
OH, and the next thing to check is....soy...if it isn't HFCS, it's soy...and for anyone's information...soy blocks the thyroid hormone...my son and I both have to take thyroid medication now that we dieted and drank those protein drinks that were mostly SOY...wb

:-)

was due to aspartame. Mostly I use raw sugar and honey now anyway. And not much of those.

YMMV, of course.

Probably it's one of those chemicals...like sugar and salt that affect different people in different ways.

a nasty virus several years ago from my assistant's little girl that was most likely Fifth Disease (human parvovirus). It's a major cause of cardiomyopathy that leads to the need for heart transplants. In my case, it appears to have just sensitized my myocardium to that particular chemical.

and he drank a lot of diet sodas, most of them with aspartame. He still drinks diet caffeine free Dr. Pepper, which also has aspartame.

He had several cardioversions already and needs to keep taking meds. Every now and then, his heart skips back and he has to up his meds.

and for a couple of weeks it was even ventricular bigeminy/trigeminy. I thought it was caffeine (which I ALWAYS consumed with aspartame). Took a long time to figure out the real problem. I can recreate it anytime at will with modest use of the blue packets.

Tell him to STOP with the aspartame for a couple of months and see what happens.

He also stopped caffeine but still has caffeine free diet sodas. I'll let him know.

My ex used to drink nothing but diet soda and she would always get these migrane headaches, still does as far as I know. A coworker told me his wife was getting them then stopped drinking diet and bye bye headaches!
Now try and find a stick of sugarless gum that is made with out aspartame.

it must be cheaper than sugar

Was having them frequently. Optometrist said there was nothing wrong with my eyes & diagnosed the lights I was seeing as such. She didn't tell me they were caused by aspartame, but on a hunch I cut out diet soda and they went away. Now when I get the aura rarely, it's after I have had an after-dinner mint or gum or something without thinking and it contained aspartame. Anecdotal, I know, so "woo woo" to you-know-who.

aura but no headache a couple times (usually I get no aura with the headache). Interesting. I almost never get them now.

It's an herb that can be grown in a home garden or purchased at Health Food Stores. I also think it's sold in most supermarkets under the name "Truvia". It has zero calories and can be used in drinks, cooking, and baking. It also has no aftertaste.

FDA refused to approve aspartame for 16 years and then Donald Rumsfeld became CEO of Searle. Suddenly... it was approved.


http://www.politicalsoundoff.com/home/2009/10/27/fda-refused-to-approve-aspartame-for-16-years-and-then-donal.html



I would re-think aspertame if I was you..i won't allow the shit in my home or anyone in my family to uzse it...it causes so many allergic reactions ..and as a flight crew we were given the warnings of possible allergic reactions in our passengers. ( although my airline had a contract to use it!..I carried my own pink packets for myself!!)

I just can't stand actual sugar any more, it started leaving a nauseating aftertaste about 40 years ago...
obviously anyone who has a reaction to it shouldn't eat the stuff. I guess I'm lucky, the only things in the world I'm allergic to are the sting of a certain species of red wasp...and fundamentalism.
:-)

Later more thorough studies found that aspartame does not cause cancer. And review of the original work found that it was flawed.

Incidentally, that's almost the exact same story that prevented the all natural sweetener Stevia from getting approval.

Despite being perfectly safe, all sorts of kooks love to whine about aspartame. It's perennial woo woo. Which explains why your link is littered with cranks, quacks, and kooks. Blaylock, for example, is heavily into fluoride woo woo.

is that what you are saying?

but it was just aok when Rummy fucked with the FDA and their approval of his bubba's shit Aspartame...ok ..gotcha..now i understand your sig name.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


http://www.politicalsoundoff.com/home/2009/10/27/fda-refused-to-approve-aspartame-for-16-years-and-then-donal.html

"Donald Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition team and the day after he took office he appointed an FDA Commissioner who would approve aspartame. The FDA set up a Board of Inquiry of the best scientists they had to offer who said aspartame is not safe and causes brain tumors, and the petition for approval is hereby revoked. The new FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, over-ruled that Board of Inquiry and then went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer, Burson-Marstellar, rumored at $1000.00 a day, and has refused to talk to the press ever since.

