I’m mostly buying replacement products. I love yogurt, Dannon has an all-natural version that does not have HFCS. I try not to eat too much bread anyway, but when I do it’s deli-style Italian or Giant Eagle brand multigrain (no HFCS). Giant Eagle brand maple syrup does not contain HFCS, believe it or not, and it’s super cheap. Tropicana orange juice and lemonade are all-natural, and I love the “Simply” brand juices…Simply Grapefruit, Simply Lemonade, etc. The use of HFCS is so widespread that I’m probably getting it in things I wouldn’t even think of, I would rather not buy it purposefully.
I had to buy some corn syrup to make marshmallows. Every single brand had:
Ingredients: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup.
WTF??? STOP IT, GODDAMMIT! :mad::mad::mad:
Ooo, same here! What I don’t get is when people of my mother’s generation and older insist that I’m crazy for preferring sucrose-based sodas to HFC-based ones. They grew up with that stuff – how could they not notice it changed? (Of course, this is also the same bunch of ladies who claimed to have never heard of root beer when I ordered it at lunch one day; they thought it was a Dr. Pepper clone.)
I drank this kool aid for a long time. I used to be so pro-“real” sugar in sodas. I preached it to all my friends. Lately, though, I’ve been going to a specialty soda shop once a week and trying a lot of the same sodas in HFCS and “real cane sugar” varieties, and you really can’t tell the difference. Straight up. They also have cane sugar Coke and HFCS Coke at Wal-Mart and you can’t tell the difference. And I’m a supertaster. I’ve been considering doing some double-blind tests to verify, because I know I could be mistaken on some miniscule level, but I don’t know anyone nerdy enough to indulge me and participate. If anything it’s definitely not “no comparison.” The container you drink it out of seems to be the biggest factor in my solo experiments - glass vs. plastic vs. aluminum. Since glass tastes best and most cane sugar sodas come in glass bottles, my hypothesis is that this is where the perception that sugar sodas taste better comes from.
I’m not entirely sure that HFCS does anything unfortunate biologically, but the debate about it has really brought my attention to the whole over-sweetening/over-salting of our food. Plus it really is difficult to eat that stuff in moderation considering how many places it turns up. My order of preference is to buy unsweetened (when possible/feasible), then less sweetened but with non-HFCS sugars, then artificial sweeteners, then HFCS.
I’ve switched to diet soda due to weight maintenance issues, but since there’s some debate over that too, I’d prefer to just cut out that pricey addiction. I keep trying to taper off then quit.
My example: I was in a supermarket looking for barbecue sauce, and only one of the few dozen varieties didn’t contain HFCS.
I read labels closely anyway, being a vegetarian and having an uncommon food allergy.
Corn syrup? Can’t THEY make better profit using there corn to make biofuels? Or is high fructose corn syrup a bye product of the refinery process?:dubious:
They have plenty of corn. The same guys that make corn syrup also make the biofuels, so they are more than happy to sell as much of each as they can.
I design industrial controls for a living, and two of the largest producers of corn syrup just happen to pay a substantial part of my paycheck. That doesn’t mean I want their corn syrup in my food, though.
To add to the irony, my daughter is allergic to the stuff.
Amen to that.
I’ve started eliminating HFCS as much as possible, but the most difficult place to eliminate it is BREAD, for God’s sake. Almost every brand out there has HFCS in it. I buy Pepperidge Farms 100% Natural, or else their Dark Pump, as those are about the only ones I can get at your average grocery store without it.
These commercials are total BS. I hate that they paint all of us concerned with our sugar intake as morons who just listened to some news byte and really have no idea why we do things.
In routine blood tests a year ago my insulin was a bit high so my GP recommended I cut a lot of sugars out of my diet. I already didn’t drink sodas (prime suspects for doctors) so I had to look closely at everything else I ate to find those sugars. It’s sad, when you actually look at the labels.
Yeah, I don’t drink Kool Aid because it’s chock full of sugar. I don’t drink juice, rarely drink soda (and then it’s diet ONLY) and we shop for no-sugar added brands for most other groceries as well.
Stop and Shop (I think they are called Giant elsewhere in the country) has a great “all natural” line of products that supply us with non-HFCS ketchup, breads (whole grains!) snacks, etc. I don’t have to pay the big bucks at a solely organic food store to choose wisely, and that makes me like S&S a lot.
Their ketchup is great and I can’t stand being served HFCS ketchup now. It tastes so fake and over-sugared.
I try to keep my sugars where they count–like in chocolate, and not where I don’t even want them like breads.
Could not disagree more. First time I had sucrose Coke, it was a taste test that my wife and a friend did. They could tell the taste difference as well (we used the same container for testing). They just didn’t necessarily like it.
We found that as you went back and forth, it became harder and harder to tell the difference. The final verdict was that the HFCS left a filmy type of residue, making it more and more difficult to taste the difference. Makes sense, since corn syrup is a filmy substance.
