I am giving up high fructose corn syrup for Lent. On the night of Mardi Gras I drank my last Coke and ate my last Hershey’s bar. No more high fructose corn syrup for me till at least Easter!
High fructose corn syrup was invented in the 1970s and entered the American food supply in the 1980s. Since it is 40% cheaper than sugar but tastes just as good it is now in all kinds of things – not just Coke but spaghetti sauce, bread, corn flakes, canned fruit, ketchup, fast food and on and on. It accounts for half of all the sugar Americans consume.
Some studies say it is harmless, others not – as you can imagine for anything that has become big business. One study says it is no worse than sugar. Another says that a third of all food with it also has mercury! Dr Mehmet Oz said on Oprah that it leads to overeating since the body does not read it as food.
The Corn Refiners Association spent $30 million on ads to tell us that “it’s made from corn, it’s natural, and like sugar, it’s fine in moderation.” Those ads have been mercilessly mocked on YouTube. It was probably the “fine in moderation” that set everyone off, but the “natural” is laughable too.
Over the past few years food companies have been moving away from it. So if one brand of peanut butter has it, for example, probably another one does not.
How to avoid high fructose corn syrup:
- Read the ingredients! Anything that would have high fructose corn syrup in it would also have its ingredients listed on the package somewhere. Read them! This should become second nature. There is no telling what has it and what does not till you read the ingredients. For example, that Mardi Gras Hershey bar I ate did not have it! Nor do some Girl Scout cookies. Or Cap’n Crunch. But cheap store-brand bread and corn flakes do!
- Avoid fast food, pizza, take-out and cafeteria food. Fast food uses it to keep down costs. It is a fair bet that school and company cafeterias do too. Take-out and pizza could also have it – avoid them just to be safe unless you can see a list of ingredients.
- Prefer family restaurants over chain restaurants. Because they make more of their stuff from scratch and therefore are less likely to use the packaged food that has it.
- Bring your own lunch. That will allow you to see what the ingredients are.
- Cook. This makes it easier to avoid the packaged food that has it.
- Drink Mexican Coke. It uses sugar instead. It even tastes better. Other Mexican drinks are also free of the stuff. So are Pepsi throwback drinks and, at Passover time, yellow-cap Coke.
- Eat organic food. Food marked “organic” does not have it. “Natural” food can.
- Eat more fresh fruit. God does not make stuff with high fructose corn syrup (or refined sugar).
- Watch “Super Size Me” (2004) and “King Corn” (2007).
See also:
- Instructables.com: Give up Corn Syrup for Lent! – I was not the first one to think of this, as a Google search quickly informed me
- A Life Less Sweet – a whole blog about giving up high fructose corn syrup!
- high fructose corn syrup
- Super Size Me
I watched Food Inc the other day. Fascinating stuff. Also watched Super Size Me. Especially about the high fructose corn syrup.
These films made me scratch my head. United States of America, richest and most powerful nation on earth, yet unable to nutritiously feed its people. The average African eats a WAY more nutritious meal (lots of fresh veggies and fruits here, probably the weather) than the poorest person in America. That floored me.
And this ingredient is used in almost every pre-packaged food.
I am glad you are off it! It does not sound very good for your body.
For me, I am giving up meat as usual for Lent.
Abagond
America used to be the way I grew up. Farm fresh everything. Fresh milk and even fresh toffee. Hmmmm…those were the days.
The problem began with, you guessed it, mass production to generate more revenue. Now it’s too expensive to ship sugar cane from the islands, corn syrup is cheaper and easier to use, plus, some doctors believe than it’s addictive.
I’m not crazy, well, sorta, but I think this is being done on purpose, like Big Tabacco. Grow your own herbs and veggies if possible.
My cousin, who is still in the farming business, feels that these man made ingredients cause cancer.
I’m in the “it’s not significantly worse than sugar” camp. It’s a simple, refined carbohydrate, like sugar, quick and easy for the body to digest. Probably a bit simpler than sugar. The evil resides in its cheapness. Beginning in the early 1980′s processed food manufacturers began incorporating the stuff in all manner of products, and at the same time America was beginning to super-size its portions. Americans were consuming way too much simple carbs, plus way too much meat. We got fat, so fat that Disney had to re-engineer the “It’s a Small World” floating attraction because the boats were bottoming out, and port authorities began quietly reducing the number of permitted passengers on ferries, etc.