"There were three congressional hearings because of the outcry of the people being poisoned. Senator Orrin Hatch refused to allow hearings for a long time. The first hearing was in 1985, and Senator Hatch and others were paid by Monsanto. So the bill by Senator Metzenbaum never got out of committee. This bill would have put a moratorium on aspartame, and had the NIH do independent studies on the problems being seen in the population, interaction with drugs, seizures, what it does to the fetus and even behavioral problems in children. This is due to the depletion of serotonin caused by the phenylalanine in aspartame."

According to a press release put out by the National Justice League on April 26, 2004, lawsuits were filed in three separate California courts against twelve companies who either produce or use the artificial sweetener aspartame as a sugar substitute in their products: Defendants in the lawsuits include Coca-cola, PepsiCo, Bayer Corp., the Dannon Company, William Wrigley Jr. Company, Walmart, ConAgra Foods, Wyeth, Inc., The NutraSweet Company, and Altria Corp. (parent company of Kraft Foods and Philip Morris).

The suits allege that the food companies committed fraud and breach of warranty by marketing products to the public such as diet Coke, diet Pepsi, sugar free gum, Flintstone's vitamins, yogurt (including Yoplait) and children's aspirin with the full knowledge that aspartame, the sweetener in them, is neurotoxic.

Read it again.

So many articles have been written about the problems caused by using aspartame that they have decided to give it a warm and fuzzy new name to trick us into buying products containing the stuff.

Many people have reported the following side effects from aspartame:
Fibromyalgia Syndrome and symptoms of Fibromyalgia
Multiple Sclerosis symptoms
Dizziness
Headaches
Menstrual problems
Joint Aches

I used to drink diet sodas and was developing joint aches. Thought I was getting arthritis. Then I read an article about aspartame's bad side effects. I gave up the stuff. Guess what? No more joint aches.


As to high fructose corn syrup, try looking at the cereal aisle at the grocery store -- there's maybe a handful of cereals without the crap. It also shows up in yogurt too.

I spend a lot of time in the grocery store these days, reading labels before I purchase items.

for sports. Gatorade and just about every drink that kids are consuming is full of HFCS. It's like MSG in everything that taste so good (try to find ranch dressing without that). I just add electrolyte drops to vit. water (which has cane sugar and fructose). My kids rarely drink soda. Its really everything in moderation for sugar or any fake sweeteners though I'd rather my kids use real sugar than the fake stuff because of everything I've read about our bodies not knowing what to do with the fake stuff.

Aren't all artificial sugars poisons??

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

You spew their pseudoscience and misinformation.

no one should put that crap in their bodies :-(

is formaldehyde. Yes, you read that right.

I wouldn't touch that crap with a ten-foot pole. Same goes for Splenda.

Your body naturally produces and processes formaldehyde every single day as a part of normal digestive processes. Yes, you read that right.

nt

no calories, and it doesn't raise your your BG. been in use in japan and central america for decades with NO bad effects.

mainstream!

and when I returned to the States, I couldn't stand eating the bread here anymore. I still rarely eat bread. It was cakelike in its sweetness.

and got a solar oven so I can have bread to eat in the summer here in the desert.

I've noticed a lot of foods with "off" flavors they never had before. Chicken is a prime example. Even the free range birds are tasting a little funny, probably because their feed is supplemented with the same crap factory raised chickens are fed on. I now satisfy my once a year fried chicken Jones with Quorn products.

We used to have the best food supply in the world. Now it's been cheapened and adulterated by factory farmers and it's killing us.

flour
water
salt
yeast

that fluffy white bread with the thin, soft brown crust typical of the cheap white mass-produced brands.

;-)

both yeast and unleavened. But my absolute favorite is Cuban which does have yeast and a little bit of lard.
Now -that- ought to be good for a couple people to yell at me, Wally.

:D

One of my favorite rock songs:

Song of a Baker by the Small Faces

There's wheat in the field
And water in the stream
And salt in the mine
And an aching in me

I can no longer stand and wonder
'Cos I'm driven by this hunger
So I'll jug some water
Bake some flour
Store some salt and wait the hour

While I'm thinking of love
Love is thinking for me
And the baker will come
And the baker I'll be

I am depending on my labour
The texture and the flavour

:-)

:grr:













(didn't want you to be disappointed :hi:)

:rofl:

unless it's your everyday bread. There is really no substitute if you're doing Cuban sandwiches, although I'm more likely to use solid veggie shortening because I don't use pork products.

We all need stuff that's bad for us once in a while. It's the stead diet of it that makes us run into trouble.

