Think about the usual breakfast options, especially those targeted at kids: waffles, french toast, cereals, 90% of which are corn syrup based, bagels, toaster pastries… and then try and feed your kid healthy alternatives once they have had a good dose of the sugar, and see where you end up. They get the sweet stuff at grandparents homes, friends, and at school. Just imagine trying to feed your child the following for breakfast:

egg white omelet & cucumber, spinach-plum bites.

feed them eggs, they clamor for bacon, and also for cheese in the omelets… and then toast, with fatty butter, and high fructose corn syrup, and fried potatoes, with catsup and its serving of high fructose corn syrup…

Why do I trash high fructose corn syrup? Have you heard what it does to a cow’s stomach when they are in the feed lots? But on a more personal experience, the effects of high fructose corn syrup is in creating more appetite for the product, rather than satiating any hunger. Have a bowl of fruit loops. Have another: still feel like you’re hungry? Yes, I do. Its because our bodies don’t handle the high fructose corn syrup well, kind of like how the body has a hard time processing partially hydrogenated oils, it has a hard time with this stuff in chemical breakdown.

The theory goes like this: The body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. It also forces the liver to kick more fat out into the bloodstream. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL

and more of a chemical approach can be found here: http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html

So, how do we feed our kids in light of the pressure from the community and the culture and their own strong voices, to continue to poison them??? That is where we have to find our strength, and pay both the financial price of better choices and the price of inconvenience.

The problem with High Fructose Corn Syrup becoming more intrusive into America’s Food Chain was during the Nixon adminstration and under his Secretary of Agriculture Mr. Butts. Butts encouraged larger farms…the beginning of the end of alot of Family Farm.

The Soda companies were pushing for farmers to grow larger crops of a fairly new breed of Corn the gave hiher yeilds of corn syrup. The result was lager farms, more corporations getting into farming this type of corn crop and more and more food manufactuers dropping the use of cane surgar and switching to the much cheaper corn syrup.

The PBS show did interviews with Iowa corn growers of the new hybrid od corn with the hybrid of high yeild corn syrup.

To a farmer they said the corn they were growing was “crap, poor quality, not good for the cows and not edible for human consumption”.

The University of Iowa AG school show a live cow where they had had safely exposed it’s stomach’s (yes all 3!) and were studing the effects of feeding the cow the (HFCS) hybrid of corn…the cow could not properly digest the corn and after a period of time it would eventually cause the death of the cow!!!

This they said the cattle farmers and stockyards usually butcher the cattle at about 18 to 24 months of age.

After watching this PBS show I quit eating food products with HFCS, I read food products ingredients label and you have to be very careful, HFCS is almost everyware.

Six months after cuting out HFCS I have lost 40 pounds, with no change to my daily schedule.

Now I am on watch for Salt content, It is unbeliveable the levels of salt food manufactuer are putting into food to raise their “Favor Level”.

The USDA and the FDA need to step in and stop this trend of higher and higher salt levels in food portion.

I have been checking food packagaging I saved from food companies I use to work for over the years…part of my personal business porfolio…I worked in the food manufactuering business for 31 years before I retired 8 years ago. Salt as a ingredient (Look at the whole label, there is salt inside the tomato product, in the cheese, in the “naturally Flavorings, etc.) by my calculations has increased by about 42% on the products I could compare with from 15 years ago.

I feel better I feel more fit, so I will keep on cutting out corn syrup and High Fructose Corn Syrup and keeping my salt content low and making sure I keep Mrs. Dash in stock i my cupboard.

http://almostfit.com/2008/09/14/five-reasons-why-i-avoid-high-fructose-corn-syrup/

That said, on high fructose corn syrup specifically, I am one of those people that focus on it. But in my mind, for good reason. My reservations are not only health-based but increasingly morally and ethically based – the environmental and social costs of our love affair with the unnecessarily subsidized overproduction of corn is costing us not only in environmental terms, but in tax dollars – nearly all of which goes to big industry, not small farmers. Corn overproduction is linked to significant health and environmental impact on critical U.S. growing regions that utilize industrial petroleum-based fertilizers. In other words, for me it goes well beyond just the health reasons.

I am mid-swing in a series on it at Almost Fit (link’s in my signature), and there are *significant* health issues as well that are easily obscured by counter studies that are conducted under the direction of the Corn Refiners Association, not to mention their current $30 Million dollar ad campaign to try to convince consumers that HFCS is good for you. To be frank (and risk sounding “kooky”) I think HFCS is one of the principle reasons for the obesity epidemic in this country for one simple reason, all studies aside: HFCS is added to 80% of the food products sold in the U.S., which means that nearly everything we eat contains some form of sugar (fructose, in particular). That makes overconsumption almost guaranteed, because the more sugar you consume, the more your body craves it. And again, that only benefits one side – the seller. As long as we continue to overconsume sugar in any form, we’re going to be obese, diabetic, and in line for heart disease. To me, dietary fat is a lesser concern that sugar. When you eliminate the majority of sugar (HFCS or otherwise) from your diet, the eating aspect becomes much more manageable – and your risk factors go way down.

Again, I am living proof of this: I’ve lost 25 lbs this year by doing one thing: eating real food in moderation, which is my focus on Almost Fit. I’ve eliminated HFCS completely as part of that picture, and as expected, the big three you rightly mention are much easier to manage.

That said, on a political note, I am not in favor of legislation on it; I am in favor of educating myself and making a personal decision. So for me, part of the reason I focus on it is because I feel it is my obligation to do so – take responsibility for my health, and put my money where my mouth is, instead of just “blaming the Man”. But, sometimes I can’t help but blame him a little.