Stay away from refined carbs. For adults, take animal protein in moderation.
The best advice I have heard about nutrition: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for this post! Drink Mexican Coke? You sure? Done. I’m working on my ‘addiction’ to diet sodas, ‘crystal lite’, with the aspartame, and so on. Drinking more water, but need a healthy substitute for the ‘fake and deadly’ ‘sugars. Stevia and that ‘syrup’ natural sweetener is one, but they cost so much
@ Blanc2
Have you ever wondered why foods that are bad for you cost so little?
While fresh vegetables and hebs are $3.99 for a head of cauliflower?
Makes you wonder what’s cooking.
loved this post abagond! not only was it informative… but it’s a welcome break from race and the resulting analysis which i find quite draining in large quantities (i’m not AA… but I am black… which may have something to do w/ my lowered tolerance).
Good luck w/ your challenge. After Lent, will you go back to corn syrup or just be less strict?
Excellent!
Excellent post!
I am not sure whether by giving up high-fructose corn syrup Abagond is saying he is giving up sugar?
Sugar is one of the quickest addictions to acquire but one of the toughest addictions to kick. Because it’s a food substance, the powerfully addictive nature of sugar normally goes unnoticed.
But, the tell-tale signs of addiction, such as craving & withdrawal, are certainly present. It goes like this: you start your day feeling energetic and optimistic; but, by mid-afternoon or early evening you feel tired, cranky, or even depressed. Accompanying these low feelings is a craving for other sweet foods, cookies, soda…something sweet, anything sweet, and often the craving is too strong to ignore.
This is classic, and its chains of oppression are found in the brain. The sugar-high comes from the brain releasing serotonin and dopamine – a couple of the feel-good hormones – when sugar hits the bloodstream.
http://www.foodaddictionsummit.org/presenters-ahmed.htm
But the corn industry know how addictive corn syrup is! They know that in the way that sugar became a necessity in 19th century Europe.
It’s this manufactured necessity for the taste and demand for sugar as an “essential” food ingredient that unleashed major economic and social changes of the time. Wasn’t it the driving force, in part, for the colonization of tropical islands and nations where labour-intensive sugarcane plantations and sugar manufacturing could thrive?
Much like cotton, sugarcane plantations motivated large scale near-enslavement and migrations of human beings in the 19th and early 20th century.
When I was a kid, I remember everybody around me cooked with coconut oil. Actually, you could do a lot of things with coconut, and use every part of it. Then, it stopped being around, and the rage was for corn oil. Coconut oil was dangerous to health, don’t use! Corn oil was better. That was the message.
I found it hard to believe because all the people I knew from southern India, Sri Lanka and Philippines – who had lived on coconut oil for generations – were slim and health long-livers, and they weren’t convinced of this new-found danger…
Another time I heard that many of the coconut trees in Jamaica died/unhealthy.
Practically overnight. Why? A mysterious virus?
Apparently the corn/maize industry in the US didn’t appreciate the competition from coconut oil production, and no more indigenous coconut would form an immediate market for corn oil, thus this virus was introduced the crop.
http://www.plantapalm.com/vpe/pestsndiseases/vpe_ly_coconut.htm
typos, typos – last line should read “….thus this virus was introduced to the crop.”
I don’t know about giving up this awful product for Lent it should be for good!
Americans have been seriously deluded about the real health dangers of this product.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/03/high-fructose-corn-syrup-even-worse-than-weve-been-told.aspx
If I lived in the US I would avoid this product like the plague!
@Kwamla – seconded!
@ Bulanik
Mother Nature doesn’t come in a package.
America loves ‘fast’ and easy foods. Childhood obesity is now approx. 16% for children ages 6-19. And growing.
Guys, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t saccharin cause cancer?
@ Truthbetold
All artificial sweeteners are carcinogenic…without exceptions!
On sweeteners… Just recently saw a documentary where they recovered a 2000 year old glass yar containing honey. Guess what? It was still in useful condition. No artificial substances, ingredients, preservatives, any of such. Just natural hoey in closed glass yar for 2000. Makes one think what the so called food industry is telling us…
@ Kwamla and Sam
My theory:
Cancer causing agents are done on purpose. The FDA, insurance companies, and Big Pharma are all in it to make lots of cabbage.
