This is ONE ingredient I have been VERY careful to not miss at the store (along with other sweeteners you will read about shortly). But it’s in MY RITZ CRACKERS!! This is bad news for the home made lunch*bles I’ve been making for my daughter.
What’s the big deal about High Fructose Corn Syrup? I will first say that if you have a whole website ‘defending’ your cheap, chemically processed sweetener… It’s not looking too good.
The side effects: weight gain (or lack of weight loss), metabolic syndrome digestive issues and some believe cancer risk. In a 2009 article, The Washington Post wrote that over half of the HFCS has tested positive for mercury! Fantastic.
You ever wonder why 8 people have a heart attack and they pull a very helpful drug off the market (Vioxx) and millions of people are obese, have metabolic syndrome and many other health issues and HFCS is still used widely? The answer: government subsidies. These make corn syrup (in all its forms) be the cheapest sweetener out there. The biggest eek factor is that it almost always goes in highly processed foods and most of the time we aren’t even checking the labels!
You can also find HFCS (or corn syrup) in pasta sauce, salad dressings, yogurt (buh bye Yoplait Thick & Creamy), candy bars, bakery products, drinks (buh bye Gatorade), juices, canned foods, cereals (buh bye Kellogs Raisin Bran), granola bars… Once you start looking; you’ll find it everywhere!
High fructose corn syrup doesn’t exist naturally. It can’t be squeezed out of corn kernels and requires a long and complicated process to make, which can only be done by people. The verdict: It’s coming out of my pantry completely.
Stay tuned for pictures and what comes out of my pantry… Part 3 of the pantry make over!
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