Death By HFCS ...

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) — A diet high in fructose increases the risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension), according to a paper being presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 42nd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition in San Diego, California. The findings suggest that cutting back on processed foods and beverages that contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) may help prevent hypertension.

http://www.sciencedaily.c...09/10/091029211521.htm

You have to watch like a hawk anymore. We read labels all the time, it's surprising what things HFCS is in, life the can of Campbell's Pork and Beans we just bough without looking.

It's pretty frightening how many products carry it. There is a really good book titles Fat Land: How American's Became the Fattest People in the World that's dicusses how and why HFCS became so prevelant...guess what the answer is? Esentailly money...in the late 70's food companies realized that it was a heck of a lot cheaper to use HFCS over sugar and here's what happened:

I know this is so akin to heresay that I may have to surrender my Road Food membership,but...
    
Did the studies show a difference in the same amount of cane sugar and HFCS? Could the results be due to eating too many ca;ories from sweet things, no matter the source? Just wondering what exactly makes HFCS so lethal?

Well, too late for me to worry about.

mbrookes


I know this is so akin to heresay that I may have to surrender my Road Food membership,but...
    
Did the studies show a difference in the same amount of cane sugar and HFCS? Could the results be due to eating too many ca;ories from sweet things, no matter the source? Just wondering what exactly makes HFCS so lethal?

Yes and no. Of course calories are calories but using HFCS instead of sugar can make foods up to 10 times richer in carbonyl compounds. It's been found that people with diabetes have elevated levels of carbonyl compounds. I think it's also a matter of the amount of fructose and how quickly it metabolizes. HFCS has pretty much all the work already done for you as far as any additional work needed to extract energy from it, you body still has to do a little work with sugar.

You can deduce further and further that the reduced price allows companies to add more, sell cheaper, etc. which leads to more consumption and at lower prices....It's sort of a perfect storm of reasons. Let's just say "It ain't good".

There is a movie called King Corn that is interesting and related to this topic.  The point of the film is that we are mostly corn.  Corn is in almost everything we eat.  Think corn fed beef, any meat really.  And farmed fish, they may be fed a feed based on corn.

Anything is excess is bad for you, do we get too much corn?

mbrookes


I know this is so akin to heresay that I may have to surrender my Road Food membership,but...
    
Did the studies show a difference in the same amount of cane sugar and HFCS? Could the results be due to eating too many ca;ories from sweet things, no matter the source? Just wondering what exactly makes HFCS so lethal?

You are right.  No different from High Sucrose Cane Sugar Syrup.

I have a sensitivity to corn, so I avoid things with HFCS as they can make me feel awful. I generally drink soda only if I can find one made with regular sugar, or with mixed drinks (then I won't be drinking a lot of it).  Corn tortillas and chips aren't regularly on the menu, but I can actually tolerate them better than say, a can of Coke. Corn on the cob or canned corn are completely out of the question. :(

SeamusD


I have a sensitivity to corn, so I avoid things with HFCS as they can make me feel awful. I generally drink soda only if I can find one made with regular sugar, or with mixed drinks (then I won't be drinking a lot of it).  Corn tortillas and chips aren't regularly on the menu, but I can actually tolerate them better than say, a can of Coke. Corn on the cob or canned corn are completely out of the question. :(

You aren't alone, Seamus... I have it too, and so does my mother.  I've known for about 5 years now.  I avoid anything corn related, and I feel so much better without it.  It hasn't solved my weight problem, however... but I do feel much better.

Do you two have a problem with sauces and gravies that might be thickened with corn starch?

When I was young, I was allergic to many, many foods. (At one time, the only two vegetables I could eat were peas and asparagus; chicken and chicken eggs were a no-no, so I ate turkey and turkey eggs.)  Luckily, I outgrew most of the allergies by about age 21.

I don't have a problem that I've noticed, but I rarely eat foods with sauces/gravies when I go out. When I cook at home, the only thickeners I use are tomato paste (for chili and sauce) and regular flour.

I turned out the opposite of you, 6star... I had no problems with anything until I hit 21. I ate ground turkey, tomato products, beans, and whatever fruits and vegetables I could have (lettuce is a big no-no for me). 17 years later, I can tolerate a lot of things that would have set me off big time earlier on, but corn is still one of the things I can't really do.

I never thought about turkey eggs... I can eat chicken no problem, but the eggs are probably the worst thing I can think of for me.

SeamusD


I don't have a problem that I've noticed, but I rarely eat foods with sauces/gravies when I go out. When I cook at home, the only thickeners I use are tomato paste (for chili and sauce) and regular flour.

