Last week we talked about the Corn Refiner’s Association marketing campaign of “corn sugar”. The cornerstone of their campaign is that “sugar is sugar”. That high fructose corn syrup is no different than regular sugar. This is false. 

Now, if you’ve been reading our blog for a while you’ll know that we don’t use refined sugar at all. Sugar is not good for you. So saying that “sugar is sugar” is not a compelling argument to us. But, what is even more concerning is that high fructose corn syrup may be even worse for you than refined sugar. Here’s why:

  • The fructose in high fructose corn syrup is more rapidly absorbed from your intestines into your bloodstream. This causes a few things to happen. Lipogenesis is one of those things. Lipogenesis means that the fructose causes your liver to make more fat. Another thing that happens is your insulin levels spike; causing your body to store more fat. So, your body is making more fat and then also storing more fat…
  • The fructose also causes metabolic problems as a result of the lipogenesis and insulin spikes. These metabolic problems include increased appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dementia just to name a few.
  • High fructose corn syrup actually requires more energy to absorb. That means that less energy is going to building and maintaining a healthy digestive tract and more energy is going toward bringing high fructose corn syrup into your body. Consuming high fructose corn syrup can literally put holes in your intestines, little teeny tiny microscopic ones of course, but they are big enough to let in toxins and other things that shouldn’t be floating around in your bloodstream. These toxins in your blood can cause widespread inflammation in your body.
  • High fructose corn syrup often contains toxic levels of mercury. And when chemical analysis was conducted on samples of high fructose corn syrup, not only was mercury found, but there were also strange chemicals that showed up of some unknown compound…

The bottom line here really is that if a food has high fructose corn syrup listed as an ingredient, it isn’t a real food. You shouldn’t be eating it anyway. It’s probably full of a whole bunch of other chemicals, preservatives and additives, not to mention empty calories.

For more detailed information and sources please see: Five Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You