The reason HFCS is such a problem is that it's in everything, especially the sodas people are drinking because all of a sudden it's too much trouble to make iced tea, milk is prohibitively expensive, coffee jangles the nerves, and plain water gets boring.

I'm just sayin'---:evilgrin:

The church ladies in my hometown also worked in the school cafeteria. They made the BEST rolls (with lard). You post your recipe and I'll post mine, deal?:hi:

I think of myself as a good cook, because not only do I *like* to cook, but I love to eat as well. I make pickles, jams, jellies, my own pasta when the mood hits me. And then there's my downfall: bread. I love freshly baked bread and its wonderful scent, texture and taste. Have tried so many times to bake bread, and it sits there like a lump, looking at me. And in the end, once it's baked, the only use for it is as a doorstop or as a deadly weapon.

There is SOMETHING I'm doing wrong - but what?

Recipe? Hints and advice? Please?

Other flatbreads like chapatis and flour tortillas do not.

something like a ME style (wheat) tortilla. Not the kind with a big pocket.

edit: I'll be damned. The pita my wife has (the flat kind) made at the Dearborn Golden Bakery list ingredients as flour, water, yeast, salt, sugar. Hmmm, guess that shows what I know...

I lived in the United States for twenty years and then returned to Europe. I had memories of many foods I loved while living in the United States and looked forward to having those treats again on a recent visit. Guess what... those very favorites I wanted to taste again so much - many tasted artificial and stale. And without exception, far too sweet and cloying.

One habit I developed over these past years is to not buy pre-packaged or prepared foods. I make my dinners from scratch, buying seasonal vegetables and fruit. Why do I need to eat strawberries and asparagus in December, when they aren't locally available until June? Answer: I don't, because I wait until June, looking forward to these seasonal treats.

It does take time to shop and cook from scratch, and we have leftovers for dinner for a few days or freeze them for later, but our food is home-cooked. The exception is bread. Our bread comes from a bakery in the countryside, delivered once a week - dark, crusty bread. Real bread. Spread some butter on it, add a sprinkling of chopped chives, and it's heaven. What is such a pity is that so many people don't have ready access to this staple, but are rather forced to eat that crap that is so artificial it won't even grow mold.

...that is the main reason that I don't bake most breads any longer. They simply do a better job.

It is doesn't rot, it ain't food. It's plastic.

...one does not need sugar to make bread. All you need is flour, I prefer spelt, water and some yeast. That is it. I make my own. It only takes about 5 minutes a day to make a loaf (read the great book "Artisian Bread in 5 minutes a day.")

The fact is that the Standard AMerican Diet (SAD) is the only one GUARANTEED to make you sick. Eat like an America and you will either die younger than you need to or suffer some pretty serious dibilitating diseases.







As for PornSyrup I'm pretty sure he works for someone in the food industry and Monsanto is a likely enough choice.

will leap at the chance to spend more money for 'healthier' foods and vitamins and have plenty of leeway to take a few days off to reduce stress.

Why is it that the people who write these screeds are always the people who make enough money to practice what they preach? Could it be because the people who are living paycheck to paycheck don't have the time or the money to eliminate all those bad things from their diets and their lives and write about the benefits?

Yes, HFCS is awful - packaged foods are horrible - and working three jobs is terrible for your health.

Adding a fourth job to pay for the healthy, organic, fresh, locally grown foods will be much better for everyone, I'm sure. They can slot that new job in after they meditate, commune with nature, and spend hours in the kitchen preparing all the healthy food for their sit-down family meals.

The problem is not that it is discussed as a choice but that it is pronounced as a demand, with little to no consideration given to the simple fact that there are many, many people who cannot - not will not but cannot - simply DO what the opinion writer pronounces as the proper course.

Do I understand that these things are bad for us? Yes, I do - but these sort of screeds (and that's what the linked article is) are no better than the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' preaching of the 19th century. That preaching was almost always directed at those who could barely afford rags to wrap around their feet, much less boots to pull up. This does the same thing - and while it might make the writer feel morally smug, it does little to address the larger problems society faces.

By all means, talk about good nutritional choices - I'm not standing in your way or that of anyone else.

of rice and beans, is cheap, nutritious, and healthy.....

i understand your point; but it is possible to eat healthier, at least, even when not making middle class wages

some of the larger issues are the structure of the agricultural subsidies and supports in this country; they favor the big 5 at the expense of producers of fruits and veggies....leading to their higher cost, etc....