I turned out the opposite of you, 6star... I had no problems with anything until I hit 21. I ate ground turkey, tomato products, beans, and whatever fruits and vegetables I could have (lettuce is a big no-no for me). 17 years later, I can tolerate a lot of things that would have set me off big time earlier on, but corn is still one of the things I can't really do.

I never thought about turkey eggs... I can eat chicken no problem, but the eggs are probably the worst thing I can think of for me.

I concur with Seamus... I don't trust sauces/gravies when out, unless I can ask the chef/cook about the recipe.  I use regular flour (and am careful to use unbleached) or use tapioca starch.

I have to watch meat.  I won't do anything from WM, as most of it is either gassed or broth/MSG enhanced.  There's something else corny, MSG. 

I'm now 45, and I've probably had this for the last 10 years.

There's a group of us over on Delphi Forums that exchange info and such about corn allergies and intolerances.  I have an intolerance, as the problems don't show until about 24-36 hours after eating corn or corn product s.  Others get almost immediate reactions.  Some websites for those interested... Connors  Great Smokies Medical Center   No Corn Blog (w/ link to the corn-free list)

SeamusD


I don't have a problem that I've noticed, but I rarely eat foods with sauces/gravies when I go out. When I cook at home, the only thickeners I use are tomato paste (for chili and sauce) and regular flour.

I turned out the opposite of you, 6star... I had no problems with anything until I hit 21. I ate ground turkey, tomato products, beans, and whatever fruits and vegetables I could have (lettuce is a big no-no for me). 17 years later, I can tolerate a lot of things that would have set me off big time earlier on, but corn is still one of the things I can't really do.

I never thought about turkey eggs... I can eat chicken no problem, but the eggs are probably the worst thing I can think of for me.

If you have any farmers in your area who raise turkeys, you could check with them about buying eggs from them.  The problem is that these days many turkey farmers buy the poults (baby turkeys) instead of breeding their own turkeys, but maybe they could "hook you up" with their hatchery in order to get some of the turkey eggs.  Luckily in our area we had turkey farmers who could supply my folks with some eggs, but in order to have at least some for during the winter, my mother would hard boil and preserve the eggs in quart jars.  One thing you need to know is that a turkey egg is 1 1/2 to 2 times larger in volume than a chicken egg, so you have to adjust your recipes. 
 
In your case, I am very surprised that you would have a problem with chicken eggs, but not with the chicken meat.  I wonder if the difference might actually be related to your corn allergy.  (The laying chickens might be fed a mix with a high percent of corn or even HFCS in it, while the "meat" chickens are being fed a totally different mix.)  If this is the case, you might be able to find some chicken eggs from a small local farmer that does not use any corn or corn products in his chicken feed (or maybe even eggs from free range chickens that are not fed any commerical feed at all and have no access to corn), which you might want to try as a test.

Here's an article about the dangers of fructose in general but also HFCS.

Child diabetes blamed on food sweetener
http://www.timesonline.co...lth/article6954603.ece

Fructose bypasses the digestive process that breaks down other forms of sugar. It arrives intact in the liver where it causes a variety of abnormal reactions, including the disruption of mechanisms that instruct the body whether to burn or store fat.

“This is the first evidence we have that fructose increases diabetes and heart disease independently from causing simple weight gain,” said Kimber Stanhope, a molecular biologist who led the study. “We didn’t see any of these changes in the people eating glucose.”

Natural fructose represents 5%-10% of the weight of any fruit. Its use in processed foods stems from a discovery in 1971 that synthesised a 55% fructose and 45% glucose syrup from maize, creating an ingredient cheaper and six times sweeter than cane sugar.

That does it.  I'm not eating any fruit anymore.  It's got up to 10% of that deadly fructose!

I note that the HFCS folks want to change the name to "corn sugar" because people don't want HFCS. I accept the argument that customers need to be educated, and I'd like to see more research and less hype, but it takes more than a name change.
 
They note the success of Canola oil, which didn't sell well under the old name of rapeseed oil. It is, IMO, a false argument, because rapeseed oil, even with the unfortunate name, was never considered to be a "bad" food. When considerable money was spent to create an improved rapeseed oil variety, I can't blame to creators for picking a nice sounding name like Canola, but the oil has been sold on it's merits.

Do you know that the majority of citric acid (vitamin C) that is in your food and drinks is extracted from corn, not fruits? Corn has way less citric acid than citrus fruits, but costs so much less that it is more cost effective to extract. Just FYI.

Doesn't matter. HFCS tricks your brain into thinking you got actual calories from the food or beverage you just consumed when you didn't. It just seems like it because it's up to 600 times sweeter than regular sugar. I try to avoid it when I can, but sometimes it's unavoidable.