Corn & High Fructose Corn Sugar – “Have you Done Your Research?!”
My daughter was asking me a few weeks ago about High Fructose Corn Sugar. She heard a commercial say that they had done the research and there was no difference at all with sugars. There was no reason to worry about High Fructose Corn Sugar, So she wondered what research they had done and why our family stayed so far away from HFCS….
This is actually a pretty deep subject and I will do my best to get to some of the biggest points.
First, it is High Fructose CORN sugar – unless you see that the corn you consume is organic, all other corn and corn products will be Genetically processed. Monsanto has done its best to control seeds and crops – in the name of survival – creating crops that are resistant to pests, herbicides, disease, cold and drought. Yet researchers are just beginning to see the potential of a major health crisis coming from all these Genetically Modified foods.
In the United States, we’re mostly fed by two things: corn and oil. We may not sit down to bowls of petroleum, but almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts of fossil fuels. Oil products are part of the fertilizers that feed plants, the pesticides that keep insects away from them, the fuels used by the trains and trucks that transport them across the country and the packaging in which they’re wrapped.
American cattle fatten on corn. Corn also feeds poultry, pigs and sheep, even farmed fish. But that’s just the beginning. In addition to dairy products from corn-fed cows and eggs from corn-fed chickens, corn starch, corn oil and corn syrup make up key ingredients in prepared foods. High-fructose corn syrup sweetens everything from juice to toothpaste. Corn is in everything from frozen yogurt to ketchup, from mayonnaise and mustard to hot dogs and bologna, from salad dressings to vitamin pills.
“Tell me what you eat,” said the French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, “and I will tell you what you are.”
We’re corn.
“Each bushel of industrial corn grown uses the equivalent of up to a third of a gallon of oil. Some of the oil products evaporate and acidify rain; some seep into the water table; some wash into rivers, affecting drinking water and poisoning marine ecosystems.”
“There are some 45,000 items in the average American supermarket, and more than a quarter of them contain corn.”
And it doesn’t end there—as corn is a staple in the diet of feedlot cattle, too. For all the nightmarish stuff feedlot cows eat, the most damaging of all may be their staple, corn, which tends to damage their livers. Evidently, corn-fed cows become sick as a matter of course, a fact accepted by the industry as a cost of doing business. Between 15 and 30 percent of feedlot cows are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
Ok, so let’s get back to High Fructose Corn Sugar (HFCS)
Processed foods speak negatively to your body but, unfortunately, there are at least 320,000 processed foods and beverages available to us. The problem is that they can cause genetic communication breakdown, but processed foods are nothing new. For example, in the 1970s, major changes in U.S. agriculture led to an overproduction of corn and an extra 500 calories available daily for every American—mostly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
High-fructose corn syrup can be hazardous to your health. It has no vitamins, minerals, or enzymes and robs the body of micronutrients. Additionally, it messes with healthy cholesterol and insulin levels and converts to fat faster than any other sugar, while raising serum triglyceride levels—and that’s not a healthy combination.
That’s not all, though. An important discovery in nutrigenomics is the hunger hormone leptin’s role in obesity and high fructose corn syrup’s effect on leptin. Found in chromosome seven, leptin regulates energy intake and energy expenditure, but reacts adversely to high amounts of HFCS consumption and stops working. That leaves the body leptin resistant, which leads to weight gain. So avoid intake of foods high in HFCS.
If you want to cut down drastically the amount of processed food you eat, don’t buy anything that has high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in it. Unfortunately, HFCS is in nearly everything: jelly, juice, sodas, whole-grain breads, cereals, ketchup, crackers, yogurt, sweet pickles, applesauce, salad dressing, ice cream, cough syrup and lots more.
Exactly what research have “they” done in these commercials???
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor, Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”
These findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic.
In conclusion, learn how to read labels and know what you are eating and drinking.
Eat and drink as close to the way they are naturally then your health and weight will benefit! My recommendation is to stick to Organic, healthy sweeteners such as Organic Raw sugar; Raw, unfiltered honey, Stevia, Xylitol, or organic Agave – in moderation!
Much of this information was found just by internet searches and pages from the Beyond Organic University. If you don’t believe me, do your own research and prove it to yourself.
Hope this information can to taken to heart and help your and your family’s health improve!
Have a Healthy Day!
Kim Butler
Natural Health Counselor
Beyond Organic Health Coach
Palm Beach Nutrition