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Thursday, June 26, 2008
Children of the High Fructose Corn
High Fructose Corn Syrup has been getting a bad rap. Many people have blamed it on the current issue with obesity. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described how the corn industry is launching a 30 million dollar campaign to help address the "many untruths" related to the sweetener.
Let me preface by saying two things ... first, it is processed foods in general, including foods with other sugars, that I believe is the culprit, and more guilty than the manufacturers is the people who choose to invest in and consume these junk foods. Second, am I the only one who finds it disturbing that there are 30 million dollars laying around to try to convince overweight and obese Americans that it's OK to consume foods laden with this processed sugar (many of our children who are given "fruit juice" by well-meaning parents are really drinking fruit-flavored High Fructose Corn Syrup concoctions, for example)? Where is the 30 million dollar "eat broccoli because it's incredibly healthy" campaign?
The Center for Science in the Public Interest wants the Corn Refiner's Association (CRA) to come clean. The CRA claims in their campaign that HFCS has "the same natural sweeteners as table sugar." As you may have read in my article, The Sugar Coated Truth, sucrose is a sugar that occurs naturally in nature. HFCS does not occur anywhere in nature. The deceptive labeling that the FDA allows makes it possible to call something "natural" as long as it derives from natural ingredients. What is the "natural" process to obtain HFCS? First, you must have an association like the CRA in order to refine it. Then, that association which has 30 million to spare on campaigns convincing you that their product is perfectly normal and healthy must take corn starch, use chemicals and/or enzymes to break the corn starch down into other molecules, then add another enzyme to further convert portions into fructose.
While the article above states that "the harmfulness of HFCS is an urban myth" some urban mythologists have conducted studies that suggest otherwise ... consider this: "The 2002 UCD study reported on animal testing that showed how fructose consumption contributed to insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and elevated triglyceride levels - three of the core symptoms of metabolic syndrome. Other metabolic syndrome symptoms include excessive abdominal fat, high C-reactive protein level, and low HDL cholesterol. Three or more of these symptoms put a patient at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease." Forget the animals ... In Can Fruit Make You Fat? found that overweight people "given large doses of fructose were more likely to put on weight around the stomach than those given glucose." While its not clear from the summaries, it appears the subjects were given pure fructose as opposed to whole fruit. While fruit is high in fructose, I suspect it is also packaged with other nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and enzymes that change its overall impact as compared to the highly refined, processed sugars found in foods.
Again, not to say that HFCS by itself is "evil" ... it's refined sugars and processed carbohydrates that are sinister, and HFCS just happens to contribute to a large extent. If you'd like to read a well-rounded article with some good facts about why we should be very guarded about the multimillion dollar "highly refined and processed corn starch added to all of your food is good thing" campaign, read this article about fructose dangers.
(By the way ... to put this in perspective, the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry "only" spent $168 million lobbying in 2007 ... that's only about 5 times what the corn refiners are investing to push their own special product down our throats).
Don't be a Poser
As many know, I do a bit of running and will be doing a bit more as I work up to my first ultramarathon (a race longer than the traditional marathon distance of 26.2 miles). A friend of mine pointed me to PoseTech website as a source of information. This is a very interesting running technique that attempts to focus not on the right running shoe, nutrition, or training regimen, but proper running form. An interesting concept and read ... I may look into integrating some of those concepts into my own training.
Don't McDiet
Recently someone received a lot of press for going on a diet and losing a lot of weight eating only at the restaurant with the golden arches. The American Institute for Cancer Reasearch cashed a reality check by stating the diet was a crash-and-burn program that couldn't be maintained in the long term. You can probably lose weight on the "insert your food here" diet (imagine, just one bowl of ice cream per day) ... the question is, are you shooting for a lovely corpse, or should overall health factor into what you eat as well?
Grandma's Cigarettes
Here's an interesting blog post about the old argument, "But grandma used to eat lard and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day" used to say we're OK eating junk from a can or box and lifting the remote instead of weights.
Ditch the Shakes for a Cranberry Smile
The New York Times ran an interesting article called Real Thought for Food for Long Workouts. It essentially asked whether we really need all of our bars, shakes, and gels to workout for long periods of time. A few doctors who know what they're talking about (they don't just research muscle physiology and kinesiology in the lab, but actually participate and for example won the Ontario trail running series three years in a row) claim that nothing but water and natural, whole foods is all that is needed.
No matter how much we try to engineer, nature just seems to have figured it out already!
Labels: high fructose corn syrup, hill running, mcdonald's diet, sugar, sweetener, workout shakes
posted by Jeremy Likness | 5:39 AM
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