Who's Your Audience

I've been hearing a lot lately about high-fructose corn syrup. According to The Mayo Clinic, it's a sweetener that is made by "changing the sugar in cornstarch to fructose." Developed in the 1970s, the replacement of sugar with HFCS developed gradually and some folks attribute the growing American obesity problem to the infusion of this product into many of our foods.

Since I am always looking for new ways to be healthy, I decided to try and alleviate HCFS from the Martin diet. Last weekend, I went to Kroger and really spent some time looking at labels. It was in everything! The yogurt we have been eating in our smoothies lists HFCS as the second ingredient. Other foods that I found it in include wheat bread, ketchup, cereal (even the "healthy" cereals), soft drinks, coffee creamer, protein snack bars, and fruit juice. The list goes on and on. In fact, it's in so many foods that it is almost impossible to entirely alleviate it from our diets.

I did find some healthy alternatives. The Dannon All Natural line of yogurts, while more expensive, is not just a container of creamed fructose. I eat cereal almost every morning. I must have picked up 10 boxes of so-called healthy cereal, only to find that every one of them was sweetened with HFCS. I settled for a lesser known brand in the health food aisle that produces a knock-off of Cheerios. I love the Kashi cereals and I found at least two of them that utilize pure cane sugar about 10 ingredients down on the list. I will continue to buy that brand.

It's harder to find sweets that don't have both trans fats and HFSC. I ended up buying pineapple, watermelon, canteloupe, and blueberries for our lunch snacks. I just cut it all up and divided it all into separate containers and we each take a container to lunch. We've both found that it's actually quite refreshing to eat a serving of fruit in the middle of the day! I have also replaced our coffee creamer with half & half. Admittedly, we only drink one cup of java in the morning but it's something we both enjoy so we're just modifying it to fit a healthier lifestyle.

There are some items that I just will not stop consuming, though. Those include my one Coca-Cola per week (usually enjoyed during lunch on Saturday), tortilla chips (which I admit I haven't researched yet), and of course chocolate in moderation. Hey, everybody's gotta live, right!

I am going to start making a list of items that do not contain the HFCS so check out the column on the right for that. Meanwhile, if you run across any delicious items that aren't spoiled by the dreaded HFCS beast, let me know! I'll make sure to add them to the list as well.

The image inserted in this journal entry is from imagepress.com.

Update on Monday, June 9, 2008 at 08:34AM by Who's Your Audience

Comment from a very healthy, sexy 40-something friend:
"I have been watching my HFCS consumption for a couple of years now. I had read somewhere that it gives you a hungry feeling even when you’re not and that was enough for me to stop. I don’t know if you have noticed yet, but it is even in ketchup. You think you have picked up something healthy like you had done with the yogurt and it contains it. It is in most granola and even in your Saturday soda. Almost every item that is marked ‘low fat’ or ‘diet’ usually contains it. You should read “Skinny Bitch” if you haven’t already. They also give you a list of healthy food."
See "My World is Laid Away in Books" section for link to "Skinny Bitch."

Update on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 09:05AM by Who's Your Audience

Following is a list of foods that do not contain high-fructose corn syrup (or contain trace amounts):

• Panera Bread Potato Chips

• Thomas' Multigrain English Muffins

• Post Grape Nuts

• Kashi Go Lean cereal

• Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup

• Hershey Special Dark

• Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

• Hershey's Milk Chocolate

• Dannon All Natural yogurt (vanilla, coffee, plain)

• Breyers All Natural ice cream

• Smuckers Organic Jelly

• Smart Balance Omega Natural Peanut Butter

• Private Selection Tomato & Basil Pasta Sauce

• Athenos Hummus

• Fontova Salsa

• Frito's Corn Chips

• Garden of Eatin Blue Chips

• Sugar Free Kool-Aid