{"id":824,"date":"2010-09-16T16:46:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T23:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leanmeanvirilemachine.com\/?p=824"},"modified":"2010-09-16T16:46:22","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T23:46:22","slug":"the-great-corn-sugar-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/16\/the-great-corn-sugar-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Corn Sugar Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"corn<\/a>High fructose corn syrup, the current target of much criticism regarding its effects on your health, is going extinct<\/a>. But don’t start celebrating just yet…<\/p>\n

All About High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

HFCS is a cheaper sugar than sucrose, made from corn rather than cane or beets. The higher concentration of fructose may result in a lower glycemic index, but the fructose goes straight to your liver to be metabolized as though it were a poison, causing chronically elevated insulin levels leading to fat accumulation and such diseases of civilization as diabetes and heart disease.<\/p>\n

Whew.<\/p>\n

People have been realizing more and more the detrimental health effects of HFCS, and have been going old-school, snapping up all the products that advertise themselves as being sweetened by sucrose rather than HFCS (you see all those “throwback” sodas that have been popping up?)<\/p>\n

So what’s The Corn Refiner’s Association (the company that produces HFCS) to do? Why, lobby the government to change the name of high fructose corn syrup to “corn sugar,” of course! In a couple years’ time, there will likely be nary a label with HFCS in the ingredients ever again.<\/p>\n

Don’t let yourself be hoodwinked.<\/p>\n

Sugar, Sugar Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n

The search for a healthy sweetener is like the search for The Fountain of Youth. From aspartame to sucralose, stevia to agave nectar, people really, REALLY want to get their sweet on without compromising their health. And the backlash against HFCS has led a lot of people to put regular ol’ sugar in the “health food” category.<\/p>\n

This is a mistake.<\/p>\n

Maple sugar, honey, and cane sugar may have more nutrients than more processed sugars, but they are still sugars. A blast of fructose to your liver to create insulin resistance and a little glucose to send your blood sugars skyrocketing.<\/p>\n

Cultures that don’t eat sugar – in any<\/em> form – all have several things in common. They don’t get fat, they don’t get cavities (despite never brushing their teeth), they live long lives, and they never succumb to diseases of civilization such as diabetes and heart disease. Switching from HFCS to sucrose isn’t going to help you be more like them.<\/p>\n

The Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n

I grew up on a diet of pure garbage. From the time I was born until my mid-teens, my diet consisted of nearly 100% processed junk food, loaded with tons of sugars. As a result, I was “skinny fat,” had lots of cavities, and had a stomachache about 300 days out of the year.<\/p>\n

When I started learning how to cook and switched over to a diet of whole, fresh, and unprocessed foods, all these problems disappeared.<\/p>\n

We as consumers are right to stop buying products sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, but simply changing the name will make no difference. Even switching to so-called “healthy” sweeteners isn’t going to help. The best course of action is to wean ourselves off of sugar. Trust me, you’ll lose your taste for it. I can’t even drink or eat most of the sweetened stuff I used to love anymore – it just tastes way<\/em> too sweet.<\/p>\n

Your Health Is In Your Hands<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amidst all the hubbub surrounding the “evil food companies forcing us to eat unhealthy food,” it’s important to note that we as consumers have the power to change the food production system based simply on what we buy and what we don’t buy.<\/p>\n

If consumers want, say, low-calorie \/ low-fat \/ low-cholesterol food, by golly some smart entrepreneurial folks are gonna take advantage of it and flood the market with products loudly proclaiming their conformance to these characteristics. After all, businesses only succeed if they can sell enough of their product to people in order to stay afloat.<\/p>\n

Don’t be fooled by “corn sugar” when it starts appearing on your labels. Instead, work on weaning yourself off most sugar. It makes keeping the fat off far easier than trying to keep track of each and every calorie that goes in and out of your body.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High fructose corn syrup, the current target of much criticism regarding its effects on your health, is going extinct. But don’t start celebrating just yet… All About High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) HFCS is a cheaper sugar than sucrose, made from corn rather than cane or beets. The higher concentration of fructose may result in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[129,130,128,131,132],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nutrition","tag-corn","tag-corn-sugar","tag-hfcs","tag-sugar","tag-sweeteners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}