That’s why fresh foods are expensive.
Packaged foods are 1.00.
@ Abagond
Will you be able to give up coke and cocoa bars for the entire duration?
@ Kwamla and Sam and Abagond
Why do you think America likes fast foods as opposed to farm fresh options?
I’d love to hear your theories.
@ Bulanik
“Sugar is one of the quickest addictions to acquire but one of the toughest addictions to kick. Because it’s a food substance, the powerfully addictive nature of sugar normally goes unnoticed.”
As addictive as nicotine but perfectly legal and encouraged.
I gave up drinking soda two years ago next month. One of the best decisions I ever made.
Transitioning from store bought drinks to natural drinks -
Invest in a juicer… for juicing nature’s goodies: apples, carrots, cucumbers, ginger beets, celery, garlic, onions, greens, etc. Natural sugars, enzymes, minerals, vitamins – are easily digested and absorbed, aiding and promoting the body’s natural healing process.
Having a blender (and a freezer stocked with frozen bananas, strawberries, peaches and other frozen fruit) helps too.
Drink herbal teas. Or purchase herbs in bulk and brew your own. Stevia is a wonderful natural and safe CONCENTRATED sweetener (after your taste buds get used to its quirky aftertaste). You’ll save a lot when you buy it by the pound in powder form. A little bit of it goes a long way.
I second the juicers! After drinking a freshly juiced beverage, you feel like a million bucks, really. I hate tomato juice in a can. I juiced some tomatoes, added a garlic clove and some chicken broth and it was delicious. A few years ago, I won a fifty fifty draw at work and purchased this juicer:
http://www.omegajuicers.com/juicers/juicer-8004.html
Vita Mix is also excellent for this type of thing. Here is a recipe for a beverage which helps you sleep:
One or two bananas, Frye’s Cocoa, 2% milk. Throw them into a blender and blend to a smoothie consistency. Drink before you go to bed and you will sleep soundly. There are juicing books with recipe with myriad uses such as immune system boosting etc. As for chocolate, stick to at least 6o%, chocolate(real unadulterated) is high in antioxidants and flavonoids.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200307/flavonoids-antioxidants-help-the-mind
@ Herneith
My grandma used to give us tonic water.
Blended ginger,fresh peppermint leaves, sometimes chamomile root, all with a touch of honey.
I gave up sodas years ago, and can’t even finish a can of Coca-Cola to this day…the only soda-pop that I like anymore is Hansen’s Natural, Mandarin-Lime; or, Schweppes’ Ginger Ale – but, I don’t drink those on a regular basis. Coffee or tea for me!
My fiancee and I enjoy cooking and eating healthy; we buy organic, local fruits and vegetables on a seasonal basis, and are members of a farmers’ market co-op where people can buy a whole side of free-range, all-natural beef. It’s nice to have freezer full of good cuts of meat to go with the healthy veggies!
giving up high fructose corn syrup for lent, well good luck with that? If I was Catholic I would give up pepsi for lent, but I hate pepsi any way ever since that commercial so it wouldn’t mean much, coca cola is better, it’ll beat the hell out of pepsi…i hope pepsi goes out of business some day, but not coke.
I didn’t know all this stuff about high fructose corn syrup. I see it on ingredient packages all the time. You know what I like baking cakes.
All I can say is that this is very useful.
I gave up on sodas a long time ago. Most of what I drink is water. I’m starting to eat bananas and I plan to go back into exercising and working out.
http://www.omegajuicers.com/juicers/juicer-8004.html
That’s a NICE juicer!!!
It’s much better than the cheaper Waring juice extractor I’m enjoying. What I also like about the masticating juicers, besides getting more juice out of product, is you can make your own nut butter. Not to mention ice-cream like deserts made out of frozen bananas mixed with other added delights.
A decent Oster blender can make nut better too, providing you make a little at a time using a pint sized canning jar, but it’ll put lots more stress and strain on the blender’s motor, and your ears. The Vita-Mix, with its much strong motor makes nut butter quickly and easily.
Not sure if I am going to give up high fructose corn syrup for good. That is a decision I will make at the end of Lent. I am unlikely to give up pizza or eating out with family and friends or eating fast food when I am on the road, but I could see getting rid of it at a day-to-day level.
