High fructose corn syrup is in a LOT (I’d probably say MOST) of the processed foods you eat: canned soups, frozen dinners, maybe some cookies, pasta sauce from a jar, cereal (maybe?), condiments, salad dressings from a jar.
I don’t know if Latin America eats as much processed food as we do, but I doubt it. But also, you’re talking about people with a whole different level of prosperity, so there are other factors at play on top of how much corn syrup they ingest.
I have a friend who, for a while, decided to eat whatever he wanted. And this is a guy who thinks steak is a vegetable. His only restriction was that he could have no high-fructose corn syrup. He lost 50 pounds.
I’ve wondered if corn in general is the problem. Corn is very much an American thing, as is the level of obesity here. I wonder if there is some correlation. Then again, if that were so, one would think we’d be seeing far more fat Mexiacans.
Well, it helps the docs who get to claim the treatments they provide the obese.
But it does appear that the CDC info is based on BMI so presumably that’s consistent across years.
Why, you make it sound like corn’s just a quaint, cultural preference of ours, rather than the issuse being the oft-discussed, nearly unanimously disparaged government subsidies causing an overproduction of the stuff.
It certainly seems possible. I’d tend towards fingering the fructose rather than the corn.
We are seeing far more fat Mexicans (and everyone else, too).
After having gastric bypass sugar, I avoid sugar like the plague as it can cause “dumping syndrome” - a reaction to the unprocessed sugar hitting my bloodstream that can be highly unpleasant.
Needless to say, I am a rabid label-checker. It was shocking to see sugar - generally high-fructose corn syrup - in things I’d never think they’d be in. Lunch meat. Frozen lasagna. Meat spreads (there is a soft food stage early after the surgery). Just about anything you can imagine - it’s there.
VCNJ~
That suggests that Mexican obesity is a new problem, but corn has been a staple of Mexican food for centuries.
Still, it seems like North Americans are basically corn-fed cows. I won’t give up the occasional buttered ear with my occasional lobster, but perhaps I should stop taking in corn syrup. That means I’ll only have to give up – er, nearly everything.
Damn! :eek:
OK, what about lettuce? Is lettuce OK?
Here’s what I’ve noticed: corn syrup is in all the crap foods. If you give up corn syrup, you automatically avoid anything overprocessed, you pay a little more but the quality goes up. Good chocolate made with real sugar, the occasional freshly-made bakery cupcake as opposed to a box of powdered mini-donuts. And, personally, the real foods are more satisfying than a whole lot of crap foods so I eat less.
Alright, who wants to break it to him that lettuce is out too?
Your best bet, really, is to drink water.
Wait, water has corn syrup in it now too? Son of a bitch!
What it looks like is moving to homemade everything, including lunch meats and breads. And thinking about it, there’s a huge amount of foods I buy that have no nutrition labels at all. Consider the lunch counter, for example.
Bestest. Freudian. Slip. EVAR.
Why thank you! (where’s that curtsey icon?)
I had sugar on the brain, obviously. But to be honest, I don’t crave it at all anymore.
VNCJ~
Well. . .yeah.
Essentially, in my house we make everything we eat. Occasionally, our lunches are meat & bakery bread, but probably 6 days a week, lunch is leftovers from supper.
It’s not just high fructose born syrup either. There’s just weird, crazy stuff in pre-made foods. Now, has that weird crazy stuff been approved by the FDA? Sure. But I’ll be damned if they know what effect some of that has on a person who eats it for 40 straight years.
You are going to eat food every day for the rest of your life. Get in the habit of making it yourself. (the Royal you)
I trust the lunch counter stuff more than stuff that was put together by Kraft in some plant in the midwest. Prepackaged food has a lot of stuff in it to preserve it, to flavor it, and give it an appealing texture. Stuff, I don’t trust them to understand.
I use high fructose corn syrup in some things at home (KARO is corn syrup. I’m not sure if it’s the same thing as HFCS, but I think so). When they say it’s the main ingredient in BBQ sauce, they mean it. It makes BBQ sauce TASTE GOOD, makes it nice and gooey. But you might as well be eating tablespoons of sugar when you’re eating it.
I just got a bag of Doritos. You know, health food.
Among the list of unpronounceable ingredients were the following: Corn, corn oil, high fructose corn syrup solids, corn starch. I’m sensing a theme.
Trunk, I trust the lunch counter more too. But it’s not like they make their own balogna or ketchup. It all starts out in a factory anyway.
There’s already firms in place that filter out all of that stuff for you. In other words, shop at Whole Foods.
Or Trader Joe’s. We love Trader Joe’s.
Mrs. Giraffe went on a high-fructose corn syrup boycott a while back, and I too was shocked at how many foods it’s in. It’s in everything. Between that and trans-fats, I suspect that processed foods are a lot more fattening than people realize. I’d be interested to see the results of a large group of overweight people going on a “eat as much of anything you want as long as it’s not processed” diet.
Me too. We’re told not to eat junk food, which makes us think of things like Twinkies and cheese doodles. It doesn’t occur to us that junk food might also include things like carrot soup and granola.
I love Trader Joe’s too, but it’s no health store. Yes, you can hunt and peck and find some healthy things, but they sell a heck of a lot of junk food. Fancy schmancy junk food, but that’s still what it is.
Dr. Andrew Weil has several books out that talk about this kind of stuff. I’d recommend him to anyone who is serious about changing their lifestyle.