Here is the best explanation I have every seen on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and how the body responds to it. It is from
The Great American Detox Diet by Alex Jamieson (Morgan Spurlock's girlfriend of "Super Size Me"). Bear with me - this is so good , it is a l-o-n-g quote
Recent reports ib\n the media have stated that Americans have been eating less white refined sugar in the past 2 decades, down to 63.2 pounds per person per year in 2002. That's still a lot of sugar! This reduction in cane sugar consumption doesn't mean we're eating less sugar - now we are just getting it in another form. In the early 1980s, food companies began to use a form of sugar known as high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS in their products. The reason? HFCS is significantly cheaper than cane sugar and saves the food industry tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. USDA studies show an increase in consumption by 250 percent over the last 15 years. Some studies show that the average American kid consumes up to 20 percent of his daily calories from HFCS alone. In the early 1960s, the average American consumed no HFCS. By 2002 the average American was consuming 62.8 pounds of HFCS a year! In less than one generation, we've become hooked on this dangerous druglike sweetener that effectively has doubled our intake of sugar additives.
Why is this corn-derived sweetener so ubiquitous and so inexpensive? It's a matter of politics. The federal government began offering subsidies to corn growers in the 1970s. This created a huge amount of dirt-cheap corn that was turned into a sweetener that is much cheaper than sugar. And if it is cheaper, it is what the food giants want.
HFCS is so cheap to produce that it has replaced cane sugar in almost every processed food we eat: sodas, juices, candies, pasta sauces, ketchup, cookies, syrups, yogurts, soups, salald dressings, breakfast cereals - even baby formula.
... In the early 1980s, whe HFCS became commonplace in food products, a once-stable obesity level in this country began to spike, and it has been soaring ever since. How can there not be a connection
So, how does the body react to HFCS? This passage is what really drove it home for me and, in 2003, made me throw away and replace everything in my home that had HFCS. I was amazed at the products that had it.
HFCS, however, appears to affect our bodies differently than sugars that convert right to glucose, behaving more like fat than sugar when it hits our bloodstreams. With fructose, there is no spike in blood sugar, and there is also no signaling to our bodies that we have been adequately fed. This is one of the potentially scary attributes of foods laced with HFCS, and it has researchers very concerned. Since HFCS doesn't appear to signal to our bodies that we've taken in calories, we tend to eat more foods laden with these than we should. In essence, when we eat foods high in HFCS, our bodies are essentially tricked into wanting to eat more, and at the same time our bodies are processing this sugar in ways that prompt them to store more fat **Emphasis is mine** This is part of the reason many experts believe our rising consumption of HFCS is a major contributor to the current obesity process.
Pretty scary stuff. I hope that now that FDA and food manufacturers have a handle on how much we care about getting trans fats out of our food supply, will now get the message about HFCS!!
I have to tell you, one of the things that I did in the past was go to OA where I learned a lot of people lacked the ability to tell when they were truely hungry and truely full. 