Refined sugar is not all that great either, but one step at a time. As my children discovered, adding sugar makes almost anything taste better: peanut butter, milk, apple sauce, even Coke. And guess what, the food companies know that too. I doubt anyone put sugar in their spaghetti sauce back in the 1960s, for example, but now it is pretty common in store-bought spaghetti sauce.
What I would like to do in the long term is move towards a Mediterranean diet.
A juicer is a wonderful idea. Thanks Matari and Herneith.
@truthtobetold:
“Why do you think America likes fast foods as opposed to farm fresh options?”
It is conditioning. Food industry has been doing its propaganda at least for 60 years now (actually much longer but this much in really heavy way). Their message has been repeated in the media and by the lobbied government so no one has been immune.
They also with the distributors have closed the markets from alternative products, that is supermarkets, shops and such, so that for ages fresh farm products have been rare and hard to find in urban areas. You have been forced to go looking for them instead finding them at your local super market.
They also have been ruining american animal farming. In one documentary they said that in 1970′s there were thousands of slaughter houses all over the country. Today there are less than ten meat prosessing plants (five or three if I remember correctly) in the whole USA. Some very small independent slaughters may still be hanging in there but they have no influence on the over all picture.
This was done, according the industry and government, to make sure there is more level quality control and more clean and safe process. In actuality, this concentration has lead into a nightmare healthwise. If and when one of the few meat processing plants get infested by some disease or bacteria, it will spread to millions of consumers fast and unstoppable way before anything can be done. They can also be starting points of pandemics, as are the so called poultry farms and meat farms which have bee growing into factory size production centers with tens of thousands of chickens etc.
One of the most likely causes for the deadly pandemic of 1918 were the western allied army chicken centers. They had two or three huge chicken centers behind the western front during the war of 1914-1918, each with millions of chicken. They had noticed that thousands of chicken were dying mysteriously already in 1916 in those nighmarish centers but did nothing. But the time war ended in 1918 the chicken flu had already been effecting the troops, it had been noted already in 1917, and when those millions of men went back home, it was on. Millions died around the world.
So instead of being so worried about bird flu or pig flu coming in from abroad, americans should take a really hard look at their very own production system which is almost the same as was in western front in 1914-18: huge consentrated production facilities which can be as effective to launch epidemics as they are producing the food.
I don’t know how similar Canada is to the US in terms of high fructose corn syrup usage, but when I moved there I was put off by the sweetness of many foods. I hated most of the bread available in the supermarkets because it was all so sweet. It’s the same where I am now, but I’ve had to settle for the least sugary bread instead of making it at home. Had a bread machine in Europe, but it broke a few days before moving…
I gave up soft drinks a long time ago. It was made easy by the fact that I began to get severe stomach aches whenever I drank them! I don’t miss them. In fact I tried a little a while ago and didn’t understand why I drank so much of them before!
I’m interested in making more fruit/veg smoothies. I’ve made a few from oranges, kiwis, guavas… Delicious, filling and quicker than eating the required amount per day. I need to make more on a regular basis.
For anyone interested, an old article about sugar and high fructose corn syrup: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all
@sam
But even though there is an abundance of food in the US, especially meat, do you think that people actually cook less – in general?
Don’t you think part of the conditioning or cultural shift is seen in the way that children, for instance, are programmed to eat more fast-produced, eaten-on-the-run, high-calorie, low-fibre, low-nutrition junk.
I don’t mean to say fast food doesn’t taste good or that it doesn’t seem cheaper or that people shouldn’t eat what they enjoy!
I mean that the pleasures of cooking and eating together is a different experience, and is enjoyed less than in the past.
Sure, this has been enabled by the way that food is marketed in the States, fast food does seem cheaper than made-from-scratch meals because the true cost of fast food production isn’t paid to the workers, and of course this: the common RECOGNITION that the advertizing for fast food is not actually an exercise in free speech, but the manipulation of behaviour by the addition of copious amounts of addictive substances?
Also is real food available and made affordable to everybody? I doubt it.
Don’t obesity rates rise when poverty increases? The less well off seem to have less food choices, plus get too many calories and not enough nutrients.
I wonder, too, if the habit of cooking is something that has become lost in American culture? Are most people learning to cook at home these days? I imagine if parents don’t cook then their children won’t either. And if the public school system doesn’t fill the void by teaching cooking as part of the curriculum – is it the ‘responsibility’ of the fast food industry to do it?
