Sugar coated -risky eating

An overweight America may be fixated on fat and obsessed with carbs, but nutritionists say the real problem is much sweeter -- we're awash in sugar. Not just any sugar, but high fructose corn syrup.
If you consider fructose a safe, natural sugar, think again. You've been had by one of the biggest nutritional bait-and-switch ploys in years.
The country eats more sweetener made from corn than from sugarcane or beets, gulping it down in drinks as well as in frozen food and baked goods. Even ketchup is laced with it.

Almost all nutritionists finger high fructose corn syrup consumption as a major culprit in the nation's obesity crisis.
For example, a single 12-ounce can of soda has as much as 13 teaspoons of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup.
So, the answer is to just avoid soda, right? Unfortunately, it's not that simple, because the inexpensive, versatile sweetener has crept into plenty of other places -- foods you might not expect to have any at all. A low-fat, fruit-flavored yogurt, for example, can have 10 teaspoons of fructose-based sweetener in one serving.

Loading high fructose corn syrup into increasingly larger portions of soda and processed food has packed more calories into us and more money into food processing companies, say nutritionists and food activists. But some health experts argue that the issue is bigger than mere calories. The theory goes like this: The body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. It also forces the liver to kick more fat out into the bloodstream.
The end result is that our bodies are essentially tricked into wanting to eat more and at the same time, we are storing more fat.

New research published in the United States that followed 50,000 U.S. nurses reveals those who drank just one serving of soda or fruit punch a day gained weight more quickly than those who drank less than one soda a month.Those who drank more also had an 80% increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

High fructose consumption has been fingered as a causative factor in heart disease. It raises blood levels of cholesterol and another type of fat, triglyceride. It makes blood cells more prone to clotting, and it may also accelerate the aging process.

People who work for the Corn Refiners Association are insisting that high-fructose corn syrup doesn't promote diabetes. And yet, here we have research that followed 50,000 nurses showing an 80% increased risk of type 2 diabetes when people consumed either sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. And not in huge doses, by the way, all it took was one soft drink or one fruit drink a day to boost this risk of diabetes.

What is the Corn Refiners Association afraid of happening here? They're afraid that all of the anti high-fructose corn syrup research and information is going to turn this ingredient into the next big tobacco debate. They're afraid that junk food companiess and fast-food companies (and especially soft drink manufacturers) are going to be blamed for the nation's obesity crisis in the same way big tobacco companies are blamed for lung cancer.

Simply put -one soda provides almost all the sugar a person should eat in a day....
How mant do you consume?

Then again, let's think about this for a moment. What do farmers feed cows when they want to fatten them up for market? Corn, of course! If you want to look like a cow, all you have to do is eat lots of corn and corn by-products, including high-fructose corn syrup.