High Fructose Corn Syrup is a heart disease starter....

Today's post: Friday, 3-7-2008

I get an email called the HSI e-Alert. I don’t agree with everything it says; but it does have some very useful information from time to time.

Last Monday, 3-3-2008, the HSI e-Alert email compared a self-described “healthy” breakfast cereal to a standard highly sugared, “children’s” cereal.

The sugared cereal for kids (or at least for the kids who don’t have parents who know better) had less grams of total sugar than the self-described “healthy” cereal.

Even worse, while the cereal marketed to kids had real sugar (which people, particularly kid, can safely use if they don’t eat too much & do get enough exercise), the self-described “healthy” cereal used high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, instead.

Then to show how bad for you high fructose corn syrup really is, the email had this gem.:

“Steady HFCS intake has been linked to weight gain, higher triglyceride levels, higher LDL cholesterol, and a decrease in insulin sensitivity - not really what you're looking for when you want to help your heart.”

Translated into plain English that says that if you eat high fructose corn syrup most days of the week, you WILL be fat; you will likely get type II diabetes; & you’ll very probably get heart disease.

And as our regular readers know, if you also don’t get regular exercise, you put all these bad things on steroids so they happen faster & to a larger degree.

Every single one of those effects sharply increases your risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, other circulation problems, & early death or disability.

So, that means, in a very real sense, eating high fructose corn syrup is very much like adding lighter fluid or fire starter & fire to accelerate a fire quickly -- only high fructose corn syrup does this for getting fat & getting heart disease -- & related diseases.

If you value your health, how often should you eat or drink foods or drinks with high fructose corn syrup?

It’s very clear the answer to that is as close to never as you can manage.

The problem is that perhaps half the packaged foods in most grocery stores, many commercially baked goods, possibly packaged candy that has no labels & some that does, maybe some restaurant & fast food, & the vast majority of regular soft drinks all have high fructose corn syrup today.

At this time, virtually all pancake syrup sold in stores, except real maple syrup, has high fructose corn syrup in it.

Almost all jams & jellies contain high fructose corn syrup. I’ve even read that “energy bars” sold to people who want to be healthy often contain high fructose corn syrup.

Ice cream & snack foods often have high fructose corn syrup also.

In order to not eat this stuff you have to read EVERY label on the packaged foods you buy.

Unfortunately, since high fructose corn syrup is a bit sweeter tasting than real sugar & costs less, until almost everyone learns not to eat this junk & stops buying the food that contain it, or unless it’s made illegal, this will likely continue.

Now you know what eating it does to you, you can escape it now without having to wait.

Eat more real foods: vegetables, fresh fruit, nuts & other health OK protein foods & fats. Eat way less packaged treat & snack foods. ALWAYS read labels & simply don’t buy or eat the food if it has high fructose corn syrup in it.