After hearing and reading about the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup and Sucrose, I’m ready to take the plunge and eliminate them from my diet. My rule is going to be no HFCS, Fructose, Sucrose, or any sweetener that ends in -ol (sorbitol, malitol, etc.). I think regular sugar (in moderation) is OK for cooking or baking but I won’t add any to tea or coffee.
Anyone have any tips or tricks?
What are you defining “regular sugar” as if it doesn’t include fructose and sucrose?
You do realize that table sugar IS sucrose, right?
IMHO, the key word doesn’t end in -ose or -ol, but -tion, as in “moderation”.
As for tips, to avoid added sweeteners you’re pretty much going to have to swear off the majority of processed foods and most packaged baked goods. The upside of that is you’ll also be cutting out a lot of excess sodium and fat.
Don’t eat processed food.
Seriously, that’ll do it for everything except sucrose/glucose - because you’ve pretty much screwed yourself out of nearly all natural sweeteners there too. And fruit, for that matter.
And why are you lumping sugar alcohols in with sucrose?
Personally, I don’t believe that HFCS is more dangerous* than regular sugar, unless you hate corn subsidies too.
*Mostly limited to empty calories and tooth decay.
I understand that Sucrose=Sugar. I don’t know of any way to avoid using sugar when I bake. I’m going to try to avoid packaged foods that have a large percentage of added sugar to the ingredients.
My goal is to eliminate artificially created/added sweeteners. Natural fructose in fruits and vegetables are OK. Pure fructose added to a packaged food is not. HFCS is not processed by the body the same way glucose is. I’m coming to realize how MUCH added sugar I’m ingesting and I’m setting myself a goal to eliminate as many sources of added sugars as I can.
Regular sugar meaning no Nutrasweet or Equal. I’m not saying sugar is totally evil.
Most bread (like wonder bread, etc) has HFCS in it. Oh, and so does ketchup. And a million other things, the stuff is impossible to stay away from
Well, technically it’s just a blend of fructose and glucose, so in that way no, it’s not processed the same way as plain glucose - which you aren’t going to find in a natural pure form anyway. All of the digestible carbohydrates and sugars get broken down into glucose.
HFCS is processed like honey, which has the same fructose/glucose ratio and is the most natural concentrated sweetener around.
Nutrasweet and Equal aren’t sugar per se; “artificial sweetener” is the usual term applied. Same for sucralose/Splenda, Ace K, and the sugar alcohols you already mentioned.
Anyway, artificial sweeteners would actually help your goal since they have no/few calories and replace sugar/honey/HFCS/etc. in various ways. If you’re good with that, just read the label and watch out for stuff like “dehydrated cane juice” which is a sneaky way of saying “sugar,” added fruit juices, etc.
If you’re aiming to cut out sweet stuff, period, then avoid processed foods, including condiments, bread, and so forth.
groan You do know that sucrose is fructose + glucose right? And that HFCS is the same thing, just broken into two pieces . Your body breaks sucrose into fructose and glucose before using them at the brush border of the intestines, so they are essentially identically metabolized. You don’t have to avoid HFCS, or even any sugar, like the plague. Just eat it in moderation.
Next you’ll be saying you want to avoid glucose.
It isn’t impossible at all. Just don’t eat processed food. You avoid all kinds of awful crap in your diet by not eating processed food.
Plus, there is such a huge public backlash against HFCS there are tons of products which used to be made with it that now loudly proclaim “HFCS FREE!!!”.
Although the name Gary Taubes seems to cause undo ire around these parts lately, I’ll take the chance of getting flamed by pointing out a recent and relevant article by him in the NYT. There is also a Q&A with him answering reader’s questions. (from there, I learned that Caro corn syrup is almost pure glucose)
Whether or not you buy into his whole thesis, there is some good info to consider in there.
I did that for lent last year or the year before.
There’s a lot of HFCS in places you wouldn’t think to look. So look. Read a lot of labels. You’ll be surprised at how much is out there where you wouldn’t expect it. That’s what makes “moderation” so tricky. It’s so ubiquitous it’s hard to moderate.
Wonder Bread and the like may have HFCS, but there are several shelves full of ‘real’ bread at my supermarket with no added sugar of any sort. Heinz ‘regular’ ketchup has HFCS, but they make a ‘Simply Heinz’ ketchup that uses sugar.
It’s not really that hard to stay away from HFCS; it just takes a few extra minutes of label-reading, and the willingness to make a substitution or two.
Be aware that HFCS has been renamed “corn sugar” lately, too.
And its a lot easier if you avoid processed foods. There isn’t a lot of HFCS to be found in fresh fruits and vegetables.
Personally, if I were going to take the plunge (I’m a “healthy in moderation” person myself - lots of home cooking from scratch, but no guilt over the once in a while drive through), I’d go the “limit processed foods” route. Its much easier to start with whole ingredients than to read labels.
Take Saturday and bake two loaves of bread. Buy a chicken or a turkey breast and eat it for a week like your grandparents did. Shop heavily in the produce section. Arrange to have “simple” snacks available so you aren’t tempted to go for store bought baked goods. Ingrediants don’t sneak up on you when you start with flour, oil, eggs, raspberries, chicken breast, et.al.
Yes. Don’t believe all the scare crap you read on the Internet.
Part of the reason many people shop at Whole Foods is because of the unacceptable ingredients list. If you are actively avoiding certain ingredients (for me it’s HFCS and hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated oils) it’s nice to have a store to go to where you don’t have to pore over each label of everything you put in the basket. While there’s still plenty of processed stuff to buy there (and if you can get past the smug), I find it nice to be able to shop without label reading once in a while. Many staples are not outrageously priced. I stock up on ketchup, mustard, pasta sauce, stuff like that there.
Part of what I found since striking HFCS from my diet isn’t that I’m doing it because it’s evil (though some research into the corn industry/subsidizing blah blah is interesting) in itself, but because as the cheapest sweetener out there, it’s subsequently in the cheapest products, and is bound to be among many other ingredients on a long list on a product I shouldn’t be ingesting.
If you think of HFCS as a “gateway drug” you’ll get more out of avoiding it, as in the avoidance process you’re also putting down and stepping away from highly processed cheap, and not good for you for other reasons, foods.