I think over time the human palate gets tuned, and I think fast food tunes the palate to enjoy synthetic flavour profiles.
Then, if you add in the ‘convenience’ factor – POW – less interest in what is farm fresh….
I think when we eat, say, a meal of burger and fries, we don’t realize that it’s physiologically less filling.
It’s hard to believe, especially when presented with marketing imagery of massive proportions, but the nutrients (or lack therein) in these meals are processed in a way that leaves us hungry again after a much shorter time than whole grains, vegetables, etc.
Have you heard about “pink sludge”?
) grind them up, and sterilize the mess with ammonia (probably not so nice on the taste buds) before adding the sludge back into the meat.,,probably to add a few cents profit extra per hamburger.
McDonalds and other fast food hamburger places take the remaining cow parts (good that they’re not wasting
Although it’s up for debate, I do think it is cheaper to cook at home, and I’d say that it’s also not much more expensive to eat organic.
I mean ‘organic’ in the sense that it’s an absurd label to differentiate traditional non-pesticide non-antibiotic laced foods as ‘organic’ – I mean the real farm-fresh produce truthbetold commented on.
Except for meat, which we should eat less of anyway (I’ve read that our bodies only need about 3 oz. of protein per day). Unfortunately, industrial farming gets the government subsidies so that “organic” or local farmers markets aren’t always available depending on where you live. That’s what I observed anyway.
Calories are calories, but there’s good and bad. We are what we eat – or what we actually absorb.
If we eat a lot of nutritionally-poor, de-natured, high calorie foods containing toxic chemicals, genetically modified ingredients – such as more and more corn, soy and antibiotics – being too tired to cook may be a regrettable excuse if it makes us more prone to disease, cancers and immunological disorders, as well as obesity.
@ Truthbetold: The process known to political scientists as “regulatory capture” applies in big bold letters to the FDA/USDA. The regulatory process, coupled with the annual “farm bill”, has been manipulated by Big Food Inc. to slant the market toward its products, in myriad ways big and small. This, coupled with aggressive marketing in the mass media, has made America a nation of people who are idiots when it comes to what we put in our bodies. You don’t need a conspiracy theory to understand this. Adam Smith’s invisible hand explains it just fine, so long as you keep in mind that the invisible hand includes industry manipulation of the regulatory environment.
I’ve been cutting down on sodium and refined sugar for a couple of weeks now. As someone mentioned upthread, the best way to do this is to not eat most processed foods. I’m into reading labels. I have found that low-sodium foods have tons of sugar and vice versa. Also many low-fat and non-fat foods often have a lot of sugar AND sodium. Manufacturers do this to make up for any taste lost when they put less of something in a food product. I occasionally eat peanut butter combined with other foods as a complete source of protein. I was amazed at how much sugar is in peanut butter!
A few years ago, I stopped drinking sugary drinks (soda, flavored vitamin water, fruit juices and hot beverages w/ sugar) for a month. I wasn’t trying to lose weight but lost ten pounds. I even occasionally ate foods that contained sugar and still lost weight just by eliminating refined and natural sugar in my beverages.
Even though some products do not contain HFCS, they still might contain many grams of sugar and these are just as detrimental to your health. The problem with HFCSs lies in their ubiquity – they are in almost all processed foods. Bottom line, you should limit your intake of ALL refined sugars. Also, you should also try to avoid processed foods and prepared foods that have many ingredients. Eat many more fruits and vegetables as your main source of carbohydrates because they take longer to absorb into your body and will supply you with the energy you need to make it through the day and eat less meat to avoid saturated fats and cholesterol. I think this is a better route than avoiding HFCSs.
And of course processed foods are cheaper than whole foods. They are cheaper in many ways – including your time. But I still think impoverished Americans can make better choices. Many urban neighborhoods have farmers markets and I think we can take better advantage of these venues. When I was an “at-risk” youth, I was a participant in an urban youth program designed to help “at-risk” teenagers. We set up a community garden and sold our produce at the local farmers market. Many people in the community came out and bought food from the market because our prices were cheaper than the supermarket’s and it was closer in proximity to their homes. Now, the city was largely composed of impoverished minorities, but they still came out and bought from the farmers market. I think sometimes we don’t give the poor enough credit and think that they always choose low nutrient, high calorie processed meals.
