High Fructose Corn Syrup: Your soul is at stake

joshofalltrades

I've been seeing these commercials on TV for a while now. The concerned mother/strawman will watch another mother pour a beverage for her children and accuse her: "You mean you aren't worried about what your children eat/drink?" or somesuch. "What do you mean?" the obviously well-informed yet strangely unperturbed mother replies. "Well, that's got high fructose corn syrup in it." The sagely mother smiles, showing off her dazzling whites.

"And...?"

The strawman pauses, unsure of herself. "Well, I mean... uh... I heard that..."

"That it's all-natural, made from corn and healthy in moderation, just like sugar?"

The strawman then looks as if she's had her gob appropriately smacked, and allows her children to consume the substance. At the bottom of the screen, there is a tiny subtext stating that it's paid for by the Corn Refiners Association.

It got me wondering... why do corn refiners feel the need to pay good money on ads deflecting bad press for this one product?

Well... because it's in everything. And according to books such as this, HFCS "inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off gherin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry."

But why is HFCS pushed into everything when there are healthier products available? Well, according to some, there is a prohibitively expensive tariff on sugar products produced in other countries, so our government opts for the cheaper, less healthy version: high fructose corn syrup, which is produced right here in the U.S. of A.

My personal opinion? We need to be a little more health-conscious as a nation. HFCS is just one of the nasty ingredients that is foisted onto us (it's in everything!) in the name of somebody somewhere else saving some unspecified amount of money. People don't do the research on this sort of thing and really won't understand how bad it is for you.

What do you think?

Dman

What I think is that we've had this debate like 3 times in the last month or two....

I think we determined that HFCS is not especially poisonous or bad for you when compared to other sugars, but that by eating HFCS containing products were participating in corn subsidies which are unethical.

HFCS is more calories for the same sweetness when compared to sugar beat sugar, so eating it makes it easier to have too much sugar. It's wormed it's way into way too many foods.

In general, most people need to be eating less sugar, so cutting foods with alot of HFCS out of your diet is a good idea.

B:L

I hope this thread goes places like the previous HFCS thread:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=76788


These commercials remind me of how cigarette companies used to trick people with advertisements on how smoking is healthy.

Podly

joshofalltrades wrote: »

"That it's all-natural, made from corn and healthy in moderation, just like sugar

I love these ads because of this quote. What, you don't want god damn corn in your popsicle? It says nothing about the taste of HFCS, which is ass nasty. You could say the same thing about a beef popsicle. It's all natural, made from meat, and healthy in moderation, just like sugar.

Yeah, but it's not god damn sugar!

Dman

B:L wrote: »

I hope this thread goes places like the previous HFCS thread:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=76788


These commercials remind me of how cigarette companies used to trick people with advertisements on how smoking is healthy.

I love that if you scroll down the page that links to you can see me saying that we've already had this debate!

joshofalltrades

B:L wrote: »

I hope this thread goes places like the previous HFCS thread:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=76788

I guess I didn't think to look for a debate thread in Writer's Block.

Podly, the whole damn commercial is dumb. What, we have to pretend that anybody who doesn't want HFCS is a feckin' moron?

Nocturne

B:L wrote: »

These commercials remind me of how cigarette companies used to trick people with advertisements on how smoking is healthy.

HFCS tastes good like an enzymatically processed sugar-like substance should.

RandomEngy

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/88/6/1738S?ijkey=NVivwr2sdGumA&keytype=ref&siteid=ajcn

Blood glucose, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin did not differ significantly between the 2 sweeteners. HFCS- and sucrose-sweetened beverages produced similar ghrelin suppression after each meal of 200 pg/mL after both sucrose and HFCS trials. As was seen in the fructose-glucose study described above (65), no significant differences were seen between HFCS and sucrose in ad libitum energy or macronutrient intakes. Appetite ratings were also similar (the one exception was a slightly greater desire to eat after sucrose consumption). Lack of differences between HFCS and sucrose in energy intake and appetite ratings are not surprising because of similar responses in plasma glucose, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin (66), all of which have been postulated as biomarkers of energy intake regulation (36).