The point I was trying to make is that the people who think they have all the answers are not the one's on the pointy end of this particular stick - and their moral outrage over 'bad' food is both tedious and disgusting.

I'm not antagonized, by the way (although I admit I've been downright cranky all day, which accounts for my initial post - I don't usually hit 'submit' after writing something like that.)

:)

They have no nutritional value besides the caloric content of the sugar in them.

Diet soft drinks, flavored waters and teas, and bottled water are a total waste of money.

Fruit juices, milk, etc. at least provide some nutrition. A cup of tea or coffee, made yourself using inexpensive brands, provides some taste and the acidity and other chemicals help "disinfect" the water you are using, which is one of the reasons that tea and coffee were considered "healthy" when the water supplies were pretty iffy.

There is nothing in soda, what we call "pop" in NY, that is food. I was working 12 hour swing shifts in a factory years ago and was dogging it badly every day by shift's end. One of my buddies always seemed better off. When I asked why, he told me he never ate candy or drank soda as a kid, so neither as an adult. I quit drinking soda and felt better within a few days.

Found out I'm diabetic last September. I took up trying to cut out HFCS and BHA/BHT over 20 years ago after reading Dr. David Reuben's "Everything You Need to Know About Nutritution But Didn't Know Enough to Ask" (title may differ slightly.) It is everywhere, but it can be nearly eliminated if you get religious about it.

In my recently acquired, 225 carb/day diabetic's diet, I use Nustevia when I decide to sweeten something.

You can say sugar is natural, but so is poison ivy. Want some in your salad? In college in the early 90's, I did a proto magazine ad about sugar substitute that alluded to a real study showing that when sugar was introduced to third world and developing nations, rotten teeth, obesity and diabetes followed along with all manner of health issues that did not exist before the introduction of sugar. Cane Sugar is bad. There are enough natural sugars in fruits to satisfy a body's needs.

The heinous pop culture drink of our times is energy drinks. Horrible, horrible crap that has no business in anybody's body. Need energy? Eat as decent a diet as you can and get your sleep. Pumping crap into your body is like Republican politics- it might get you what you want in the short haul, but will devastate you further down the road.

I am talking about poor people telling insurance companies to piss off and keeping their monthly payments for themselves. People pay insurance companies out of fear that they will get sick, but when they do get sick, the insurance company doesn't help and causes more stress than the illness itself.


Everyone will benefit when people who do have the time and knowledge stand up together and make demands on our FDA. Nothing should get past the FDA until it is proven safe, and not by studies paid for by the company.

The FDA use to function to protect us from harmful foods.

Now they function to protect the corporations who are producing harmful foods from US.

Well said!

buying mounds of crap food which does not satisfy and you therefore buy MORE of it.

Three good, light meals a day costs no more than all the junk food most people eat. Tap water is cheaper and healthier than soda, by a LONG way. Even bottled water is cheaper at the SAME price, because it quenches your thirst, while soda keeps you craving more and more.

The only difficulty with finding good food is FINDING good food. The expense is not an issue, unless you have to go miles out of your way, costing time, transport, and extra money.

But you can start small - just not use anything with HFCS in the ingredients. It can be done.

Just got through posting about cooking from scratch.

You are right. There are circumstances when working two or more jobs, picking the kids up from daycare, doing your chores at home, supervising homework, trying to make it from payday to payday while feeding the family will not allow (either time- or money-wise) to shop for seasonal produce and cook from scratch. There are some neighborhoods where fresh fruit and vegetables are not readily available, or else very expensive.

I'm now an empty-nester with a good paycheck and it is all too easy for me to talk. Thank you for bringing me back down to earth, remembering those years of eating Wonder Bread or its equivalent (often day-old, because cheaper) with mustard so I could afford to send my kid to daycare and feed him a hot meal at night.

I've cut my soda consumption to less a serving per week and saved around $10 per month. A serving of fruit is usually cheaper than or comparable in price to a serving of junk sweets like Twinkies, etc. For most Americans, their worst food habits are due to excessive consumption of junk foods. Cutting back on these will SAVE them money.

to encourage the producers to make food with better nutritional profiles. When enough people pass up that food with high sodium or high fat or high sugar amounts, or low nutritional value, the market listens.

With some issues the government can step in to either encourage or regulate a change. Look at how swiftly manufacturers started touting "no trans fats," for example. Another one at a different side of the equation is the issuing of farmers market vouchers, over and above the SNAP/food stamp assistance, as a way for very low income families to earmark some food money for fresh fruits and vegetables.

