The Murky World of High Fructose Corn Syrup
January 11, 2007 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Diets and Dieting, Food and Drink, Prevention
- It’s in almost everything we eat and it’s terrible for you.
- Don’t let the name fool you, it has nothing to do with fruit and almost nothing to do with corn or anything else that comes out of the earth.
- It takes a complex process using genetically engineered enzymes to create.
- It’s a harbinger of high cholesterol and cirrhotic liver.
- It’s harder to boycott than Disney because it’s everywhere.
But, hey! It’s cheap, it tastes great!
Welcome to the murky world of high fructose corn syrup. Think _____ is the new black? This poison is the new trans fat, and it might be worse for you.
HFCS has the exact same sweetness and taste as an equal amount of sucrose from cane or beet sugar but it is obviously much more complicated to make, involving vats of murky fermenting liquid, fungus and chemical tweaking, all of which take place in one of 16 chemical plants located in the Corn Belt. Yet in spite of all the special enzymes required, HFCS is actually cheaper than sugar. It is also very easy to transport–it’s just piped into tanker trucks. This translates into lower costs and higher profits for food producers…
“The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar,” says Dr. Field, “but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic.”
The Murky World of High Fructose Corn Syrup – The Weston A Price Foundation