What study does your book reference?

_J_

Podly wrote: »

joshofalltrades wrote: »

"That it's all-natural, made from corn and healthy in moderation, just like sugar

I love these ads because of this quote. What, you don't want god damn corn in your popsicle? It says nothing about the taste of HFCS, which is ass nasty. You could say the same thing about a beef popsicle. It's all natural, made from meat, and healthy in moderation, just like sugar.

Yeah, but it's not god damn sugar!

"Healthy in moderation" is one of the best expressions, ever. Because it sounds like Aristotle. Except...no.

emnmnme

Maybe 50 years in the future, our grandchildren will hassle us about our syrups like we hassle our grandparents about smoking cigarettes. Being a smartass is what people our age do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI

tsmvengy

B:L wrote: »

I hope this thread goes places like the previous HFCS thread:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=76788


These commercials remind me of how cigarette companies used to trick people with advertisements on how smoking is healthy.

The HFCS commercials are stupid, but somehow saying that smoking and consuming HFCS are equivalent is ridiculous.

HFCS gets painted as a scapegoat for obesity, but I have yet to see convincing research that says its worse for you than cane or beet sugar. Obesity rates are going up all over the world - it's because people are eating more and more, not because of the sweetener they're eating. Anybody read those recent articles about how the portion sizes and calorie counts of recipes in the Joy of Cooking have gone up over time? That has nothing to do with HFCS and everything to do with the fact that we just consume more and more.

I don't like corn subsidies either, but I feel like a lot of these arguments can be extrapolated to "lol if everything we ate was just flavored with cane sugar nobody would be fat!" which is ridiculous.

archonwarp

To summarize a lot of the past threads' discussion:

A lot of people don't like the taste of HFCS. There's a growing movement of people who are pissed that, because of its ability to keep food soft and moist, HFCS is used in places where sugar would not have been used. Because of this, they are frustrated-- it's much more difficult to avoid in your diet than sugar! Of course there are a lot of people who want more research done on the study, but basically all of the research done so far points to it not being significantly worse for you than cane sugar.

I hate its ubiquity in non-sugary foods. My blood sugar will sometimes drop very quickly if I don't have enough complex carbs to keep it up, and I can tell you from my experience/scientific research that HFCS does trigger insulin response very similar to sugar.

emnmnme

archonwarp wrote: »

I hate its ubiquity in non-sugary foods. My blood sugar will sometimes drop very quickly if I don't have enough complex carbs to keep it up, and I can tell you from my experience/scientific research that HFCS does trigger insulin response very similar to sugar.

Oh god! Now I'm paranoid and suspect everything in my pantry.

Zimmydoom

archonwarp wrote: »

To summarize a lot of the past threads' discussion:

A lot of people don't like the taste of HFCS. There's a growing movement of people who are pissed that, because of its ability to keep food soft and moist, HFCS is used in places where sugar would not have been used. Because of this, they are frustrated-- it's much more difficult to avoid in your diet than sugar! Of course there are a lot of people who want more research done on the study, but basically all of the research done so far points to it not being significantly worse for you than cane sugar.

I hate its ubiquity in non-sugary foods. My blood sugar will sometimes drop very quickly if I don't have enough complex carbs to keep it up, and I can tell you from my experience/scientific research that HFCS does trigger insulin response very similar to sugar.

Nothing particularly objectionable here, but I challenge the assertion that HFCS is so highly valued as a preservative. It's valued because it's cheap, because it's price is artificially controlled by federal subsidies, because Big Agribusiness (as Thanatos is so fond of calling them) is one of the country's most powerful gatekeepers for anyone with political aspirations on a national level.