BTW, I really enjoy your blog, Abagond. Thank you for your insight.
@ everyone
I pondered a theory on obesity and poor diet in the US.
Women began to enter the workforce after their men were at war, correct?
Well, that began the slow but sure decline of eating at home.
After a long day at work, many single moms didn’t want to spend another hour or two making fresh meals so the TV dinner was invented.
Fast forward to middle class suburbia, keeping up with the Joneses became a trend. Suddenly, two salaries were needed to buy that extra car, add that extra room, take that extra vacation.
Now, no one has the time to cook.
Mom works 60 hours a week, dad works round the clock plus weekends, and add to the fact that video games replaced riding your bicycles, you have modern day obese America.
Fast food used to be a treat.
Going to McDonald’s was a birthday celebration.
Now it’s custom.
We must reinstate the joys of farm life in present day America. But how?
@viscipleX14:
“And of course processed foods are cheaper than whole foods.”
—
One option for people on a budget is buying frozen vegetables. They are cheaper than the fresh ones found in the produce section.
We hear a lot about plant-based diets being the best way to eat. After Bill Clinton had his triple bypass surgery, he went on one and is still on it. Also, Al Sharpton said he keeps his weight off by eating a plant-based diet.
Excellent point – I forgot the frozen food aisle has great and inexpensive options for produce. I frequently buy many bags of frozen broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and green beans at $1 each. And you know, frozen veggies are sometimes fresher than ones found in the produce section since they are flash frozen when they are harvested.
Put a package of frozen broccoli in a skillet with a bit of olive oil, some diced onion, some sliced mushrooms, some diced pepper (bell and/or hot peppers) and some salt & pepper. Saute until it’s about 1/2 cooked. Pour 6-8 whisked eggs over the top and put in a 400 degree oven for about 20 or so minutes. Fantastic taste, super health — lots of protein and veggies — and inexpensive and fast. Zero processed carbs.
For a notch up the health chain, eat a slice of this fritata with a bowl of pinto beans. This combination is a weekly dinner in our household. The beans can be cooked in a large batch on Sunday and heated through the week. Beans are like a miracle food, rich in protein and fiber and all kinds of other good stuff.
@Blanc2
That recipe sounds tasty.
Thanks!
If You think sugar (or i should say refined processed sugar seperated food in its natural state) is bad how about the other white processed food ingredent – Salt – sodium chloride (NaCl) – i currenlt have a “cold” that is a constant nasal drip that i’ve dealt with scince childhood.
I always get them not during the winter due to some mysterious virus ,but whenever i consume foods with excessive amounts of salt.
Why do I keep doing this to myself?
it started with ignorance that developed into a habit as a consequence of living in a society and culture that values almost anything “white” regardless of the truth or consequences.
When you grow up poor you develop habits of choosing the cheapest because its usually all yo can afford, not realizing the long (and short) term price you inevitably pay.
Still learning how to aviod what amounts to mild posion in the form of tasty foods.
what about “corn syrup”? is this equally bad like high fructose corn syrup?
Love the comments, good to see lots of peeps eating well. Hang in the Aba, you’ll feel better for it. Giving up bad foods is easy after awhile; you just don’t miss them anymore. I’ve been pretty much completely off that HFCS for years now, mostly sweeten stuff with honey. I buy organic at a co-op, which costs more, but the fact that I also gave up meat long ago more than makes up for that. And hey, I also look much younger than my age! And feel it too.
The more I make a Lenten resolution the more I do to go out and break it …..
I tried to give up mint chocolate chip ice cream.
It didn’t work.
@CJ-Canadian:
“what about “corn syrup”? is this equally bad like high fructose corn syrup?”
–
Look up “Glycemic Index.” Basically, to the body, sugar is sugar. However, the GI determines blood sugar levels and how the body stores fat.
@abagond:
I wish you luck, it’s damn hard to avoid the stuff!
@CJ-Canadian:
Mostly the same thing now, big corn lobbied to get high-fructose corn syrup labeled just like other corn syrup.
Same reason they advise lowering all refined sugars – because anything with fructose will increase your bad cholesterol (LDL) worse than normal sugar, i.e. glucose.
Wish there was a better solution, but as it is now my best advice is buyer beware.
