High-Fructose Corn Syrup -- Another Poison in Common Foods

reply to post by anhinga


Thanks for this informative thread,

I am a stevia user and you can find it in your local health food store, from powder form to package individually.

Something I noticed recently is that our local Wal-Mart started to sell stevia, and it was selling pretty good, but out of nowhere they stop, I ask the clerks about the missing Stevia and they said that it was not selling.

I think is a big lie.

reply to post by marg6043


Stevia is a great alternative.

Thanks for the info about "tram-law" (Wal Mart backwards) -- does not surprise me, in the recent aspartame thread, I found countless examples of special-interest to approve these products AND keep them on the market.

Blatant disrespect of humanity -- but some of the same people call the Geneva Conventions "quaint" -- so, I don't see it changing anytime soon, unless people get really fed up, I often leave informational flyers where ever I can to do my part.

[edit on 5-11-2007 by anhinga]

reply to post by anhinga


I agree, now Wal-mart is big on aspartame products and splenda on all kind of form.

Plus their value brand of aspartame also.

I believe the competition was too much for them having an organic brand like stevia.

It turns out that HFCS is very similar to honey (55% fructose, 45% glucose). We'd better avoid honey too.

reply to post by RatRanger


To the People's Chemist!

HFCS transforms people into eating machines. Once consumed, it sets into motion a chemical cascade that begins with spiked insulin and ends with feel-good molecules known as endorphins. Intoxicated with artificial feel-good, our brains are unable to sense overeating and demand more, more, more. The excess calories get stored in your bottom – big time. Ultra-sensitive to the Frankenfood induced pig-out, I’ve even heard of kids accidentally taking bites out of their fingers when under the influence of HFCS. Worse yet, many children who over-indulge on products containing HFCS eventually become diabetic.

Sugar is great for a birthday party, that’s it. Like HFCS, it is nothing more than fat fertilizer and a heart attack waiting to happen. Look for it listed as sucrose, dextrose, or cane sugar on the labels of your favorite food.

Remember kids, Shane Ellison has an Masters degree in organic chemistry... www.thepeopleschemist.com...

...and to the last poster, turns out honey isn't that good for you. And for a little typical 'preemptive strike' to those w/ the "gotta have some sugar" -- there are some healthy alternatives that aren't fat machines.

Hey, looka this: 62% adults and 34% of America's kids are overweight! Hmm, half the population.

www.usatoday.com...

[edit on 13-11-2007 by anhinga]

reply to post by anhinga


Congratulations, you pointed out that too much sugar is bad for you. Care to contribute something most of us DON'T already know?

Seriously. How about telling me how HFCS is worse than honey, seeing as they're both 55% fructose and 45% glucose?

[edit on 13-11-2007 by RatRanger]

reply to post by RatRanger


Yeah, it's bad for you, I didn't ask this thread to go on and on like this... hey rat, watch the attitude for a member who's a day old. I'll point you to a "courtesy is mandatory" thread which mentions the terms & conditions in regards to insulting behavior:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Also, to quote your pronoun usage of "us" -- I beg to differ on your not-true absolute statement when a population is nearly HALF overweight.



[edit on 13-11-2007 by anhinga]

I would reply by U2U to keep the thread from drifting off-topic, but apparently I don't have enough posts yet to be allowed to use the U2U system.

I'm sorry to hear you think I'm being rude. I don't mean to be. But you're taking this thread off-topic more and more.

...been paging through this anti-sugar(s) book and came across these stats, thought to update the thread, also from a site that has a slew of HFCS info:

www.femhealth.com...

More than 1 out of every 3 individuals in the United States has diabetes or impaired fasting glucose, a condition that increases the risk of developing diabetes.

The CDC estimates that diabetes costs the United States $92 billion in medical costs and $40 billion in indirect costs.

It is getting difficult to find a food product at the grocery store or McDonalds that is not loaded with HFCS. One 20-oz bottle of Coke, Pepsi, Mt Dew, Sprite or Dr. Pepper is the equivalent of pouring 17 teaspoons of sugar straight into your body.

HFCS is the leading ingredient after carbonated water in these beverages. Women who drink at least one regular soda a day are 85% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who drink less. It also leads to tooth decay.

People who use HFCS as a sweetener increase their triglycerides 32% relative to people who use mostly sugar, according to U. of Minnesota professor John Bantle. The body metabolizes high fructose corn syrup differently than sugar. It blunts the body's ability to recognize when it is full and increases a person's appetite.

Beta cells in the pancreas create insulin in response to sugar obtained from food. When beta cells start to function less effectively, they produce less insulin, leading ultimately to diabetes. The USC team found that about 40% of the sweets consumed by the children in this study came from sugary drinks such as soda or sweetened juices.

Research by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reveals that high fructose diets shorten the life span of laboratory mice from the normal two years to a mere five weeks.

archives.cnn.com...

