High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Sugar for our Children

Have you seen the high fructose corn syrup commercials?  The commercials tell us, “it is simply corn, and fine in moderation.”  What does moderation mean?  Do you know what you are eating?  What are you feeding your children?  The fact is that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is genetically modified corn starch with added genetically modified enymes.  Doesn’t sound like food does it?  Check out the process that the HFCS that you are eating goes through before it makes its way into your food:

• HFCS is the processing of corn starch to yeild glucose and the processing of fructose to yeild a high percentage of fructose.  This process is very complicated:
  
  • 3 enzymes are needed to breakdown cornstarch:
    • 1- Alpha-amylase is produced by a bacerium (Bacillus sp) to produce shortened chains of sugars, polysaccharides
    • 2- Glucoamylase is produced by Aspergillus, a fungus, and used to breakdown sugar chains even further to yeild simple   sugar glucose.
    • 3- Glucose-isomerase is very expensive, and is used to converts clucose to a mixture of 42% fructose and 50-52% glucose.  The enzyme is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is poured over it (can be used over and over until it looses most of its activity.)
  • 2 Additional steps required:
    • Liquid chromatography takes the mixture to 90% fructose
    • Blend this back with original mixture to yeild concentration of 55% fructose (hence, HFCS)

Do you believe after all that, HFCS is actually cheaper than good ‘ol sugar?  Not only is it cheaper to make, but is is easier to transport by just pumping it into trucks and shipping it off.  This all leads to lower cost for the food manufacturers and higher profits, which is why Americas consume more HFCS than real sugar.

What does this all mean for your health and your children’s health?  Well, based on testing done on lab rats, fructose can have severe effects to the gorwing organism in the liver where it is metabloized.  Our growing children should not be consuming this genetically modified food (if you can call it that), in fact we should not be consuming it either!

Why do we need sugar?  The answer is that we don’t!  We eat plenty of natural sugars in our fruits and vegatables on a daily basis that we really should not be adding any extra sugar to our diets, especially our babies and children’s diets.

If you must sweeten your food it is best to choose sugar in the raw.  This brown colored sugar is the most minimally processed sugar that is made by rolling out the juices from the sugar cane and then boiling them and drying them until you have the brown crystals that you buy at the store.  The white sugar that you buy goes through a longer process of bleaching, removing the molasses (brown color), and breaking it down and re-crystalizing.

Do you eat HFCS?  Take a look at the items in your pantry, your cereal?, your ketchup?, your yogurt?, your juice?, your jams, etc….they all use HFCS in their products.  If you are trying to avoid HFCS and HFCS for your children, try shopping at Whole Foods.  Whole Foods has a partnership with the non-GMO project.  GMO (Genetically Modified Foods) products are avoided by Whole Foods for resale

2 comments