The Chemical of Evil...

[acroyear]

...continues to haunt me.

"High Fructose Corn Syrup".

Evil.

and Everywhere.

Its in all but 2 of the "nutritious snacks" that my company gives its employees for free.  And one of those two is "Cheetos".  Its in Animal Crackers.  Its in Nutter Butters.

The real pisser: its in the supposedly best for your health "Nutri-Grain" Cereal Bars from Kellogg's.  Three times.

"Ingredients: Filling (high fructose corn syrup, apple preserves [high fructose corn syrup, apples], ...)..., high fructose corn syrup, ..."

So its the #1 ingredient of the "filling", and the #1 ingredient of the #2 ingredient of said filling, AND it shows up in the main ingredients list on its own.

I just can't stand it.  I didn't used to care, but now that I do, I am still at that state where I am shocked at all of the food items that incorporated this processed calorie factory.

Someday, I won't be shocked to see it.  When that happens, I might as well just quit. 

I'm pretty sure its a key ingredient in Budweiser, only the mega-breweries refuse to submit to a "list your ingredients" regulation from the FDA, something the micros have been pushing for over a decade, for that very reason. ;)

Items that have that poison, and more of it than you might think...

• breakfast syrups are now more corn syrup / high fructose corn syrup than maple, and the major brands all have no maple at all.  pure maple syrup should have this as its one and only ingredient: "sap".
  
• whole wheat breads
• Caesar salad dressing and Yoplait Yogurt.
• every (non-organic) prepackaged sweetened tea (often its in the ingredient list above tea itself) including lipton and nestea
• peanut butter (not all, but the cheap stuff they stick in crackers from keebler or lances certainly does).  most american-made jellys, jams, and preserves.
  
• most condiments (ketchup, bbq, yellow mustard)
• white bread products like low-end hamburger and hotdog buns (particularly those used at McDonalds)
  

simply inescapable...but i'm gonna keep trying as best i can.  I won't worry about it in the things I eat in relatively small doses (condiments and salad dressings, and my favorite apple jelly), but otherwise if i see a snack that lists it as an ingredient (and certainly something that claims to be nutritious and yet lists it 3 times, including the first two items on the list), then its something I will, quite literally, live without.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

HFCS won't be in any non-diet drink. the closest is in the "low carb" C2 from Coke, which is their "new coke" formula of 1985 brought back from the dead with a 50-50 split of HFCS and Aspertame (nutrisweet).

One thing about the "positive spin" that the HFCS "industry" publishes is that table sugar is "60-40" glucose/fructose, compared with 50-50 in HFCS (which was named that only because of the added fructose, not because it was all THAT much higher than natural corn syrup (not that that's terribly natural as such, either)). So HFCS shouldn't be seen as being all that different from that which its replaced.

What they DON'T say is that the sugar that used to go in those products was not "table sugar" at all, but a rawer sugar more closely straight from the cane, which has a much higher glucose level than what results from the processing and bleaching to create white sugar.

as for alternate snacks? well they do provide a nuts-and-raisins only trail mix (only 80 cal, no added sweeteners or salts), but that's about it. i'm not worried in and of itself. however, the irony of providing such snacks in the midst of a "we're concerned about your health" program (with water bottles and pedometers and free health scans) still gets to me. :)