@sam
The impression I always had about food in the US is that there is always a super-abundance of it.
In restaurants:- massive portions, ‘as much as you can eat’, much of the of food left on the plate, untouched, etc. Does everything, all the uneaten and unused food, go in the rubbish bin, land fill-site and so on?
(What are consequences of so much rotting food to the environment as rotting food emits methane?)
In some other countries, this over-stocking is not encouraged, especially in Islamic states where there is religious fasting,etc.
The European Union is notorious for wasting mountains and mountains of food, in order to keep farms in production and workers in jobs.
In the US, what happens, for example, to the surplus-abundance of maize/corn? Is it known how much of the food produced in America is wasted?
I don’t eat high-fructose corn syrup. I don’t drink soda very often either.
i have to come out of hiding for this one. juicy stuff…
my $0.02
one of my new year resolutions was to transition from whole food vegetarianism to whole-food veganism. one of the points that stick out as far as wellness goes is that one is either cold or hot, you cant be lookwarm- vegan or paleolithic. there is wiggle room in both but food choices would be best made with the understanding that man cannot improve upon nature; one is better served if they shop with these words in minds: organic (or more accurately 100 percent organic), unprocessed, unrefined and preferably locally produced.
as far as meat eating goes, one best option is grassfed beef. at the rate at which we are going chickens and fish are to be left out of one’s diet.
Q: what about meat and its link to cancer?
A:Really good question! Yes, feedlot meat has strong links to cancer- in fact not only are people who eat this kind of meat getting cancer but the animals too(not to mention the horrifying conditions these animals live in).
Grass fed meat, however contains one of the strongest anti-cancer compounds known to man: CLA. Conjugated Linoleic Acid is not present in feedlot meat. Long story short, eat food that eats healthy food.
“In 1979, researchers from the University of Wisconsin applied a [grassfed] beef extract to mice skin. The mice were then exposed to a strong carcinogen. When the researchers counted the number of tumors developed by the mice 16 weeks later, they found, to their surprise, that the mice exposed to the beef extract had 20% fewer tumors. The identity of this anticarcinogen was not discovered until almost a decade later, in 1987. Michael Pariza, the scientist who discovered CLA, later remarked that “few anticarcinogens, and certainly no other known fatty acids, are as effective as CLA in inhibiting carcinogenesis in these models.” [2][3] Although CLA is best known for its anticancer properties, researchers have also found that the cis-9, trans-11 form of CLA can reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease and help fight inflammation. ”
More info on CLA…
Dr. Mercola:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/07/17/cla-cancer.aspx
So you have two options: be a raw vegan, or eat raw vegans.
food touches on so many social justices issues. it stops being personal quickly and it turns political.
in closing, no one is going to come out alive. your money might buy you better options but they are the better of the worst. there is much information out there. even for the lazy intellectuals, there are so many documentaries on food and water (an economic good, BTW) and of course corporations and the governments that there is no excuse to remain ignorant.
whatever small changes you make, they add up…
he who has the why to live can bear almost any how-Friedrich Nietzsche
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
HFCS is not metabolized the same way sucrose (table sugar is). The results of these studies conducted at Princeton are startling to say the least. I have cut soda from my diet all together but it hard to get a non-water drink that doesn’t contain HFCS.
I was in the dining hall today looking at the ingredients of the teas available and every brand with the exception of Peak Tea contained HFCS. I went on a run last night and bought a Powerade afterwards, even that had HFCS.
Certainly one can make the argument that the obesity epidemic in this country is fueled by over-eating combined with inactivity but what the components of the food is crucial. HFCS is not obviously not meant to be consumed in large quantities, which is problematic because of its high prevalence in packaged food.
It’s unfortunate, because it would take a complete restructuring of one’s diet/eating habits to avoid HFCS.
@ Y
Thanks for the link!
Don’t quote me, but I think that Passover U-Bet syrup has sugar instead of HFCS. Not much diff in health, but it makes a mean egg-cream.
Look out the window to see if pigs are flying by, because I’m about to agree with Abagond on something.