Low income people can't be on the forefront of these changes for the reasons you articulated,but everyone else can participate in changes that may help them get better quality food.

HFCS is nutritionally no different than any other refined sugar. It's not very good for you in large quantities, *just like* beet sugar and cane sugar.

:hi:

- Corn grows in a very large swath of the U.S.
- Corn is more useful for many different things, including ethanol and animal feedstock, than sugar beets
- Most importantly, corn growers are wealthy and can afford to lobby for subsidies

None of it has anything to do with HFCS being nutritionally different than table sugar.

The only reasonable conclusion is that you can identify no "scientific" reason for this stuff to be preferred over other sweeteners--it's government pork that makes the economics work.

There isn't a scientific explanation. It's outside the realm of science.

A little slow on the upswing, are we? :silly:

Oh, that's right. I'm not. You fail.

When you've been forced to admit that, in fact, it is NOT "just science" that is dictating which of these sweeteners producers and consumers are choosing.

And this is yet another situation in which you (hiding behind a proclamation that "It's JSUT SCIENCE!", no less) desire to keep consumers in the dark about their choices and/or prevent them from choosing what they perceive as healthier alternatives.

In short, more Operation Mind Syrup type stuff.

If somebody wants to argue about ending corn subsidies, that's fine.

I only take issue when people espouse pseudoscience.

You can't complain about keeping consumers in the dark while endorsing pseudoscience. That's hypocritical.

Your over-arcing thesis is that consumers must be kept in the dark because they do not make (in your estimation) the "scientific" choice.

It's a lame thesis, but there you go. And you aren't particularly proud of it, as you squirm like a schoolboy when called on it.

Never has been.

Skirm?

And anybody can see that I've never argued for or against labeling of GMOs based on scientific grounds.

Not that it has anything to do with this topic, as HFCS is labeled. It seems you're just continuing an argument from another thread, and getting it wrong in the process. Suhprise suhprise suhprise.

But it appears you're not interested.

That's my stand. Yours is to justify the status quo at any cost (and this applies to any subject you like.) (And you've dropped into "it's SCIENCE!" again--remember that this subthread is about policy choices--you know, that thing you said upthread that you never conflate with so-called "science".

Like I said: waste. of. time. :hi:

But, like you admit, you're not really interested in stuff like facts.

That doesn't affect its nutritional content. I suppose we could "prefer" sugar beets to the same degree we prefer corn. It wouldn't change anything, scientifically.

Can I possibly make this point any clearer for you? :shrug:

I am simply pointing out that claming "SCIENCE" as a reason AGAINST this preference is bullshit.

The price of cane sugar in the US is artificially high due to quotas and protective tariffs erected on behalf of the cane sugare plantations of Florida, Louisiana, and a couple other cane producing states. There also protect beet sugar producers, but that is a lesser factor.

HFCS would probably not be competitive with world sugar prices. Or at least it was not in the past. Demand by China and India on the world market may be changing that.

Sugar cane can't be grown in most of the United States so it's shipped over greater differences. Corn can be grown in just about every state, and processed closer to where it will be used.

in any form. :hi:

I bet you thought you had some kind of point in there but I really don't see what it could be. Are you suggesting we are buying our HFCS from international sources? :hi:

Whether what we will call "the sweetener" be HFCS, beet, or cane in origin. Really, my point is clear in the context of your comments to me. :hi:

That's enough for me.

Oh, but this is something useful for you to read:
http://www.sweetsurprise.com/learning-center/hfcs-not-subsidized
The only caloric sweeteners that benefit directly from government support programs in the United States are sugar and honey.

You lose. Try again next time. :hi:

"Except that it can be supplied more cheaply on the int'l market than it can be grown here."

(it) means "the sweetener" which we are assuming means a sweetening product derived from either corn, cane, or beets which can be compared at cost/sweetening effect.

So...what point have I conceded? Be specific. :hi:

And the link I just posted completely dismisses it. Your red herring about other sweeteners and the int'l market is exactly that, and irrelevant. :hi:

(emphasis not in the original.)

"in any form" mean as corn, beets, or cane. Again, this is obvious in context. Your link doesn't dismiss anything other than any faith in your ability to slow down and read before responding... :shrug:

Your OP was post #42. It had a subject line of "So... what's the "scientific" explanation for the massive gov't subsidies for corn then?" and no text.

