There are a lot of reasons why we love good, natural food. The most important one is that it just tastes great. But we’re also concerned about maintaining our health for just as long as possible. Toward that end, I’ve been working with Carol Blair, the certified nutritionist at Natur-Tyme. One of the things, of course, that any nutritionist will tell you is to stop eating junk food. There are a lot of foods on the market that appear to be healthful or natural, yet one of the main ingredients is a sure-fire marker for junk: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
Here’s Carol’s take on it:
I am so sick of these “what’s wrong with high fructose corn syrup” ads on TV, I thought I would share this with you so you can pass it on.
The problem is that High Fructose Corn Syrup is absorbed differently than other sugars — It causes major health problems. For example:
- The exposure of the liver to such large quantities of fructose leads to rapid stimulation of the breakdown of fats and the concomitant rapid accumulation of triglycerides, which in turn contributes to reduced insulin sensitivity, insulin resistance, and glucose intolerance.
- Unlike glucose, fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin production, which means it isn’t utilized for energy, but rather is stored in the liver as triglycerides.
- Again, unlike glucose, HFCS doesn’t increase leptin production or suppress production of ghrelin. (These are hormones that play a primary role in appetite control.) The net effect is that HFCS encourages you to eat more…the more of it you eat. In effect, HFCS is addictive and encourages weight gain and obesity. To put it another way, glucose will decrease food intake and high fructose corn syrup, conversely, will increase food intake. Both of these sugars signal in the brain through the malonyl-CoA signaling pathway and have inverse effects on food intake.
- And if that were not enough, it appears that HFCS distorts the body’s magnesium balance, thereby accelerating bone loss.
Carol B. Blair, BS, DiHom,CNC
Wellness Educator/Certified Nutritionist
Natur-Tyme, 5898 Bridge Street, East Syracuse, NY 13057
phone: 315.671.5175 store: 315.488.6300
web: www.natur-tyme.com
All well and good. Now let’s have some fun.
One of the ads as seen on TV:
And one that’s pretty similar:
I think I’ll watch this video and this one again to get inspired to plant some blueberries … and maybe this one for the strawberries. If I want something sweet and delicious, I’ll just pick it from my own yard, thank you.
It’s also worth noting that a number of sweetened “enhanced water” products include “crystallized fructose” on the label. That is, more or less, the freeze dried version of HFCS – despite not sounding as creepy.
First chapter of Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” has some fascinating information on King Corn and its increasingly ubiquitous presence in food products.