Lunaville: Growing up we couldn't afford many store bought foods. We had a huge garden and everyone was required to help in it. My mother had an enormous freezer that she used to put food up for the year. When she made spaghetti, she started with tomatoes from our garden. There was no sugar of any kind in the sauce. Most commercial spaghetti sauce contains HFCS. The remaining jars contain sugar. I always wonder why? Sugar is not needed in spaghetti sauce.

Masks the acidity if you overcook it.

 

He's coming for us!!!

When will the government stop subsidies for HFCS? I know it will not solve the problem, but it would help.

ZipSplat: Keep f*ckin' that HFCS chicken. Eating multiple times over the amount of simple carbohydrates that you should is going to result in diabetes. This isn't because of some mystical property of HFCS that has evaded chemists - it's because if you eat too many simple carbs in general you're going to develop insulin resistance. And yes, having a diet flooded with cheap simple carbs (which we have, thanks to HFCS) will have an increased rate of diabetes.

Get it right.

The government subsidy of of corn production in this country makes HFCS cheaper than sugar, making the incorporation of evil carby badness more abundant and widespread. This makes HFCS a problem in its own right beyond that of sugar.

HotWingConspiracy: bestie1

I'll type it slower so you understand.

Corn syrup, cane sugar maple are the same. They are sugar. The argument isn't that excessive sugar causes diabetes. The argument is that MOSANTO BUGA BUGA BUGA.

The US lives longer because we have food and no internal wars. If anything the lack exercise in our jobs is what leads to obesity. Our grandparents ate bacon and chicken grease sandwiches whenever they wanted to because they burned twice the calories we do in a day.

So what do you really want? Do you want to work in a coal mine or subsistence agriculture? You won't make 75 years old doing that. So you want to tell people they can't have the food they want like NY is doing? Do want to artificially raise the prices of food? That one is a slippery slope. Raise the price of corn syrup/corn meal and a fark ton of at risk people aren't going to be able to afford to eat.

What exactly is your plan other than MOSANTO BUGA BUGA BUGA?

liam76: Lunaville: Growing up we couldn't afford many store bought foods. We had a huge garden and everyone was required to help in it. My mother had an enormous freezer that she used to put food up for the year. When she made spaghetti, she started with tomatoes from our garden. There was no sugar of any kind in the sauce. Most commercial spaghetti sauce contains HFCS. The remaining jars contain sugar. I always wonder why? Sugar is not needed in spaghetti sauce.

Masks the acidity if you overcook it.

It also covers the fact that the tomatoes are picked unripe. You can't really store ripe tomatoes more than a week or so. You can't transport them when ripe either. They pick them greenish and ship them to wherever. Haven't you ever noticed that garden fresh tomatoes taste nothing like store bought ones? The garden fresh ones have a higher level of sugar naturally because they are ripe. Does it matter at the end of the day though?

bestie1: liam76: Lunaville: Growing up we couldn't afford many store bought foods. We had a huge garden and everyone was required to help in it. My mother had an enormous freezer that she used to put food up for the year. When she made spaghetti, she started with tomatoes from our garden. There was no sugar of any kind in the sauce. Most commercial spaghetti sauce contains HFCS. The remaining jars contain sugar. I always wonder why? Sugar is not needed in spaghetti sauce.

Masks the acidity if you overcook it.

It also covers the fact that the tomatoes are picked unripe. You can't really store ripe tomatoes more than a week or so. You can't transport them when ripe either. They pick them greenish and ship them to wherever. Haven't you ever noticed that garden fresh tomatoes taste nothing like store bought ones? The garden fresh ones have a higher level of sugar naturally because they are ripe. Does it matter at the end of the day though?

You trying to start a foodie thread?

dragonchild: Lunaville: Like Dragonchild, I do think that HFCS is metabolized differently.