It may well be a useful preservative in many foodstuffs, but the fact that so many food companies outside of the US won't touch it with a 10-foot pole is very telling. I recently cut HFCS out of my diet entirely over the course of about six weeks; I lost ten pounds and a face full of acne. Thing is, I wasn't 225 to start with. I was 125 and 5'8". After drinking nearly 10 liters of soda a week for fifteen years, my body had become dependent on it to a degree. When I studied abroad for a year I had to buy imported garbage soda and snacks with HFCS, not because I liked the taste, but because if I didn't get my fix I felt like a smack addict sucking dick for a poppyseed bagel.

I suffer from chronic migraines, and as a result of trying to control them with habit-forming pain meds have to periodically ween myself off of said pain meds several times a year. Every few months I end up lying in bed for several days wanting to scream, wracked with agony as my body angrily demands I feed it more Vicodin. I have been lucky enough to avoid the most truly debilitating controlled substances, but still, I know what withdrawal feels like. Opium dependency is not fun, let me tell you. But as miserable as it can be, nothing, nothing, was ever as hard as quitting HCFS. I can pop 15mg of hydrocodone and barely feel it. Give me a can of Sprite and I feel like I'm on the fucking moon.

HamHamJ

By what definition is HFCS all-natural?

Spindrift

archonwarp wrote: »

To summarize a lot of the past threads' discussion:

A lot of people don't like the taste of HFCS. There's a growing movement of people who are pissed that, because of its ability to keep food soft and moist, HFCS is used in places where sugar would not have been used. Because of this, they are frustrated-- it's much more difficult to avoid in your diet than sugar! Of course there are a lot of people who want more research done on the study, but basically all of the research done so far points to it not being significantly worse for you than cane sugar.

I hate its ubiquity in non-sugary foods. My blood sugar will sometimes drop very quickly if I don't have enough complex carbs to keep it up, and I can tell you from my experience/scientific research that HFCS does trigger insulin response very similar to sugar.

What are some examples of foods that contain HFCS that wouldn't contain sugar otherwise?

Zimmydoom

HamHamJ wrote: »

By what definition is HFCS all-natural?

It is made from something that exists, like the Invisible Hand of the Free Market, and not something that doesn't exist, like hard working poor people.

Barrakketh

HamHamJ wrote: »

By what definition is HFCS all-natural?

I read that there are no legal standards regarding labeling a food as "natural" in the United States and that it is just a food industry term.

EDIT: Well, there's this:

It's a fight that has the nation's largest chicken producers squabbling, Big Sugar and Big Corn skirmishing and Sara Lee mixing it up with Farmer John. Lawmakers, too, have joined the fray, which already is thick with dueling petitions and at least one lawsuit. Meanwhile, government food regulators are uncertain how to proceed.

The question is at face value a simple one: When can food products, from chicken breasts to soda pop, rightfully be labeled as "natural?"

Wrapped up in it, however, are some far trickier questions: Is it ethical to charge for saltwater that increasingly pumps up supermarket chickens? Is the sodium lactate used as a flavoring and preservative in sliced roast beef "natural?" How about the high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens sodas?

Equally simple answers appear elusive.

"It's worth bringing in the rabbis to analyze these situations because it's complicated, it's subtle. You can argue from both sides. It has fine distinctions," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The watchdog group's take on the matter is clear: It has threatened to sue soft-drink companies like 7-Up producer Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages for promoting as "100 percent natural" drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

It also has complained that chicken producers are pumping up (and weighing down) their "all-natural" birds with salt water and broth, a growing practice that 40 members of Congress recently called misleading and deceptive.

Poultry giant Tyson Foods Inc. says its marinated chickens are all natural because they contain no artificial ingredients. And its survey work suggests consumers prefer marinated chicken over "conventional chicken" anyway since it's tender and juicier, company spokesman Gary Mickelson said.

Tyson competitors, like Sanderson Farms Inc., say not so fast.

"Under any definition of the term, natural chicken does not contain salt, phosphates, sea salt, preservatives, carrageenan, nor is it pumped with up to 15 percent solution and other ingredients," Lampkin Butts, president and chief operating officer of Sanderson Farms, told a federal hearing last year.

