High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You

Thanks to Jess over at Run, Girl, Run for the inspiration!

Over the last few years, my wife has slowly been changing our family’s diet to a more natural, healthy one.  Although we know it’s for our health, it hasn’t come without kicking and screaming at times.  Perhaps one of the biggest changes she’s made is eliminating as many things that contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as possible from our diet.

“Why” you ask?

Simple….it can kill you.

Now, it’s no surprise that kids today are bigger than just a generation ago.  Conventional wisdom is to blame TV, video games, lack of exercise, etc., for the alarming increase in childhood obesity.  While these may play into it a little, the real answer lies in what we’re eating.

Starting in the mid 1970′s, due to sugar tariffs and quotas imposed in the US, HFCS began replacing sucrose as the sweetener of choice.  As the graph below shows, consumption of HFCS has only increased since.

Despite what the corn manufacturer’s TV commercials tell you, HFCS is not “natural”.  HFCS is created by a complex industrial process performed in refineries using centrifuges, hydroclones, ion-exchange columns, backed-bed reactors, and other high-tech equipment. Starch is extracted from corn and then converted by acids or enzymes to glucose. Then, some of the glucose is further converted by enzymes into fructose.

In other words, it’s “Frankenfood”.

How HFCS works in the body is like so:

“The fructose in corn syrup does neither stimulate insulin secretion nor reduce the hunger hormone ghrelin, you will continue to feel hungry while the body converts the fructose into fat.”

In other words, when you have a diet that is rich in HFCS, you never feel full.  In an effort to sate your appetite, you eat more, therefore eating more HFCS, further negating the ‘full’ signal, until you’ve eaten to the point of overfull and your body has no other choice but to convert any “unused” nutrients (carbs, sugars, etc.) into fat.

…and, as we all know, excessive weight can lead to a number of health problems including, but not limited to, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.  HFCS has also been shown to increase triglycerides and can actually damage one’s liver.

Since we’ve eliminated a substantial chunk of HFCS containing foods in our diet, we eat less, we’ve all lost some weight, we’re all much healthier, and, the best part, we spend drastically less on food each month.

The last point is usually the one that keeps people from eating more organic food, the cost.  If I’m lying, I’m dying…we used to spend ~ $350 a month at Costco on our food bill, and even more during the summer.  Since we’ve eliminated HFCS, our food bill has dropped by more than half.

….and that’s WITH eating more organic foods.

See, it’s simple.  Cut the HFCS, you eat less, food bill goes down, and you can begin to substitute organic and natural foods in your diet and still spend less on food that you were when you were eating all that processed junk.

Plus, if there was one bit of advice I were to give to people trying to lose weight it’d be to cut the HFCS from their diets.  That means cut out the diet sodas, people….they’re doing much more harm than good.

Do it for your health…trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

More on this can be found at:

HFCS or High Fructose Corn Syrup = Diseases & Death

Another Child Killer

How to Fix American Obesity

Natural Corn?

Jones Soda: About HFCS