It's not metabolized differently. The reason why I got grumpy is because ZipSplat went on a Taubes-ian derp-spree about "simple carbs" which equates glucose and fructose when the Japanese diet blows open a HUGE hole in that idiocy. Sucrose and HFCS are both basically half fructose, and it's that fructose that does the damage. Nutritionally, metabolically, they're the same for all intents and purposes.

It's not being pedantic because the failure to distinguish between various molecules of the same type is what led to all this nutritional misinformation in the first place. There are HUGE differences between molecules of the same type. Hell, prions and black widow venom are "proteins" but they'll kill you FFS.

Sorry, I didn't intend to misrepresent your statement. I had interpreted some statements up thread regarding an extra step and I'm blanking out. The thread has gotten long and I doubt anyone will really benefit from me recapping it with my errors in comprehension.

Gave up soda and fast food about 3 years ago. Started exercising and losing weight. The 1 year ago I quit smoking. What do I have to show for it? Type 2 Diabetes (Just got diagnosed 2 months ago). yipee!!

Beta Tested: I dread the coming (here already?) "HFCS FREE!!!" label that is inevitable.

There are several products in the market with that label. They have been around for two or three years and their number keeps increasing. Unfortunately, with processed foods the "sugar free" label is just as suspect. It rarely means sweetener free. Typically it contains aspartame or some form of saccharine.

BullBearMS: Spend some time in the Fark cooking threads and learn how to make real food out of real ingredients that instead of eating processed foods full of chemical crap.

Between crock pots and pressure cookers, you can work full time, cook healthy meals and still have plenty of time to sit on your ass in front of your television, Murica.

I have a phobia of pressure cookers and won't have one in my house. I accidentally blew one up as a teen. Thankfully, only the dogs and I were in the kitchen at the time and none of us were standing very close to the stove. The dogs had already freaked and started running for the door before it actually blew so they incurred only a few minor burns. I got hit a bit more, but it was still minor. The scary part was that both my parents got home from work while I was still cleaning it up. I was supposed to have supper on the table. Instead, I was wobbling on a stool, stacked in a chair, scraping food off the ceiling with the handle of a broom. I'll eat Death-O's, unheated, out of a can before I use a pressure cooker again.

SirTanon: [oi45.tinypic.com image 399x192] 

He's coming for us!!!


That was beautiful!

"Ho Ho Ho!"

"Oh oh!"

Asa Phelps: yeah but the sample size for that study is necessarily limited.


Unlike American's waistlines.

liam76: bestie1: liam76: Lunaville: Growing up we couldn't afford many store bought foods. We had a huge garden and everyone was required to help in it. My mother had an enormous freezer that she used to put food up for the year. When she made spaghetti, she started with tomatoes from our garden. There was no sugar of any kind in the sauce. Most commercial spaghetti sauce contains HFCS. The remaining jars contain sugar. I always wonder why? Sugar is not needed in spaghetti sauce.

Masks the acidity if you overcook it.

It also covers the fact that the tomatoes are picked unripe. You can't really store ripe tomatoes more than a week or so. You can't transport them when ripe either. They pick them greenish and ship them to wherever. Haven't you ever noticed that garden fresh tomatoes taste nothing like store bought ones? The garden fresh ones have a higher level of sugar naturally because they are ripe. Does it matter at the end of the day though?

You trying to start a foodie thread?

No. I just don't buy sugar source A is different than sugar source B. I'm sure Gaia and captain planet approve more of the sugar from ripened tomatoes than the sugar from ripened corn or sugar cane stocks. It's really different. The tomato sugar has magic earth saving magic.

Seriously look at the whole "OMG orange juice has the peels juiced back in when reconstituted" thing from about 6 months ago. If you have an orange tree in your back yard then great that probably tastes better than anything you can buy during the 1 month a year when you can pick fully ripened oranges.

If all you can do is buy orange juice that was shipped 1000 miles then deal with it. You still have orange juice which a fark ton more than most of the world can say. They pick them greenish and the time in storage degrades the flavor so they add the peels back in to make it taste like oranges again.

Shyla: But.... "Sugar is sugar!"


EXACTLY!