You are quoting from your red herring post. I am not interested in your changing of the subject. Your OP has been dismissed. :hi:

Could you (just for the sake of a numbskull like me,) please make explicit the so-called "red herring" you feel you've demolished? Do you think that you've proven that there are no subsidies for corn? That's foolish. :silly:

Its point has been dismissed. The rest of your rambling is a distraction. Take care. :hi:

So, even accepting your idiosyncratic definition of OP, the post to which you refer wasn't it. :shrug:

So again, I ask you, which point has been been "dismissed"? Please be specific. :hi:

I'd say we're done here. :hi:

You may now have your precious last word.

Go on a strict diet of HFCS-based "juice drinks" like the majority of poorer Americans do.

I dare HighFrutose... and the other posters on this thread to put their money where their mouth is and stop drinking real juice and start drinking what 95% of what's sold is.

And it's no more or less safe.

Now diet soda, that is safer than juice.

I share your concerns about real juice vs. sugar + water, so you are evidently arguing with some other person.

Fruit drinks have no nutrients and are garbage in a glass.

Juice is actually not great for anyone to drink in great quantities either, precisely for the reason that its a concentrated sugar drink too, but without all the fiber and sense of fullness that a whole fruit would give you. There are the nutrients, which the fruit drinks lack completely, but as soon as fruit is cut or processed, it loses vitamin content quickly. For that reason, it isn't a great idea to make fruit salad more than an hour or so before you eat it. And anyone on a "diet" should stay away from fruit juice as well as fruit drinks and stick to small servings of whole fruit.

Those who are poor would do better to buy soluable vitamin c tablets, which are cheaper than fruit drinks, much more healthy, and a heck of a lot lighter to schlep home.

you get people to bite on your hooks like fish snapping back into animation at the early spring thaw.

All their science and health reporting is unadulterated crap.

Alternative Medicine is the wave of the future, so you better get used to it.

clinical environments - is the wave of the future. The sort of woo and snake oil you guys promulgate will always lose in the end.

as an argument, the poster is totally disqualified.

that has been solved by alternative "medicine". Show me a homeopath or acupuncturist who can effectively treat gangrene, appendicitis or ovarian cancer.

Alternative "medicine" specializes in diseases that don't kill you rapidly if they are left untreated. This is because all the treatments rely on your body's natural ability to heal itself without intervention.

There's nothing progressive about scientific illiteracy.

it's great that people want to be more in charge of their own health, and not to leave it completely in the hands of BIG PHARMA.

BIG PHARMA is not into preventive medicine :-)

I really like fruit :(

I knew a guy who ate tons of fruit every day. He'd have a big plate of the stuff on his desk. He's disabled now with multiple problems. Don't know whether there was a connection, but your body isn't built to eat fruit.

Humans are not fructivores, unlike some of the monkeys. We're more omnivores -- fruit, nuts, berries, leaves, roots, insects, reptiles, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, nestlings, eggs, and whatever dead birds and mammals we could scavenge until traps, nets, spears, and bows and arrows were invented.

it's natural :)

Technically it's even a fruit.

And nobody's ever died or got sick because they used HFCS instead of sucrose.

Mercola is a well-known quack. And Huffington Post is well known to be disreputable when it comes to posting on any scientific topic.

:rofl: :hi:

Here's a molecule of aspartame:




Here are the three molecules which HFCS is composed of:







The first is glucose, the second is fructose, the third is dihydrogen monoxide. All three are perfectly natural, and found in all living organisms.


Really, romulox. This is basic science.

LOL at your "it's basic science!" (sic!) after your disclaimer upthread, at any rate! :hi:

:shrug:

Dictionaries don't cover all definitions and contexts, particularly when it comes to scientific terms.

And now you are grasping at straws. Your definition is only one of several possible, and it is easy to prove it problematic.

And the point stands: somebody (namely, the editors at M-W.com) says "artificial diamond". :hi: :rofl:

Natural sugars v. artificial sweeteners.

My encyclopedia trumps your dictionary.

It's just one that you've lost.

"cubic zirconium" which isn't carbon.

:hi:

I obviously meant "nobody" as in nobody with a science education.

http://www.sciencedictionary.org/
:hi:

I wish there was an :oh brother: smiley, but this one will have to do. :eyes:

which I know perfectly well...it's just that it has nothing to do with what (or how) we're discussing.