Still, even Tyson supports revisiting the Agriculture Department's definition of "natural." In the mean time, it proposes a two-tier definition that would cover chicken, beef and pork that contains no added ingredients, plus those meats prepared with all-natural ingredients.

Other food companies have chosen their own sides in the debate. They have lodged petitions, comments and lawsuits with the government and are holding out that a definitive answer on what is (and isn't) natural is forthcoming.

At stake is a shot at increasing their share of the estimated $13 billion-a-year market for "natural" foods and beverages - a market whose 4 percent to 5 percent annual growth outpaces that of the overall grocery category, according to Packaged Facts, a market research company.

Any sort of federal ruling would, alternately, either narrow or broaden current rules and regulations that govern use of the "natural" label.

A critic maintains that the push is a bald-faced bid to manipulate federal policy for financial gain, something the feuding parties are quick to accuse each other of doing, and not to add to the public good.

"What looks like a neutral issue or question, such as the meaning of 'natural,' is not neutral at all," said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who tackles the issue in the recently published "Supercapitalism."

Reich says the issue "has profound competitive consequences. Certain companies - sometimes whole sectors of a whole industry - will be advantaged or disadvantaged by how agencies define words that may appear in labels."

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration and Agriculture Department both say they are weighing how to move forward.

The FDA generally allows foods to be labeled as "natural" if such a claim is truthful and not misleading and the product does not contain added color, artificial flavors or synthetic substances, spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said. Agriculture Department policy roughly mirrors the FDA's, though it adds that "natural" meat and poultry products cannot be more than minimally processed.

That's not good enough for industry.

The Sugar Association, in a February 2006 FDA petition seeking clarity on the issue, claims the original chemical state of sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup - made by its arch rivals - is altered so significantly during processing that "the allowance of a 'natural' claim is exceedingly misleading," trade group president and CEO Andrew Briscoe III wrote the agency. The group represents producers of sucrose, made from sugar beets and cane.

The Corn Refiners Association fired back in opposition, saying the sugar industry's claim would draw an unjustified and inconsistent distinction between sucrose and the high-fructose corn syrup its member companies make - and which presumably would no longer be considered "natural."

"The Sugar Association's petition is a thinly veiled attempt to obtain a marketing advantage for sucrose over (high-fructose corn syrup)," Corn Refiners president Audrae Erickson said in November 2006 comments to the FDA.

Meanwhile, in October 2006, Hormel Foods Corp., the maker of Farmer John and other brands, filed its own "natural" petition with the Agriculture Department, seeking in short to outlaw any natural claim on luncheon and other meats that contain sodium lactate.

The corn-derived additive is used as a flavoring and preservative. Only when a meat product uses sodium lactate as a flavoring, however, can it still be considered for a "natural" label, said Laura Reiser, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department's food safety and inspection service, citing a recent department decision.

"The change in the definition of 'natural' creates an exception for sodium lactate that misleads consumers who believe they are buying a product free of chemical preservatives, when they are not," Hormel spokeswoman Julie Craven said.

In January 2007, in clarifying remarks filed with the USDA in support of Hormel's petition, the Sugar Association's Briscoe weighed in and said providing a precise definition of what's natural "would help eliminate misleading competitive practices" - a clear swipe at his corn-syrup competitors.

Sugar produced from sugar beets and cane has lost ground to high-fructose corn syrup, which now accounts for a majority of the sweeteners shipped to the food and beverage industry, according to USDA statistics.

Sara Lee Corp. then followed in April 2007 with a petition to the FDA that presses that agency to define "natural" in a way consistent with the USDA. The Sara Lee petition also makes a case for considering sodium lactate "natural." The company's Hillshire Farms brand, for example, uses it as an ingredient.

"Natural preservatives, such as sodium lactate sourced from corn, are derived from plants, animals, and/or microflora and, thus, are 'natural' ingredients," its petition reads in part.

