Apparently, I'm not the only one who's concerned that High Fructose Corn Syrup is in everything nowadays. I remember a time when the ingredients on a can of coke were water, sugar and battery acid, but some time ago they sneakily replaced sugar with High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I guess I was mostly worried when I discovered that sugar had been replaced with corn syrup in my favourite soft drink without my knowledge, like it was some secret conspiracy. But as I began to focus on ingredients of products I buy more and more I became alarmed at how widespread it is. It's not just used in soft drinks, candy bars and the like. It's used as a sweetener in fruit juices, pasta sauces, beer and bread for criminy's sake!

After reading the above article (and others like it, like this one and this one and this one and this one), I believe that High Fructose Corn Syrup (or HFCS for Those That Love Acronyms, or TTLA) is worse for us than cane or beet sugar, despite the fact that the FDA has ruled HFCS "safe". Like any good conspiracy theory, it makes me wonder about some of the health problems across North America. Of course our sedentary, desk-jockey lifestyle has more to do with that, but surely HFCS and other processed foods aren't helping.

I really became interested in this when our babies were born, as it is natural for a parent to feel protective about their children. Since making this realization I've been carefully analyzing ingredients and trying to shop at "Whole Foods" stores for jarred baby foods, teething biscuits and crackers.

So next time you're shopping for groveries, take a look at the ingredients, you may be surprised at the prevalence of HFCS.

§13 · January 20, 2005 · Life · · [Print]

5 Comments to “High Fructose Blog Syrup”

  1. Rob says:

    You’re starting to sound like me. I noticed the corn syrup everywhere a while ago (I don’t always see the ‘high-fructose’ variety). I’ve tried to cut down, but I’m more concerned just that I know that what I’m eating is really “Corn Syrup and Peanut Butter,” not “Peanut Butter” as the large print claims. Imagine if everything had to be labelled that way? Every bottle of pop would somehow have corn syrup in it’s name – Coca-Corn-Syrup-Cola. Yum.

  2. Joel says:

    Bush controls the world the oil companys control bush high fructose corn syrup owns the oil companys……….

  3. fructose says:

    Check out this introduction article on Fructose:
    http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/Fructose

  4. Rob says:

    Seems like the media’s finally picking up on it – just showed up on /..

  5. Michael says:

    May sound like a kooky conspiracy nut, but I know the truth. High Fructose dumbs people down. It allow the brains natural filters to be penetrated by messages that we were smart enough to write off at earlier times. Our brains functions from the use of Glucose not Fructose. In fact fructose has the opposite effect.