I mean, you could describe cane sugar as being artificial because sugar cane farms are artificial. And sugar refining is artificial. And trucks that take the sugar to market are artificial. And markets are artificial. And so on.

But that would be intellectually dishonest, now wouldn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_compound

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_sweetener

It is.

:shrug:

High fructose corn syrup is sugar. Technically it's sugar in a water solution, but you get the point.

Charcoal and diamond are different on a molecular level.

Other than that - not much.

Chip on my shoulder? Because you're wrong? Hardly.

Its basic chemistry. Sucrose (cane sugar) is broken into glucose and fructose during digestion; glucose and fructose are the main components of HFCS. HFCS is sugar. Graphite consists of sheets of carbon in a planar configuration, while diamonds consist of a tetrahedral network of carbon atoms; they are not the same. You have made a non-analogy based on your feelings toward HFCS and other substances you deem unnatural. Try again.

true!!

The article decries the evil of fructose and the terrible things it will do to your body. Fruit has tons of fructose. The fructose in 3-5 apples = the fructose in 1 coke.

This is just one example of why the linked article is a steaming pile of garbage.

I've read enough posts now and have decided that the folks who claim that this article is a "steaming pile are garbage" are accurate.

yikes!

since my diabetes Dx. hfcs, AND white sugar, are poison. i'm positive they had something to do with the Dx as i have always had a sweet tooth. no more....i now use stevia to sweeten and it's working great!

When I was a kid, I thought that it was because they were too cheap to buy us more pop and candy bars.

But on mature reflection, when they were kids, back in the late 1800s, diabetes was a death sentence.

Their advice is still good.

diabetes doesn't run in my family. mom is 77 and very healthy, but she has never drunk sodas at all or eaten (sugary) junk foods to excess (unlike me in the past). i used to have my cokes every day...well, it caught up to me (sister too). i had to make a total lifestyle change. it's been about a month now, and i've already lost weight and feel great with no sugar! i don't even miss it...

any more than riding a bicycle causes flat feet. Too much sugar (or other carbohydrates) very well may exacerbate it, though by making the pancreas operate outside its evolved normal limitations.

And the swings in blood glucose are one of the factors that leads to or worsens Type II diabetes.

Type I diabetes is an autoimmune disease, rather than being acquired.

http://diabetes.webmd.com/guide/diabetes-causes

:-)

Especially if people still drink super sized drinks, eat too much and watch 5 hours of TV a day.

please take that into consideration when evaluating the accuracy of the article in the OP.

Sid

buying crappy food because it's all I can afford *sarcasm*

Whooda thunk it?

:sarcasm: I have so had it with the commercials that still come on TV telling people calmly that HFCS is "just sugar" so deal with it. It's crap and it's bad for you but it's cheap and inconvenient for the corporations to stop putting it in everything. We have such a sick society.

And no amount of ignoring the facts, or wishing them away, is going to change the fact that HFCS is sugar.

I've even had people try to lecture me about what "sugar" is and why neither HFCS or fructose are sugars. The ignorance about really basic science concepts is palpable, sometimes.

The illiterati are epically stupid on this topic.

But between your inability to recognize you've lost an argument. Your general immaturity. And your habit of being wrong on just about everything... Well, you've got a lot more in common with OMC than I do.

Those DUers who've been round long enough to remember the flame wars me and OMC went through will remember there are few more diametrically opposed to OMC than I am.

I am saying you are just like that poster, not that you are that poster. "Operation Mind Crime was taken" implies that there was another person to take it.

You're not as subtltltltltle as you think you are.

"You're not as subtltltltltle as you think you are."

Subtle how? You are a lot like the poster Operation Mind Crime. No subtlety involved in this statement. :shrug:

:eyes:

just to laugh at everybody when you still have the same problems you have now. It's the sickening and uncontrolled overconsumption of sweeteners and food in general that makes people unhealthy, not a few percentage points difference in the glucose/fructose ratio in your chosen sugar.

Take it off the market and in ten years obesity, diabetes, and associated health problems will remain unchanged. Gluttony is not ingredient-dependent.

:shrug:

End result of corn syrup being phased out; everyone who is hugely fat and has diabetes now will still be hugely fat and diabetic, but their boogyman of choice will be gone.

Gluttony and overconsumption are the issues, not HFCS vs, cane sugar. Sitting still and eating too much makes people obese, not "obesogens" or corn subsidies.