Corn Syrup isn't Sugar

     I would like to introduce you to my least favorite commercial on television.  Oddly enough, the company that makes it doesn't actually have it up anywhere on the internet, so you're getting an awfully filmed version from YouTube.  I'll talk about why it makes me mad after it's over.

     Once again, I'm going to remind you that these are just my personal views, and you are, in no way, required to believe what I believe.  I should also mention that the First Amendment protects my right to say what I want to say.
     C.Y.A. statements aside, I believe that corn syrup is the cornerstone upon which American obesity is built.  I'll also mention that a lack of activity and crappy eating habits make up the foundation, but today, I'm going to tackle corn syrup.  In 2010, the Corn Refiner's Association petitioned to have "high fructose corn syrup" renamed to "corn sugar."  On May 30, 2012, the FDA rejected the petition on the grounds that sugar is defined as a solid, dry, crystallized food.
   Regardless of the FDA's decision, it appears that the Corn Refiner's Association is attempting to get the American public to rename it themselves.  I personally agree fully with the FDA because I feel like corn syrup provides a disservice to the American people.
    I want to make it clear that I have nothing against corn or actually corn syrup in general.  In fact, my daughter suffered from severe constipation when she was an infant, and her pediatrician recommended adding a teaspoon of Karo syrup to one of her bottles a day (before someone says something about nursing, I feel like I should say that I breastfed as long as I could).  The reason it works is because corn syrup has a sugar alcohol called sorbitol that makes your intestines relax.
    I also want to say that I have nothing against sweet things.  I have issues with my weight because there's sugar in the world.  However, I think that sugar from sugar cane is where most of our sweet stuff should come from and I have several reasons why.
     Let's talk about pure numbers first.  1 teaspoon of high fructose corn syrup has 53 calories and 14 grams of carbohydrates.  1 teaspoon of granulated sugar has 16 calories and 4 grams of carbohydrates.  That means that, even if you took in the 3.3 teaspoons of sugar you'd need to have the same amount of calories, you'd still have taken in almost 40 carbohydrates less than corn syrup.  Since you need to take in about 750 g of carbohydrates per day, 1 teaspoon of high fructose corn syrup is 7% of your daily intake.  That's pretty big, compared to 0.5% you'd get from your teaspoon of granulated sugar.  It's worth mentioning that high fructose corn syrup is 6 times sweeter than sugar.
     Okay, so let's move on to the difference between sucrose and fructose.  Science time!  (Sorry.)
    Meet sucrose, it comes from the sugar cane plant.  It's a hydrocarbon with two six-sided rings connected by what we call an ether (the oxygen in the middle). Despite what many people think, sucrose is considered a complex carbohydrate.  Complex carbohydrates are more difficult for your body to break down and store as fat.

     This is fructose.  It's the sugar that's released from fruits and vegetables (that's why the "fru" part).  It's a very simple sugar that your body can process and store as fat really really quickly.
     So, that's the basic difference.  For the record, all fructose does not come from corn.  Any time you have a fruit or vegetable that's even a little sweet, it has fructose in it.  However, you don't see concentrated apple juice being used in every little thing to sweeten it (it is a fantastic sweetener, but the point is still there).  Your body can and does tell the difference between sucrose and fructose, and I'm about to tell you how.
     I'm a favor of empirical research which means I like research that can be replicated and tells us things about ourselves.  I have two very important studies that have to do with fructose vs sucrose in which you might be interested.
     Researchers at Princeton University gave a large number of rats diets exclusively of sucrose and fructose measured to give the rats the same amount of calories.  Now, no one's saying that you should eat a diet of exclusively sugar.  This was a test to see what the difference of the two types of sugar would be.  In the study, the rats who ate the fructose gained more weight, especially in the abdominal area, kept the weight on longer after returned to normal food, and had raised triglyceride levels which are unhealthy fats in the blood.
    This is just the latest in the Princeton line of corn syrup studies.  The link up there will take you to an article that lines them out, but they all come down to this:  When you eat corn syrup, you gain more weight.  If you don't know that being overweight is bad for your body, you should pay attention.
     The second study comes from UCLA where they fed rats a high fructose diet once again.  In this study, the rats' brains showed delayed responses after 6 weeks of a high fructose diet.  That means, the more fructose you take in, the slower your brain works.  If your kids' cereal has corn syrup in it, you might want to think about that before you send her off to school with that in her belly.

     So, there's my rant on why you should be controlling your family's high fructose corn syrup intake.  Really think about it the next time you're thinking of buying something with HFCS in it.