Hormel fired back in late September, filing a lawsuit that seeks a court order in part to force the USDA to rescind past approvals of "natural" labels on meat and poultry products that use sodium lactate as a preservative.

"The 'natural' thing has always been such a morass," said Urvashi Rangan, a Consumers Union senior scientist and policy analyst.

Rust

The fact that those commercials exist in the first place is evidence of how suspicious that shit is.

The corn lobby is the second lobby I would most like to set on fire, behind the health insurance/pharmaceutical lobby.

Casually Hardcore

Natural is a word that haves no meaning when it comes to food products. The word 'natural' is nothing more but a marketing gimmick now.

So you can say it's natural because it's made from atoms that was naturally created by the big bang.

Scalfin

ethugs4life wrote: »

Natural is a word that haves no meaning when it comes to food products. The word 'natural' is nothing more but a marketing gimmick now.

So you can say it's natural because it's made from atoms that was naturally created by the big bang.

It's used to indicate that it was derived from something organic, even if several reactions removed.
One bad example is almond flavoring. It's quite easy to make through artificial means (it's basically a salt, if I remember correctly), but to be called natural flavoring it has to be derived from banana in a process that also produces cyanide.

Daedalus

HFCS isn't worse for you than sugar, but it is just as bad, and since it doesn't taste as good as sugar, it has a worse "bad-for-you"-to-"tases-good" ratio, which is the only real way to rate the worth of a food.

or at least that's how I think about food.

bluefoxicy

joshofalltrades wrote: »

And according to books such as this, HFCS "inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off gherin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry."

But why is HFCS pushed into everything when there are healthier products available? Well, according to some, there is a prohibitively expensive tariff on sugar products produced in other countries, so our government opts for the cheaper, less healthy version: high fructose corn syrup, which is produced right here in the U.S. of A.

HFCS is sugar. Cane sugar is also sugar. Corn sugar is dextrose and fructose, cane sugar is sucrose. By inverting the disaccharides sucrose you get monosaccharides dextrose (biologically active form of glucose) and fructose. Through a refinement process that basically involves physically separating these out, you can refine either cane or corn sugar into pools of dextrose and fructose; we could use the same process that creates HFCS to create HF cane sugar.

Now, being that these are both sugars, and both glucose-fructose, and that the sucrose gets broken down to separate molecules by your saliva and stomach enzymes, these are equivalent. Sugar is one nutrient that will cause any animal to consume it even if not hungry; yes, something is sweet and the animal (human?) wants more of it even though it's not particularly hungry, imagine that.

Besides the refinement process and trace impurities, there's no real difference here.

Rust

We need to get Thanatos in here to shout at everybody for a while.

bluefoxicy

http://pivo.northernbrewer.com/nbstore/action/search-do?searchTerm=priming

Corn sugar

Moridin

I saw this commercial, started snorting and guffawing about corn subsidies, and my friend just gave me a blank stare.



There was a really good book on this whose name is escaping me that I will probably fill back in with an edit momentarily.

edit: Omnivore's Dilemma

Another side effect of that book is never wanting to eat any corn products ever again, up to and including corn-fed cattle.

archonwarp

Spindrift wrote: »

archonwarp wrote: »

To summarize a lot of the past threads' discussion:

A lot of people don't like the taste of HFCS. There's a growing movement of people who are pissed that, because of its ability to keep food soft and moist, HFCS is used in places where sugar would not have been used. Because of this, they are frustrated-- it's much more difficult to avoid in your diet than sugar! Of course there are a lot of people who want more research done on the study, but basically all of the research done so far points to it not being significantly worse for you than cane sugar.

I hate its ubiquity in non-sugary foods. My blood sugar will sometimes drop very quickly if I don't have enough complex carbs to keep it up, and I can tell you from my experience/scientific research that HFCS does trigger insulin response very similar to sugar.

What are some examples of foods that contain HFCS that wouldn't contain sugar otherwise?