To answer truthbetold, Americans eat a lot of frozen, powdered, instant prepackaged processed crap because that’s what is available to them. I’m able to eat well because of location (Philadelphia). Factory-farming never really took off in the Mid-Atlantic, upstate New York, or New England so we have lots of access to locally-raised produce and meats. There are farmers markets all over the city April to October and I actually drive out to a family-owned supermarket in Lancaster County to do grocery shopping. They have a meat-packing plant on site where the animals are butchered. What everyone has been saying about fresh food is absolutely true—once you taste real food you can’t go back to the artificial stuff. One of the greatest meals you can ever eat is some grilled Amish-raised grass-fed round steaks seasoned with kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and basil grown in the back yard, Lancaster County sweet corn picked that day by Amish hands, and some Lancaster County yellow doll watermelon for dessert.
My in-laws visited from rural Georgia a few months back. They live in a land of chain restaurants and Chinese buffets with home meals mostly being prepared in the microwave. They were astounded by the quality of the food we served them. “We don’t have access to this” was all my mother-in-law could say. They’re also sicker more often than me and my wife are, and I think at least part of that is due to the corn-syrup infested prepackaged junk they usually eat. Too many Americans do their grocery shopping in Wal-Mart, and in poor urban neighborhoods the only grocery stores are those bodegas that sell quarter water and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. You only have to look at the Amish–they have a high calorie diet heavy on protein, but it’s the real deal, and obesity is almost unknown amongst them.
@ Jay
When I was growing up, there wasn’t a McDonalds or fast food joint. That was accessible only in London proper. That was 20 years ago. Now, fast food chains and fried fish and chips, with fried everything is all around.
Remember when our grandfathers would get up from 5 am to do farm work? They had to eat like mad to keep up the energy. Now that business is a dying field. Now, even the Amish are experiencing poor soil issues depending where they are, of course. And you are so correct, once you eat fresh food, you can’t go back. Til this day, we make fresh bread at home. Mmmmmmmm.
We hope to leave the US for maybe the islands or rural UK. More farm land and hopefully, a better, simpler life.
Guys,
A grinder works wonders!!! I brought a good one from Cuisinart. I grind:
Coffee
Chickpeas to make hummus
Peanuts for homemade peanut butter, sooooo good with grape jam
Tomatoes for salsa, add onions, garlic and spices for taste
Corn for cornmeal.
Have you ever tried fresh cornmeal porridge? We grew up on that when we were back home. It’s tasty, easy and filling.
I miss Vermont when we would tap the maple trees for fresh syrup.
Those were the days…
If you are willing to go homemade or turn it into a family activity, you can still have your pizza.
CRUST
1. Find a good yeast crust recipe (you can slow rise at a lower temperature for better flavor, but it takes longer, so it’s not necessary).
2. You can even make this a week or two ahead(not only will the flavor have improved, but it’s convenient).
SAUCE
1. Chop up one tomato (two if using roma) and place it in a small pot with a bit of olive oil, a clove or two of garlic, and italian seasoning.
2. Mix and cook on low with a lid(it will give up quite a bit of liquid).
3. When it is heated through and the tomato is falling apart, add HUNTS(other brands have HFC) tomato paste.
Cheese & Toppings
…load up the toppings first then add a layer of cheese
Bake for 30 minutes(more or less)
abagond, sorry if this is a bit off topic, but… This will make virtually anyone furious: Diets ultimately make you gain pounds over the long haul and that has turned out to be more and more recognizable within
the excessive weight epidemic that\\\\\\\’s negatively effecting this kind of processed food, little physical activity generation. Are you aware that stadium seats must be increased to aid the increase in peoples growing, ahem…girth? It suggests that we are now becoming a much larger country (and by
no means in some great way) individuals than all of us have ever have prior to now which happens to be before 20 years alone. Our young ones suffer the pain of excessive weight associated
circumstances for example being diabetic in addition to coronary disease.
I just read that in a scientific study 70 obese Western kids inside the age group of six to 19 had been exposed to some battery of lab tests to look at the consequence that the eating routine rich in fats had on their own more youthful body. The results have been eye opening. All suffered from
high cholesterol levels as well as were included in the high-risk group of getting heart disease and heart failure that a number of patients are already
revealing indication of.
Will there ever be virtually any a cure for any of us? I think the answer is sure. Apparently
pretty much all we need is actually plenty of diet and exercise. We pretty much
all must get started with performing
it NOW!
Factoid: A lot of people with Central European ancestry have trouble absorbing fructose, in the same way that a lot of people with Asian or some types of African ancestry have trouble with lactose.
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