Quick!
Go get your favorite packaged food. Look at the label. Does
it have an ingredient called high fructose corn syrup? If so,
beware. It could be making you fat--and you don't even know
it.
Food manufacturers love to use high fructose corn syrup because
it's cheap and sweet. In October 2003, researchers at the University
of Michigan concluded that fructose in high levels elevates
dangerous triglycerides by as much as 32 percent and makes the
body's fat burning and storage system sluggish, which causes
weight gain.
Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has found more evidence
of a link between a rapid rise in obesity and a corn product
used to sweeten soft drinks and food since the 1970s, reports
The Associated Press. Specifically, the data showed an increase
in the use of high fructose corn sweeteners in the late 1970s
and 1980s that was "coincidental with the epidemic of obesity,"
said one of the researchers, Dr. George A. Bray, a longtime
obesity scientist with Louisiana State University System's Pennington
Biomedical Research Center. The research was published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"Body weights rose slowly for most of the 20th century until
the late 1980s," Bray told AP. "At that time, many countries
showed a sudden increase in the rate at which obesity has been
galloping forward."
High fructose corn syrup is not a natural product. Called HFCS
for short, it is processed from hydrolyzed corn starch and contains:
14
percent fructose
43 percent dextrose
31 percent disaccharides
12 percent other products
Over the past 15 years, our consumption of HCFS has increased
a belt-busting 250 percent. By some estimates, we get as much
as 9 percent of our daily calories from fructose.
What foods are likely to contain high fructose corn syrup?
Soft drinks, juice, candy, baked goods, cookies, syrup, yogurt,
soup, ketchup, breakfast cereal, and pasta sauces.
Still, Bray insists there is not enough evidence to say there
is a direct link between high fructose corn syrup and obesity.
Spokesmen with the food and beverage industry agree. "It's
not about the high fructose corn syrup being a part of foods,
it's about how many calories we're eating against how many
calories we're burning," Alison Kretser, a registered dietitian
and director of scientific and nutrition policy for the Grocery
Manufacturers of America, insisted to AP. She may be right.
Even the USDA report lays the blame on people for eating too
much and not exercising enough.
Quick!
Go get your favorite packaged food. Look at the label. Does
it have an ingredient called high fructose corn syrup? If so,
beware. It could be making you fat--and you don't even know
it. 
