*snort* sometimes, people make me giggle... He's not alone in that sort of paranoia.

And what *is* in High Fructose Corn Syrup, anyway???

Basically, high fructose corn syrup is just sugar syrup.

The problem with it is that fructose is *very* quickly absorbed by the body. Regular sugar, the white granular stuff, is sucrose, which is a disaccharide, it's got two sugars in it, it's actually a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose bonded together. When things made with sugar are digested, that bond has to be broken first, then the two constituent sugars are absorbed.

That's still a pretty quick process, but the fructose and glucose in corn syrup are already separate and are absorbed *immediately*, and so cause an even more dramatic spike in insulin production than plain sugar does. (When you read about "glycemic index" in reference to carbs, that's basically talking about how intense of an insulin response that particular carb produces.)

Anyway, so it's those floods of insulin into the blood stream that contribute to pre-diabetic insulin resistance. Plus, since high-fructose corn syrup is so cheap, and has preservative effects in food, manufacturers use a whole ton of it, and suddenly there's a whole lot of calories packed into some pretty small packages.

To top it off, things made with corn syrup often don't taste as good as things made with sugar. Since glucose and fructose taste slightly different, things sweetened with sucrose have a kind of well-rounded sweetness. Things sweetened with high fructose corn syrup alone often, to me, taste like getting beat over the head with un un-subtle brick of SWEET. Though that might be just because of how much they use... 11 tsp of sugar in a can of soda? I couldn't make myself sit down and eat 11 tsp of sugar!

anyway, I'm sure you knew most of this already, but I'm having a rambly kind of day...

HFCS is the bane of my MIL's existance. She gets strange side effects after consuming anything containing the stuff (which is everywhere). The Mister and I don't read labels much, but we do check to make sure all of our juices don't have it, and that any sliced bread has it very low on the ingredient list (if at all).

There was a small puddle of it on the bakery floor yesterday and one of my co-workers accidentally stepped in it. Not only is this stuff bad for you, but it is a downright bugger to get off your shoe! S*** is nasty sticky!

Much hate for HFCS. It's in every damn thing these days