And alcohol is alcohol.

Now shut up and drink your methanol.

Kazan: i thought monsanto owned/was closely allied with them.

They are. The point I was attempting to make is that corn subsidies are easy to criticize, but the protectionism for domestic beet farmers that inflates sugar prices in the first place tends to slip out of view. Using the companies as a proxy for that was maybe not the way I should have gone, there.

GreatGlavinsGhost: Metalithic: I suspect the problem is too much over-sweetened junk food and too many calories, not HFCS specifically. Granted, corn syrup may be the worst offender, but good old-fashioned sugar or honey can cause just as much trouble if you eat it by the tub-full, and just about any source of excess calories will cause health problems eventually. Fruit also has fructose, but no-one is concerned about fruit intake because it is much harder to eat too much fruit than it is too drink too much soda or eat too many Twinkies.

But when food manufacturers add HFCS to everything, then it becomes a problem.

/Read your labels sheeple!

This.

I was surprised to see HFCS in Chef Boyardee ravioli and spagetti. As the king of cheap food, especially for kids, that was a bit of an eye-opener on how much it's in a lot of foods I never thought about.

mr_a: I'll wager that countries that have a lot of doctors have more reported cases of diabetes as well, as do countries with more doctors, lawyers and maybe even Indian Chiefs.

The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

freewill: Kazan: i thought monsanto owned/was closely allied with them.

They are. The point I was attempting to make is that corn subsidies are easy to criticize, but the protectionism for domestic beet farmers that inflates sugar prices in the first place tends to slip out of view. Using the companies as a proxy for that was maybe not the way I should have gone, there.

Ok fine. The US is the second largest producer of beet sugar in the world. So what your really saying is you hate American farmers and love the filthy balls of those French bastards.

Oh by the way: it's still Fructose whether it comes out of beets, sugar cane, corn, watermelon, grapes, or onions. Same chemical and your body breaks it down the same way.

Dansker: OECD

Citation please.

Dansker: mr_a: I'll wager that countries that have a lot of doctors have more reported cases of diabetes as well, as do countries with more doctors, lawyers and maybe even Indian Chiefs.

The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

Amos Quito: SirTanon: [oi45.tinypic.com image 399x192] 

He's coming for us!!!


That was beautiful!

"Ho Ho Ho!"

"Oh oh!"

Thank you, thank you..

Dansker: The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

andersoncouncil42: Added Sugar is bad for you. ALL of it. That means cane sugar and HFC. The difference between the two is practically nil compared to what they BOTH will do to you when you are talking about the quantities most people consume.

Don't give us any of your both sides are bad shiat... There has never been any stopping in the red zone.

/wait... wut?

Ehcks: dragonchild: Treating all simple sugars like they're the same molecule is as ignorant as swapping methanol for booze

HFCS is glucose and fructose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose. They ARE the same molecules.

Except that one has a bit extra fructose in it, and no, the body does not treat fructose the same as glucose. Just because there's -ose at the end of something doesn't mean it's the 'same' as another -ose. Some are drastically different.

HindiDiscoMonster: Don't give us any of your both sides are bad shiat... There has never been any stopping in the red zone.

Oh really, HindiDiscoMonster? Why pretend; we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion.

Too bad the article doesn't have more detail, but I think that per capita GDP is a pretty big confounding factor here.

Per capita GDP (CIA world factbook)
Countries with the highest or "relatively high" HFCS consumption
Argentina 17700
Belgium 37800
Bulgaria 13800
Canada 40500
Hungary 19600
Japan 34700
Korea 31200
Mexico 14700
Slovakia 23300
United States 48300
average 28160

Countries "among the lowest HFCS consumers"
Egypt 6500
Finland 36000
Germany 38100
Greece 26300
Poland 20200
Portugal 23400
Serbia 10400
average 22986

The countries with a higher per-capita GDP average tend to use more HFCS. These countries also tend to have more medical resources per person, and I'd expect their diabetics (with better access to insulin and other drugs) to tend to live longer. The researchers used prevalence of diabetes, and diabetics who die quickly tend not to count towards the prevalence of diabetes. There is also the issue that mr_a raised about reporting cases of diabetes in countries with more doctors - I imagine that reporting rates are lower in Egypt and Serbia than in most of the other countries on this list.

