Should I avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup (from Jill)

First of all, let's learn what this substnace is....High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a manmade sweetener that’s found in a wide range of processed foods including things that don't even tast sweet. Things like ketchup, cereals, crackers and salad dressings. It also sweetens just about all of the (regular) soda Americans drink.

HFCS used in foods is between 50 to 55 percent fructose (a naturally occuring type of sugar in fruit) —so chemically, it’s virtually identical to table sugar (sucrose) becuase that is also 50 percent fructose. Metabolic studies suggest our bodies break down and use HFCS and sucrose the same way.

Yet, after HFCS began to be widely introduced into the food supply 30-odd years ago, obesity rates skyrocketed. And because the sweetener is so ubiquitous, many blame HFCS for playing a major role in our national obesity epidemic. As a result, some shoppers equate HFCS with “toxic waste” when they see it on a food label. But when it comes right down to it, a sugar is a sugar is a sugar. A can of soda contains around nine teaspoons of sugar in the form of HFCS—but, from a biochemical standpoint, drinking that soda is no worse for you than sipping home-brewed iced tea that you’ve doctored with nine teaspoons of table sugar or an equivalent amount of honey.

A nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, barry Popkin, Ph.D., who previously suggested, in an influential 2004 paper, a possible HFCS-obesity link, stresses that the real obesity problem doesn’t lie just with HFCS. Rather, it’s the fact that sugars from all sources have become so prevalent in our food supply, especially in our beverages. People think that “natural” sweeteners sometimes added to upscale processed foods and many "organic" foods are safer but, if a sugar is a sugar, then what we really want to be looking for are lower sugar foods - on the whole - not just the source of sugar in the product. Some of the other sugars you may find on a label is honey, brown sugar, rice syrup, brown rice syrup, concentrated fruit juice and other types of "syrups" but, what you want to remember is that they all have the same caloric effects as sugar.

You should also remember that not all of the sugar in a product is an added sugar (one of those listed above). Some foods - fruit, whole grain starches and dairy - have naturally occuring sugar. A good "rule of thumb" is to look for products with less than 5 grams of sugar. Some leeway can be given to allow up to 10 g sugar IF that sugar is coming from some of those natually occuring sugar in the product. How can you tell? Read the ingredients and, if there are no added sugar sources listed in the first 3 ingredients, you can assume that most of the grams of sugar listed on the label are coming from whole foods and not added sugars