Lots of sauces and dressings use it as an emulsifier. Bread almost always has it as well. For the most part, if you eat packaged stuff, it's almost always there.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

A tip for reading journal articles is to look for the acknowledgments section and see where their funding came from. First tip: There was no federal funding or grant. Second Tip: "JMR: helped to edit the final article. JMR has received grant support and consulting fees from PepsiCo NA. None of the other authors had any conflicts of interest to declare."

They got their fucking research money from PEPSICO.

PEPSICOOOOO

Shadowfire

tsmvengy wrote: »

The HFCS commercials are stupid, but somehow saying that smoking and consuming HFCS are equivalent is ridiculous.

HFCS gets painted as a scapegoat for obesity, but I have yet to see convincing research that says its worse for you than cane or beet sugar. Obesity rates are going up all over the world - it's because people are eating more and more, not because of the sweetener they're eating. Anybody read those recent articles about how the portion sizes and calorie counts of recipes in the Joy of Cooking have gone up over time? That has nothing to do with HFCS and everything to do with the fact that we just consume more and more.

I don't like corn subsidies either, but I feel like a lot of these arguments can be extrapolated to "lol if everything we ate was just flavored with cane sugar nobody would be fat!" which is ridiculous.

It's not just that we're eating more... we're that we're far more sedentary. Less farming and construction work, less moving about, less working outside. More sitting on our asses and working on computers.

The introduction of HFCS into things that don't normally have sugar bothers me. However, it being in soda and the like is no problem for me.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

PEPSICO

bluefoxicy

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

PEPSICO

Pepsi tastes like ass. So does cane sugar cocacola. Along with all diet sodas.

Premier kakos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMo3gOWC8h0

joshofalltrades

Premier kakos wrote: »

video snipped

That's fucking hilarious, even though comparing HFCS to the Nazis is really quite a stretch.

We have a Dr. Pepper bottling plant here in town and they make pure cane DP. It tastes so much better than HFCS sodas that I don't get regular DP anymore. Bluefoxicy's opinion on cane sodas is noted.

bluefoxicy

joshofalltrades wrote: »

Premier kakos wrote: »

video snipped

That's fucking hilarious, even though comparing HFCS to the Nazis is really quite a stretch.

We have a Dr. Pepper bottling plant here in town and they make pure cane DP. It tastes so much better than HFCS sodas that I don't get regular DP anymore. Bluefoxicy's opinion on cane sodas is noted.

Jones Soda actually makes good stuff. Cane Coke is shit. When I make cola, I use unrefined demerara and muscovado sugars (cane, but not white cane sugar that's been processed to hell); I seem to have oversweetened the last batch this way, and need to back off a little. I force carbonated it instead of using yeast to reduce some of the sugar, so maybe a good couple ounces needs to not be in there....

joshofalltrades

bluefoxicy wrote: »

joshofalltrades wrote: »

Premier kakos wrote: »

video snipped

That's fucking hilarious, even though comparing HFCS to the Nazis is really quite a stretch.

We have a Dr. Pepper bottling plant here in town and they make pure cane DP. It tastes so much better than HFCS sodas that I don't get regular DP anymore. Bluefoxicy's opinion on cane sodas is noted.

Jones Soda actually makes good stuff. Cane Coke is shit. When I make cola, I use unrefined demerara and muscovado sugars (cane, but not white cane sugar that's been processed to hell); I seem to have oversweetened the last batch this way, and need to back off a little. I force carbonated it instead of using yeast to reduce some of the sugar, so maybe a good couple ounces needs to not be in there....

And how does your non-HFCS soda taste?

Also, if Jones Soda makes non-HFCS soda I was previously unaware. Is that the case?

Quid

joshofalltrades wrote: »

Also, if Jones Soda makes non-HFCS soda I was previously unaware. Is that the case?

Yep. All of it now since '06.

mynameisguido

I always make it a point to have Mexicoke when I'm around it, though I don't drink soda on a regular basis.

Maybe it's in my head but I like the taste better than the US version.