Maybe the researchers thought of this ... but it's impossible to tell from what's been shown so far, and so I wouldn't rush to change my eating behavior based on what's been written about this study so far.

/tldr: We could conclude that HFCS causes higher per-capita GDP using the same methodology & results shown in the article.

Metalithic: GreatGlavinsGhost: Metalithic: I suspect the problem is too much over-sweetened junk food and too many calories, not HFCS specifically. Granted, corn syrup may be the worst offender, but good old-fashioned sugar or honey can cause just as much trouble if you eat it by the tub-full, and just about any source of excess calories will cause health problems eventually. Fruit also has fructose, but no-one is concerned about fruit intake because it is much harder to eat too much fruit than it is too drink too much soda or eat too many Twinkies.

But when food manufacturers add HFCS to everything, then it becomes a problem.

/Read your labels sheeple!

Well, they certainly could lay off it. It seems almost everything has some sort of added sweetener. Soy lecithin bothers me more, though. It adds fat and calories, but doesn't even taste good.

That is why they add the salt & sugar... to make it taste like something other than cardboard

I wonder if the average HFC = the devil type people know that regular sugar is 50% fructose.

I actually don't wonder, those people tend to be scientific illiterates.

Am I the only farker who thought that this was an article about hydrofluorocarbons, a.k.a. HFC's?

bestie1: Ok fine. The US is the second largest producer of beet sugar in the world. So what your really saying is you hate American farmers and love the filthy balls of those French bastards.

Yep, could definitely not give less of a shiat about the lack of demand for American beets in an open market.

Oh by the way: it's still Fructose whether it comes out of beets, sugar cane, corn, watermelon, grapes, or onions. Same chemical and your body breaks it down the same way.

I don't think anyone is claiming that beet sugar is inferior to cane sugar. The point is that the policies meant to keep beet farmers in business drove up the domestic price of sugar and got the ball rolling on the demand for HFCS as an economically viable sugar substitute, not to mention the manufacturing facilities that have left the United States for access to market price sugar, later importing the finished product.

Honestly, aside from the sketchy way we got here, on a personal level, I'm not hugely concerned about the claimed health aspects of HFCS, but I am concerned about the fact that HFCS tastes like sweetened rancid garbage. It takes me a couple of weeks to readjust to the food when I come back to the United States because nearly everything has that weird mouthfeel and lingering aftertaste.

wildcardjack: SpinStopper: Shyla: But.... "Sugar is sugar!"

Your body doesn't know the .... diff... *thud*


Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Worth your time. Sugar should be a treat, not a staple.

Halfway through this. It is excellent and should be mandatory viewing. Thank you.

bestie1: Dansker: mr_a: I'll wager that countries that have a lot of doctors have more reported cases of diabetes as well, as do countries with more doctors, lawyers and maybe even Indian Chiefs.

The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

dragonchild: Dansker: The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

Here you are, straight from the latest OECD Fact Book. 

BHShaman: How will the corn industry survive if we continue to criticize;
- Ethanol
- HFCS
- Subsidies

Start growing hemp

Dansker: bestie1: Dansker: mr_a: I'll wager that countries that have a lot of doctors have more reported cases of diabetes as well, as do countries with more doctors, lawyers and maybe even Indian Chiefs.

The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

dragonchild: Dansker: The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

Here you are, straight from the latest OECD Fact Book. 
[img.photobucket.com image 850x431]

As a medical professional, I get to see the quality of doctors from various countries (or rather their education system). Just a heads up, NEVER get sick in Russia.

The long and short of it, is getting a lot of doctors is "easy" when the entrance requirements are low and graduation not difficult. While I've known my share of awful docs in the US, the US education system is by far the best for MD's.

