Wellness Wednesday - The dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

I've spoken about high fructose corn syrup in various posts and I thought it was worth going into more detail about the dangers of this stuff and just WHY you should avoid it. Some of you are thinking, but I don't eat that stuff so I'm good! Well, you'd be surprised what you find it in. Unfortunately, it's in pretty much EVERYTHING that isn't real food.

If you eat any of the following then you DO eat HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), you just didn't realise it:

• Soft Drinks - And just before you say, "But I only drink the "light" ones, it's in a lot of those too.
• Sauces and Salad Dressings - People generally don't realise how much rubbish goes into a salad dressing. (and you thought eating a salad was a healthy option! It IS, without the dressing.) If you use tomato sauces, barbecue sauces etc, you are eating HFCS.
• Breads and pastries - Even the so-called "health" breads contain HFCS. As long as it's on a grocery shelf, the chances are extremely good that HFCS has been used to make it. 
• Fruits and Vegetables of the canned variety. If they say it contains sugar, it's more than likely HFCS. Baked beans and pickles pretty much always use it as well.
• Breakfast Cereals and Bars - A lot of these are sold as "healthy" options. Muesli is a common one. I can tell you that if the muesli is coated with something sweet, it'll be HFCS. Even the cereals that aren't that sweet will probably still have it in the ingredients. Manufacturers just can't seem to resist using it in everything. Those popular Jungle Oats bars? Nothing healthy about them I'm afraid. The sugar they use is HFCS.
• Processed Snacks - This should go without saying.

So what IS this stuff, actually? Well, HFCS is a thick syrupy combination of weird chemicals like alpha-amylase, glucoamylase, and xylose isomerase and corn kernels spun at a high velocity. HFCS is not natural at all. It has to be chemically made but, because it's so cheap and easy to make, it's the most common sweetener use in all things "food". There is not one human being on the planet whose body won't have a bad reaction to it, and yet the FDA casually allows it to be continually used as a sweetener in our foods. I can't speak for South Africa but a scary statistic is that the average american eats about 28kgs of the stuff in a year! I'm sure we're not far behind them with our levels of obesity reaching epic proportions.

Why this stuff should be avoided at all costs:

• It will make you gain body fat - Ok, so we pretty much know that anything that is sweet IS going to make you gain body fat. However, HFCS is actually even more sneaky in that it plays tricks on your brain. It messes with the functionality of leptin, an important protein that tells your brain when it’s time to stop eating. Basically, the more HFCS you consume, the longer your body will think you’re hungry, making you eat more food than necessary. As a result, you’ll steadily gain body fat.
• It can damage your liver - Fructose is much more readily metabolised to fat in the liver than glucose which means that excessive intake of fructose can lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This is a disease where fat builds up in the liver, causing inflammation, scarring, excess triglycerides, and bad cholesterol. In severe cases, the disease can progress to liver cancer or liver failure. This study and this study show that subjects who consumed more HFCS (in this case they used soft drinks) had more serious liver inflammation and scarring than those who consumed none. A good reason to stay away from soft drinks.
• It can lower your IQ - Yup, this stuff will affect your intelligence and long-term memory. A study on rats concluded that, what you eat, greatly affects how you think. The rats fed high levels of fructose navigated the designated maze much slower than the rats that were fed high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. One of the researchers, said in a statement, “Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information.” 
• It often contains mercury - In 2005, an FDA researcher named Renee Dufault posed as a fictional soft drink company and asked corn producers to ship a barrel of HFCS to her. After testing 20 vats, she found that at least 50% of them were contaminated with mercury. Another 2009 study had researchers pulling random food products off of supermarket shelves. All these products contained HFCS, and the researchers found traces of mercury in a third of them. What’s scary is that the FDA doesn’t regulate or even pay attention to the amount of mercury slipped into processed food, so there’s no telling how much mercury you might ingest by eating a donut or anything else that’s full of HFCS. Why do you want to avoid mercury? Read this post for that info. Isn't it scary to think how easily you could ingest mercury just by eating some french fries topped with a generous helping of tomato sauce containing HFCS?
• It can cause diabetes - Given that the average person consumes 28kgs of HFCS per year, it’s no surprise that one out of four people today have diabetes. Consuming high levels of fructose hinders, or can even permanently impair, the body’s ability to use or store glucose. That can, and does, lead to type 2 diabetes.
• It can fuel tumour growth - Did you know that cancer cells and tumours feed on sugar? That applies even more so to HFCS. A 2010 study showed that the pancreas, the organ that creates insulin, has a higher risk of developing cancer if it processes too much fructose. Tumour cells thrive on sugar, but fructose is like a superdrug to them. They increase even more rapidly on the stuff. This sheds some light on why cancer rates have been on the rise in the past few decades...
• It's bad for the environment - Environmentalists hate HFCS as much as food companies love it because it's terrible for the environment. It uses more pesticides and fertilisers than any other crop, and the more pesticides we spray on our crops, the more we pollute our soil and ground water. Corn is grown as a monoculture, meaning that the land is used solely for corn. That leads to soil erosion. The high demand for HFCS means we’re faced with more dead soil and contaminated water than ever.

Do you need any MORE motivation to avoid this stuff? It's tricky to avoid if you eat processed foods, baked goods, sauces etc but, if you can bring yourself to get rid of all of those things and go back to the basics, and eat REAL food, you will find you can quite easily avoid it. Most of us have eaten all those things ALL our lives and that is why we find ourselves getting ill so young, and so chronically. 

Don't you think it's time you put a stop to the abuse on a body that is basically only on loan to you for, if you are lucky, about 70 to 80 years? Guaranteed, before you reach the end of those 70 years, if you are filling your body with poison like this, it is pretty much a given that you will end up with a few chronic conditions along the way like arthritis, diabetes, benign tumours, cancer, heart disease, to name a few. Sadly, many people won't even reach those 70 years and their loved ones will have to sit by and watch them suffer through some or other dread disease. 

There are SO MANY things in this world that are dangerous and toxic to you and your loved ones, but this is ONE thing you can definitely avoid and, in doing so, take huge steps towards having a long, healthy, fulfilling life. 

I'd say that's a pretty good reason to make a few changes!