The War Against High Fructose Corn Syrup

Mrs Names sent me this great blog post about what we are actually putting in our mouths, and how making stuff from scratch is so much better for us in so may ways. One of the biggest enemies in the food wars is of course High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's in everything and is super hard to avoid, because let's face it, I'm not going to bake my own bread for a family of four, I'd never get any laundry done.

I've completely cut out buying cookies at the store, cakes, pastries or pies. If we want to eat that stuff I make it myself along with all the pizza dough we eat. It sounds like a huge drag, but in fact, once you start eating homemade and made from scratch treats, you'll never be able to go back to store bought again. You really have to want to eat it to make it, so generally you don't have a lot of sweet snacks lying around the house. I was in Costco the other day, and one of the sample ladies was giving out some muffins. Of course I took one, and I couldn't even eat the quarter she gave me. It had the total made in a factory taste that you can immediately identify if you haven't eating that type of stuff for a long time.

I was so happy about that! I'm no longer tempted to buy anything like that! Of course my family doesn't agree with me, and they get really unhappy with me if I try and buy any kind of bread that that is remotely brown and good for you. Everyone here likes the Arnold WholeGrain Oatnut Bread. I've had to totally cave on this and just give them what they want. You have to pick your battles. I try not to eat it, but sometimes I just have some. As far as other bread goes, I try and buy fresh bakery stuff from the supermarket and Trader Joe's.

Arnold's are smug about the fact that they have 0g trans fat and 13 grams of whole grains per slice, but they still insist on putting in High Fructose Corn Syrup in their bread. It's the 6th ingredient listed, and then a bit further down they have also added sugar. I'd rather just have the sugar.

Now that the trans fat war has been fought and the consumer seems to be winning, we need to start fighting the High Fructose Corn Syrup War - we can win that too. Read labels religiously and don't buy things if at all possible with HFCS in it. Or better yet, make as much from scratch as possible, it will also help the environment, with less trash to throw out.

I really believe that High Fructose Corn Syrup is really bad for us, and who knows how it's going to affect our organs in 20 years. Time will tell. Hopefully by then, the manufacturers will be back to using ingredients that might be a bit more expensive, but are not toxic.