What's even more astonishing, scientists say, is that 90% of genes associated with disease are identical in humans and mice. Because new generations of mice are born just weeks or months apart, and because medical experiments with humans are usually not done for ethical reasons, mice have become valuable research tools.

1. Sugar can suppress your immune system...
2. Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in your body...
3. Sugar can cause can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.
4. Sugar can produce a significant rise in total cholesterol, triglycerides and bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol.
5. Sugar feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas...
6. Sugar can cause many problems with the gastrointestinal tract...
7. Sugar contributes to obesity.
8. Sugar can cause autoimmune diseases such as: arthritis, asthma, MS
9. Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of yeast infections

"Lick The Sugar Habit" by Nancy Appleton, Ph.D

[edit on 24-11-2007 by anhinga]

Originally posted by Beachcoma
Good thing I've a natural aversion to non-honey sweet stuff. I only take honey as sweeteners, and only honey from the jungle (that stuff is potent!)

Agave is also a good substitute for any sweetener...it's derived from a desert plant and completely natural.

In my experience, sweeteners really aren’t necessary. When I first started educating myself to diet and nutrition some 23 yrs ago, it was because I was experiencing hypoglycemia. I soon found that how food tastes is all about what you’re accustomed to. I stopped using sugar cold turkey, and it took only a week or so to ‘dry out’. Soon I was eating plain oatmeal and enjoying it. The addition of strawberries or even raisins made plain oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, etc. taste like candy. Now soda, sweet tea, or any of the host of other foods loaded with such sweeteners are far too cloyingly sweet for me to enjoy. When I do very occasionally treat myself to some ice cream, pie or other desserts it about blows the top of my head off. In the same way, the presence of fat in foods can be brought down or at least changed so that good fats replace the unhealthy ones. For example, once you’ve weaned yourself off of corn fed beef, range fed meat, which is less rich in taste, will satisfy just fine. Soon, even olive oil covering vegetables, chicken and rice tastes great.

I’m reminded of an old joke: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

Only one, but it takes a very long time, and the light bulb has to want to change.

Now for some personal testimony. It’s purely anecdotal to be sure, but perhaps not completely without merit. Before my self education in diet and nutrition I suffered from: chronic ear infections, terrible allergies, hypoglycemia, and the perpetual pissed-off state that low blood sugar leads to. I eliminated or severely limited the following from my diet: all sweeteners, whether natural or synthetic, hydrogenated lipids, and nitrates. The hypoglycemia went away quite quickly, aided by an exercise regimen, and the allergies were reduced. Some time later, I added Omega 3 and 6 lipids to my diet (flax seed oil and fish oils) in combination with a sulfur protein (cottage cheese), a natural source multivitamin, and occasionally oregano oil. The chronic ear infections I had suffered from for 30 yrs disappeared overnight and have never reappeared. The allergies that once had me feeling my way to the bathroom in the morning to run warm water over my eyes so I could open them were reduced to a seasonal sniffle. I haven’t hade a cold in years, and if I feel one starting, I just down a couple cloves of garlic, take some oregano oil and drink a bunch of water, and it’s gone it 24 hrs. Even if you’re one of the genetic prodigies that seems to be able to eat anything without problem, you owe it to yourself to see how much better you can feel by subtracting the bad and adding the good to your diet.

My .25

Update: Pacific NW grocery store(s) decide(s) to ban HFCS!

seattlepi.nwsource.com...

There are no Wheat Thins at PCC Natural Markets, no boxes of Kellogg's Raisin Bran, not even any Sara Lee whole grain bagels or Oroweat cracked-wheat hot dog buns.

What customers will find is almost unheard of: a supermarket free of products containing high-fructose corn syrup.

After years of winnowing out the ubiquitous sweetener, the eight-store natural foods co-op announced this week that the rout was complete. While the science behind the move is still the subject of hot debate, the scope is unquestioned.

Like many PCC shoppers, Hunt is an avid label reader. She avoids all artificial sweeteners and trans fats as well as hormones in milk, and she steers clear of high-fructose corn syrup.

"I try hard not to add that to my family's diet," said Hunt. "I just don't think we need to do that. I'm sure there's a lot of arguments on both sides, but I just sort of feel intuitively that it's better not to."

After public outcry over health issues such as trans fats in food, high-fructose corn syrup is taking shape as "the newest health villain," according to Datamonitor, a business industry analyst with U.S. headquarters in New York. The sweetener has been targeted on two grounds in the nation's obesity epidemic.

...another update:

Consuming beverages containing high fructose corn syrup may increase the risk of developing diabetes, particularly among children, according to research presented at the 234th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Researchers examined the chemical composition of 11 different beverages containing high fructose corn syrup. All of them were found to contain "astonishingly high" levels of reactive carbonyls, according to lead researcher Chi-Tang Ho.

