“Still Spooked by High-Fructose Corn Syrup,” by Tara Parker ran in The New York times yesterday.  I was interested in the article because like many Americans, I suspect one of the biggest risks we are taking with our health is continuously loading up on high-fructose corn syrup that is in just about everything we eat.  The article cites a recent study and suggests that if you drink even two sodas a day, you increase your risk of kidney disease by 40%--women’s risk was double that of men’s… There is also a suggested link between fatty liver disease and high-fructose corn syrup written about in this article…

The article cites another study that suggests that high-fructose corn syrup makes you fatter quicker than other sugars. Yikes… 

And many consumers don’t even realize how many items that we buy regularly contain corn syrup.  Have you ever read the ingredient label for the whole wheat or multi-grain bread that you buy?  You’d think this would be healthy for you, right?  Likely, it’s loaded with high-fructose corn syrup—it’s near impossible to find bread at a regular supermarket that doesn’t have high-fructose corn syrup in it…  I’ve looked and have resigned to buying the Sara Lee low-cal wheat bread, as I have not to date seen the high-fructose corn syrup included in the ingredients.

I’ll end with a quote sited in the article by Michael Pollan from  The Washington Post written earlier this year,

“The environmental footprint of high-fructose corn syrup is deep and wide,” writes Pollan, a prominent critic of industrial agriculture. “Look no farther than the dead zone in the Gulf [of Mexico], an area the size of New Jersey where virtually nothing will live because it has been starved of oxygen by the fertilizer runoff coming down the Mississippi from the Corn Belt. Then there is the atrazine in the water in farm country — a nasty herbicide that, at concentrations as little as 0.1 part per billion, has been shown to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites.”

Now that’s spooky! 

And finally, wishing you a festive and happy Halloween!