Being a supertaster might be a detriment in this case - overstimulation of the taste buds might occur more quickly, and that could make them taste the same.
I say that also because there is a taste difference between Coke, Pepsi, and all the generic versions (Sam’s Choice, RC Cola, etc).
It may just be one of those things where some people can taste the difference, and others can’t. Therefore, the debate wil probably never end 
I saw “King Corn” about a month ago, and I immediately began to start reading labels so that I could avoid HFCS. The only soda that I used to drink was ginger ale, but from now on, no more Canada Dry or Schweppes.
I shop at Trader Joe’s, and they have lots of foodstuffs without it.
I acknowledge that some people might be able to tell the difference, if they really stopped to think about it (emphasis on words some, might, and really), but I will stand firm that the difference is not “no comparison” (and I really really think it’s the container you drink it out of, not the sweetener), but you’re right - we could argue this all day without ever coming to a conclusion. If I ever get the opportunity I will conduct a real double-blind test. Wait, in fact, I bet Coke did this before they switched over . . . they must have after the whole Coke 2 fiasco. I wonder if it would be possible to dig up their results?
I couldn’t disagree more. There’s been a lot of noise lately about the effects of HFCS (fructose in general, really, but I don’t think over consumption of apples is the problem) on blood sugar, insulin resistance and its sundry effects. This, combined with the near omnipresence of the shit, means that the typical American diet can very easily lead to significant resistance, generally making you fat, diabetic, and bitchy.
ETA: Usual anecdotes!=data disclaimers, I can easily tell the difference between soda sweetened with sugar versus HFCS (not that I drink much of either.) In my opinion sugar tends to give the soda a slightly brighter, less cloying sweet and less viscous mouthfeel, while evil, evil corn produces a muted flavor; it clings and lingers on the tongue.
Was at the grocery store and did a little experiment. I picked up (but did not buy) ten things at random and read the labels. 8 ouf of ten had HFCS in them. They included:
gallon jug of fruit punch
strawberry-flavored cream cheese
whole wheat bread with some kinda of “healthy” sounding label
banana twinkies
sour cream and onion crackers
mountain dew soda
store brand ketchup
store brand cooked ham
I mean, I can see putting that crap in sweet stuff, but ham? bread? crackers? WTF?
:mad:
I used to buy Nature’s Own Honey Wheat bread. I’m not a label reader at all, but in an effort to eat better I did a cursory check of all the things I normally put into my mouth a couple weeks ago and discovered that this is made with HFSC as well. It was really off putting to think that it was more than honey and wheat! I’ve since moved on to HFSC-free 100% Whole Wheat bread, which is just as good as far as I’m concerned.
I first saw this commercial the other day when I was watching project runway or daily show or something. I’d never heard of any ‘myths’ about hfsc in the past, and the obvious (diabetes, obesity, etc) clearly didn’t enter my head at the time. But when the guy says “you know what they say about corn syrup,” my mind immediately went to erectile dysfunction. Maybe it was the way the woman was holding the popsicle stick. I don’t know. :o :smack:
I’m not trying to be rude - but what did you expect? Your list contains seven heavily-processed and overtly sweet foods and one loaf of “healthy” sounding bread. While I’d admit that you will occasionally find HFCS somewhere you don’t expect it to be, you’re basically guaranteed to find it in anything wrapped in cellophane.
If you’re eating home-cooked meals and using primarily meats, fruit’n’foliage, and from-scratch starches you can easily eliminate HFCS from anything except perhaps a sauce or marinade.
Costco carries many products that are HFCS free- including a great wheat sandwich bread. Other than that- Pepperidge farm, like you.
I try to avoid the stuff in foods my kids eat on high frequency- Bread, cereal, yogurts, certain snacks, chocolate milk boxes (for lunch) etc. Less frequent foods and snacks I’m more relaxed about.
I love HF Corn Syrup. It’s delicious.
Here’s what I think the average person would expect: that they will probably find HFCS in the kinds of products featured in these commercials, namely, fruit punch and popsicles. And sure, soda and twinkies, no surprise there. They are sweet, junkfoods.
The shocker is finding HFCS in things like lunch meat, bread, cream cheese and ketchup.
An additional shock was finding HFCS in 80% of the products I picked up at random.
Note that the commercials do slip in the weasel words “in moderation” (spoken quickly and almost under their breath). How the hell can people eat this crap “in moderation” when it’s in almost everything?
Average HFCS consumption in America went from 0 in 1970 to over 60 POUNDS per person currently. That’s 7 1/2 GALLONS per person of chemically altered corn syrup made from genetically modified corn. Is that “moderation”?? I really don’t think so.
other HFCS peeves…
Barbeque sauce is nearly impossible to find without HFCS being one of the top 3 ingredients.
Most salad dressings, even supposedly healthy vinegar/oil dressings, use HFCS.
I love a nice dinner out, but it is impossible to determine if the heavenly sauce at your favorite restaurant is HFCS-based or not. I’d suspect/expect that most, if not all, commercial restaurant supply stock is HFCS based.