Reactive carbonyls, associated with the "unbound" fructose and glucose molecules found in high fructose corn syrup, are a type of free radical that has been associated with diabetes. Levels of reactive carbonyls are unusually high in the blood of those with the disease, and are also linked with the occurrence of complications. Reactive carbonyls are also believed to cause tissue damage that may contribute to the development of the disease, especially in children.

In contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar or other sweeteners composed mostly of "bound," chemically stable sugars.

www.naturalnews.com...

Recent *breaking* update, FDA responds, calling HFCS unnatural:

02-Apr-2008 - Products containing high fructose corn syrup cannot be considered 'natural' and should not be labeled as such, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said.

The decision is likely to cause a massive stir in the food and beverage industry, where a discreet battle has been raging over the status of the controversial sweetener.

Additionally, the Natural Marketing Institute reported in 2004 that 63 percent of US consumers have a preference for natural foods and beverages. In 2006, a Harris Interactive survey found that 83 percent of people wanted a government definition of the term.

FDA comments on HFCS spark industry opposition:
www.nutraingredients-usa.com...

HFCS is not 'natural', says FDA:
www.foodnavigator-usa.com...

....as well as consumer groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest categorically maintain that HFCS cannot be considered natural because its chemical bonds are broken and rearranged in the manufacturing process.

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[edit on 3-4-2008 by anhinga]

reply to post by anhinga


I saw this article yesterday. I hope that this helps food manufacturers to go back to using sugar instead of HFCS. It is very difficult to find anything sweetened with just sugar anymore.

I managed to kick cola-drinks again, after a real dependancy for a few years, where I chugged down half a gallon a day. I'm already a big and musculare guy, but that extra sugar has loaded a lot of fat onto me.
Unfortunately I am still in need of that half gallon of soda each day, but this time it's something WITHOUT pesticides in it at least... (unlike coca cola and pepsi.) and yes, I never touch aspartame or xylitol or any of that artificial stuff. I can taste it from a mile away, and throw my food or drink on the ground if it has any in it.
I just kicked fluoride today also, so then I only have left to use only fully-encased bullets in my guns to avoid lead-exposure, and I also kicked frozen pizzas about a year ago
Canned food is also bad for you I hear, as is fish (mercury and dioxines) but you still need fish, and sometimes it only comes in cans, but stay away from the tuna. This guy in germany ate 4 100-gram cans of tuna a day for two weeks and ended up in the hospital from mercury poisoning.

As long as you don't heat the canned food IN the can you should be a lot better off.
Frozen vegetables are so expensive I mostly buy the canned vegetables that don't come fresh up here. Much more appropriate serving sizes too.

With GODs help I will soon be the owner of land on which to grow my own vegetables and hold some "illegal" sheep.
My parents grew all the vegetables we needed in our garden in the 80's, they were constantly raided by rabbits and people, and soon there was only the carrots, strawberries and potatos left, and then even just potatos and the wild sweet peas and sour leaves and rubarb of course, "hidden" food. Now the iberia-snails have invaded and killed everything, so there is nothing, but I want to grow my own food on my own land and damn the government.

On the website of Dr. Andrew Weil, there are four articles on high fructose corn syrup. Here is the most recent:


www.drweil.com...


Dr. Weil (he's a medical doctor, not a PhD) has absolutely nothing good to say about HFCS. All 4 articles are worth reading. HFCS really is pretty scary stuff.

Elsewhere on this thread, someone was asking about where to buy stevia. I buy stevia in its powdered form at Trader Joe's market, which now has a lot of store locations. Here is their website:


www.traderjoes.com...


After going cold turkey on stopping all refined sugars about 6 months ago, I have a lot more energy and feel better. It's now easy for me to detect added sweeteners in products I would never have suspected have added sugar, although they do: Western Bagel has HFCS in their bagels ...bummer. And the heavy sauces at my favorite Chinese restaurant ... ditto.

What High Fructose Corn Syrup made at home!

www.esoterictube.com...

King Corn -- watch the movie here!!

New study confirms corn syrup = obesity!!

www.princeton.edu...

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

reply to post by drew hempel


Oops, to put a conspiracy spin on this.... one of the authors, "Nicole M. Avena", was at the "Rockefeller University"......

Some here may look at this with suspicion...

But aside from that, I think it's a nice study. Link to abstract below. If you want the fulltext pdf I might be able to get it.

High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristics of obesity in rats: Increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels

Originally posted by RatRanger

Seriously. How about telling me how HFCS is worse than honey, seeing as they're both 55% fructose and 45% glucose?

[edit on 13-11-2007 by RatRanger]

HFCS is a highly refined chemical concoction, honey is a naturally made enzymatically rich sugar syrup that has trace minerals. While heated honey may be some what similar to HFCS, cold packed unheated honey is way different on the body imo.

Table sugar is also very similar to HFCS in regards to the sugar ratio but recent research has shown that rats react considerably different to HFCS
www.princeton.edu...


I personally find i do fine with a couple tablespoons of wild flower cold packed honey daily