Put up as another form of a "natural type sugar", this crapola is used to sweeten everything from ketchup-to-Yogurt-to-Coke & Pepsi. And, in all those wonderful children's cereals and other foods. But finally, the FDA has take the double talking money mongering larger than life food industry corporations to task. High Fructose Corn Syrup, even though it is derived from corn, is not natural. Because, it takes a chemical process to create it. Read more on the FDA decision.
Hear me now food industry...JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING STARTS OFF AS A NATURAL OR WHOLE FOOD, WHEN YOU ARE DONE PROCESSING IT, IT IS NO LONGER NATURAL.
Valium once started out as Velerian Root. Does that make Valium natural? NOT!!!
The stuff this chemical process creates is something foreign to the human body. High Fructose Corn Syrup (here after known as HFCS) is as artificial as any other artificial sweetener and in my humble opinion, can have equally devastating effects. Basically, you are forcing your body to use a sweetener it was never made to use. Therefore, the digestive process must process something it hasn’t spent the last 100,000+ years evolving with. Corn itself, in its current form hasn't been in evolutionary food chain long enough for our physiology to adapt it as a healthful food for us, so HFCS a real no-no (read the book, The Omnivore's Dilemma for more info on that).
Now, any food, drink or other product to be consumed that contains HFCS can no longer advertise as “natural” or “all natural”.
Why is this HFCS so bad? Well, I’ll have to refer you to an early blog post. The explanation has more to do with the history of our evolution as humans over the past hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. If you are a Discovery Channel or Science Channel buff, you’ll find it very interesting. If not, then, well, it may put you to sleep.
So, chalk one up for the consumer. We finally get a little closer to the truth in labeling we all deserve. Now, if a company wants to increase its profits by using a cheap artificial version of sugar in the form of HFCS, go right ahead. I'm all for making a profit. After all, why else are you in business? But, just label your products as such so we as consumers can make the right choice for ourselves and our families based on truthful information.
Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.
3 comments:
Excellent work on nutrition here, Todd. If people were actually informed of the true nature of the ingredients that were added to their food they could be a lot healthier. Unfortunately, it still a 'buyer beware' market. Just becasue you buy pizza at Whole Foods, it does not make it healthy.
Islon Woolf MD FACP
Todd, Thanks for this heads-up. My kids were ahead of me on this one and started reading the labels (hey, that education thing is working!). I was shocked to see HFCS in every loaf of bread - even the "natural" ones. I have hauled out my bread making machine and am happily making a loaf every other day with ingredients I can pronounce and spell - milk, butter, eggs, whole wheat flour, sugar, salt and yeast!
This is an epidemic and we have a long way to go with it. Thanks for leading the charge.
Tim Pedersen
Hurray! Someone finally standing up and pointing out a major problem. It is hard enough to try to lose weight, but when crap like this is snuck into our foods we don't have a fighting chance! I am going to put a link to this site on my blog. Go Doc!
http://amysbrainwaves.blogspot.com/
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