When you eat or drink something sweet, do you have stomach issues?

Cramps, excess gas, a bloated feeling, even diarrhea and pain.

It could be that fructose is the culprit.

It’s found in many processed drinks, such as lemonade and soda, and in food such as low-fat sauces, yogurts, cereals, and more.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is trouble too.

What happens is that the fructose isn’t absorbed properly. It ends up in the colon where bacteria break it down, and turn it into acid and gas.

If this sounds like you, then try laying off anything with corn syrup in it for a few days, and see if your digestive system settles down.

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Most of the time, when I encounter, a confused face, in the grocery store, its of someone who has a new illness diagnoses, and they are overly stressed, trying to figure out what it is that they CAN eat now.

FOOD is too complicated, today.  We’ve lost our ideas of what basics are really..

We live in an over-processed food society, run by marketing directors.

We have to find balance, for our well being, even if its stable thinking, while we try to learn what we need to be doing.

We need to figure that what’s in a can or a box may not ever be our best choices, again.  Consider them allergies, in your own mind-set, because they truly can hurt you.

Look for simple ingredients on labels.  A few items, that you can almost pronounce are much better than a long list of unknowns.

Consider juice.  Tropicana sells fresh-squeezed not-from-concentrate juice, near the dairy case.  But, what is this “juice,” next to it?  The carton is smaller. IT costs a few cents more, too.. but it says “50% less sugar.”  At first glance, that may seem better.. but how do you remove sugar from fresh juice?

You add filtered water, starches, and sugar substitutes.  This is no longer juice. Its a juice drink/punch.  Its similar likes are Sunny D without the corn syrup.

The carton is smaller and it costs more than the real orange juice.

I dilute my orange juice, for my own personal preference.  But, mostly, we need to concentrate on keeping it as real as it can be, when it comes to fruits and veggies.

REAL, in its most natural state, doesn’t wash us over with words, in labels that we don’t understand.

Keep it simple.  Keep it real.  Don’t let the words, on containers, fool you, into thinking they’ve reinvented the wheel, for you.

The Conspiracy is to make a dollar.. not keep you healthy. Its a business.  Stay in control and you win.

Just say no to chemicals and sugar substitutes.

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The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) seemingly takes exception to any suggestion that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is in any way to blame for the increase in Child diabetes in the United States.

The CRA loves to quote the American Medical Association (AMA) as saying that HFCS doesn’t appear to contribute more to obesity to other caloric sweeteners (such as regular sugar, for example).

However, The AMA also recommends a daily limit of 32 grams of such sweeteners. The average can of soda contains 40 grams of HFCS.

So even if HFCS in itself does no more harm than other sweeteners, we can’t get away from the fact that the average American consumes far more sweeteners of all kinds than is recommended by the AMA – over 500% more. As practically all processed food products contain HFCS, it is a major contributor to obesity, and diabetes in the USA.

The best way forward is to cut out processed foods altogether. Eat fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, pasta, diary, beans and whole grains. Check anything in a carton, box, or packet though to be sure of what you are actually eating.

Cutting out processed foods, and sweeteners, including HFCS, cannot do any harm.

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Showing insulin resistance is one of the first signs of developing type 2 diabetes.

Scientists undertaking a new animal study at Yale University have found that a specific gene ‘PGC-1 beta’ seems to play an important role in developing insulin resistance when rats were fed with a high fructose diet.

Scientists blocked the gene, and found that the rats didn’t develop resistance.

The report, in the journal Cell Metabolism, explains that some studies have shown that fructose is metabolized in the human body differently to glucose, and is more readily converted into fat.

Other studies have shown that high fructose diets also seem to lead to increased levels of blood fat, and liver fat.

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Not only is High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) not good for us – despite how the corn refining companies dress it up, it’s still empty calories that we can do without – it’s found that up to 50% of it contains mercury.

Still, there is perhaps some light at the end of the tunnel. Last month 140 nations got together to develop an international treaty to phase out as much mercury use as possible. Not only that, but the U.S. was one of the leaders in pushing for this internationally binding legislation.

On the domestic front congress could help this by phasing out the use of mercury cell technology in domestic chlorine plants.

The U.S FDA should test HFCS for mercury content AND make those findings public.

We can all help, by cutting down on consumption of products containing HFCS.

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Researchers at Chicago’s Loyola University have found that women who drink more than one can of sugar-laden soda each day nearly double showing signs of developing kidney disease.

The study involved a national sample of over 9,000 men and women, and one interesting find was that the same signs were not shown in men who drink a similar amount.

It could be the excess of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in most sodas, or given that mercury has also been found in HFCS, in other similar studies, this could also be a factor.

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Here at TGFC, we avoid McDonalds like the plague (in fact we look at McDonalds like a world wide plague). However, reading Michael Polan’s excellent book ‘The Omnivores Dilemma’ gave us some figures even we were shocked by.

We already knew that the four main ingredients of the average Western diet were Corn, Rice, Wheat & Soy, but we were surprised to find that out of the non liquid items in McDonalds products, they contained the following percentages of corn, or corn derived products (such as High fructose Corn Syrup).

• Soft drink 100%
• Milk shake 78%
• Salad dressing 65%
• Chicken nuggets 56%
• Cheeseburger 52%
• French Fries 23%

That means there’s more corn in a McDonalds cheeseburger than anything else. The last one is the one that we wondered about the most though. Why is almost a quarter of the contents of a portion of French Fries derived from corn?

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High fructose corn syrup, sugar and several fruit juices are all nutritionally the same, according to Audrae Erickson, President, Corn Refiners Association. She says that High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as sugar and is handled similarly by the body.

The American Medical Association in June 2008 helped put to rest misunderstandings about this sweetener and obesity, stating that “high fructose syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners.”

That last statement though, is the rub. If you really want to eat food with less calories, and better nutritional values, then it’s recommended to cut out the empty calories that come with ALL calorific sweeteners, including both regular sugar, and HFCS.

So TGFC still thinks it’s a good idea to avoid HFCS as part of a sensible diet regimen.

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Take Ketchup. It’s all the same isn’t it? That supermarket own brand, tastes almost as good as Heinz, and it’s quite a bit less expensive.

“Mind you, I heard that Hunts Ketchup is full of that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), and I’m trying to cut back on that, as I’ve read it’s not good to consume, particularly when you’re trying to lose a few pounds, so I’ll avoid that one. On seconds thought, perhaps I’ll stick to Heinz. My mom bought that, and always swore by it – wouldn’t get anything else”.

You’d be wrong.

Heinz Ketchup is made with HFCS, like most other brands.

Why try an organic Ketchup? You might only take a little bit once in a while, but you can bet you’re kids take lashings of it, right? So do them a favor, and get something without the ubiquitous HFCS in.

Check the labels next time you’re in the supermarket, and you’ll be surprised how many ‘good’ brands contain way too much junk!

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A recently released study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that about 32 percent of children were overweight, 16 percent were obese, and 11 percent were extremely obese.

Meanwhile junk food companies continue to promote so-called healthy choices, such as diet sodas, and low-fat chips. Many cereal products are way less than healthy too, containing large amounts of sugar or the ubiquitous High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).

Whatever the recent commercials from the corn industry might say about HFCS, the bottom line is that it’s still empty calories, and eating less calories is one way to lose weight. Quite simply, if you burn more calories than you take in, you’ll eventually lose some pounds.

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