I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day about her food “awakening.”
“I’m reading that book,” she said, “Omnivore’s Dilemma…Scary stuff. I went to the cabinet to look at what we had, and was like “Yup, that has corn, yup, that too. Seventy percent of it had corn syrup!”
Well, I’m glad my mom is reading this book. I’ve been gently nudging her for a while, but my comments on the hypocrisy of something called Smart Start that actually has high fructose corn syrup in it went the way most helpful-but-nagging facts go: in one ear and out the other. She buys a lot of that pseudo-healthy stuff like granola bars and 100-calorie packs. Stuff which that will make you fat, even as it makes health claims. But HFCS is just sweetener made from corn, right? It can’t be any worse than table sugar. At least, that’s what the commercials say.
Well, the verdict is in on HFCS, thanks to a new study that found:
“Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.”
That’s right, if you stuff rats full of sugar, they don’t get fat. You stuff them with HFCS, and they get obese. So put down that Twinkie. Also, put down that salad dressing, granola bar, Smart Start cereal, flavored yogurt, and canned fruits and veggies, because HFCS is lurking in all those things. You can read more about sneaky foods to avoid here at EcoSalon.