Premier kakos

joshofalltrades wrote: »

Premier kakos wrote: »

video snipped

That's fucking hilarious, even though comparing HFCS to the Nazis is really quite a stretch.

We have a Dr. Pepper bottling plant here in town and they make pure cane DP. It tastes so much better than HFCS sodas that I don't get regular DP anymore. Bluefoxicy's opinion on cane sodas is noted.

Well, I certainly don't think the video is meant to actually compare HFCS to Nazis. I think the point is to illustrate how idiotic those commercials are and how they could use the same god damned dialogue for anything.

"Oh god! You're eating that?"
"Eating what?"
"That newborn infant! You know what they say about eating newborn infants?"
"What?"
"Uhhhh.... uhhh...."
"That they're delicious, easy to cook, very tender, and okay in moderation?"
"Well, shucks! You're right. Give me one of those newborn infants to chow down on!"

Scalfin

bluefoxicy wrote: »

joshofalltrades wrote: »

And according to books such as this, HFCS "inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off gherin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry."

But why is HFCS pushed into everything when there are healthier products available? Well, according to some, there is a prohibitively expensive tariff on sugar products produced in other countries, so our government opts for the cheaper, less healthy version: high fructose corn syrup, which is produced right here in the U.S. of A.

HFCS is sugar. Cane sugar is also sugar. Corn sugar is dextrose and fructose, cane sugar is sucrose. By inverting the disaccharides sucrose you get monosaccharides dextrose (biologically active form of glucose) and fructose. Through a refinement process that basically involves physically separating these out, you can refine either cane or corn sugar into pools of dextrose and fructose; we could use the same process that creates HFCS to create HF cane sugar.

Now, being that these are both sugars, and both glucose-fructose, and that the sucrose gets broken down to separate molecules by your saliva and stomach enzymes, these are equivalent. Sugar is one nutrient that will cause any animal to consume it even if not hungry; yes, something is sweet and the animal (human?) wants more of it even though it's not particularly hungry, imagine that.

Besides the refinement process and trace impurities, there's no real difference here.

Ammonium bicarbonate and sodium chloride are both salts.

geckahn

bluefoxicy wrote: »

joshofalltrades wrote: »

And according to books such as this, HFCS "inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off gherin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry."

But why is HFCS pushed into everything when there are healthier products available? Well, according to some, there is a prohibitively expensive tariff on sugar products produced in other countries, so our government opts for the cheaper, less healthy version: high fructose corn syrup, which is produced right here in the U.S. of A.

HFCS is sugar. Cane sugar is also sugar. Corn sugar is dextrose and fructose, cane sugar is sucrose. By inverting the disaccharides sucrose you get monosaccharides dextrose (biologically active form of glucose) and fructose. Through a refinement process that basically involves physically separating these out, you can refine either cane or corn sugar into pools of dextrose and fructose; we could use the same process that creates HFCS to create HF cane sugar.

Now, being that these are both sugars, and both glucose-fructose, and that the sucrose gets broken down to separate molecules by your saliva and stomach enzymes, these are equivalent. Sugar is one nutrient that will cause any animal to consume it even if not hungry; yes, something is sweet and the animal (human?) wants more of it even though it's not particularly hungry, imagine that.

Besides the refinement process and trace impurities, there's no real difference here.

It doesnt taste as good. And they use it in stuff that would have no cane sugar. And those subsidies are bullshit.

All I fucking want is some European recipe Fanta.

Al_wat

Premier kakos wrote: »

Well, I certainly don't think the video is meant to actually compare HFCS to Nazis. I think the point is to illustrate how idiotic those commercials are and how they could use the same god damned dialogue for anything.

"Oh god! You're eating that?"
"Eating what?"
"That newborn infant! You know what they say about eating newborn infants?"
"What?"
"Uhhhh.... uhhh...."
"That they're delicious, easy to cook, very tender, and okay in moderation?"
"Well, shucks! You're right. Give me one of those newborn infants to chow down on!"

See that's what I always tell people but they still give me strange looks.