Well, it really is the only sensible thing to do.

flynn80: BHShaman: How will the corn industry survive if we continue to criticize;
- Ethanol
- HFCS
- Subsidies

Start growing hemp

And put it in HFCS free brownies.... maybe made with honey..... mmmmm

Magorn: Cpl.D: I could be wrong, but I don't think the problem with HFCS is that it's HFCS. You body metabolizes HFCS just like it's sugar. Because it is. The problem is this industry is so heavily subsidized that they put HFCS in EVERYTHING. I'm amazed it hasn't turned up in plain bottled water.

Not necessarily, it might be something to o with the micro-nutirents present in the corn, or something else, but SOMETHING in HFCS seems to cause a stronger insulin response than even regular table sugar (this is not unknown, sacchrine, while sugar free, can cause the same insuling response as sugar in some people making it worthless as a sugar substitute to them)

Since insulin is the hormal trigger for fat storage, and insulin resistance is the primary trigger for Type II diabetes this explains why HCFS could be implicated in both higher rates of obesity and type two diabetes

Citation needed

Oh and before you start posting pub med abstracts, read them. My favorite anti HFC article gave people three times the normal amount for a sedentary adult ON TOP of their normal diet, compared it to people who didn't get that extra dose, and then basically claimed HFC's caused an unusual insulin response. Idiotic.

freewill: bestie1: Ok fine. The US is the second largest producer of beet sugar in the world. So what your really saying is you hate American farmers and love the filthy balls of those French bastards.

Yep, could definitely not give less of a shiat about the lack of demand for American beets in an open market.

Oh by the way: it's still Fructose whether it comes out of beets, sugar cane, corn, watermelon, grapes, or onions. Same chemical and your body breaks it down the same way.

I don't think anyone is claiming that beet sugar is inferior to cane sugar. The point is that the policies meant to keep beet farmers in business drove up the domestic price of sugar and got the ball rolling on the demand for HFCS as an economically viable sugar substitute, not to mention the manufacturing facilities that have left the United States for access to market price sugar, later importing the finished product.

Honestly, aside from the sketchy way we got here, on a personal level, I'm not hugely concerned about the claimed health aspects of HFCS, but I am concerned about the fact that HFCS tastes like sweetened rancid garbage. It takes me a couple of weeks to readjust to the food when I come back to the United States because nearly everything has that weird mouthfeel and lingering aftertaste.

Great you've been to Brazil, France or Samoa and "all the food in the US tastes terrible because in Eastern Estonia they eat rotten beef that tastes so good". Half the people in my life grew up somewhere else. Then they come here and biatch about the same farking things. The funny thing is that they all hate each others foods too. Albanians don't get off the boat loving Mexican food they hate it. Actually everyone hates Mexican food when they get here. That's the best example. It's just different. Yes Greek sheep butter that has been left at room temperature for a week is like mana if you have a taste for it; but shifting back and forth between cultures is not something most people enjoy.

It's still all fructose as far as the sugar goes. Whatever flavors you taste have nothing to do with the the sugar part. It's like arguing that the alcohol in bourbon is better than the alcohol in gin. It's the same. The differences are the impurities. I'd argue that corn syrup is purer than most fructose sources.

Dansker: bestie1: Dansker: mr_a: I'll wager that countries that have a lot of doctors have more reported cases of diabetes as well, as do countries with more doctors, lawyers and maybe even Indian Chiefs.

The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

dragonchild: Dansker: The US has fewer doctors per capita than most OECD countries.

Citation please.

Here you are, straight from the latest OECD Fact Book. 
[img.photobucket.com image 850x431]

Thank you. That was interesting. I think that Pocket_Fisherman has a point, but I had not expected that the US ratio would rank as low as it did.

Magorn: ZipSplat: Keep f*ckin' that HFCS chicken. Eating multiple times over the amount of simple carbohydrates that you should is going to result in diabetes. This isn't because of some mystical property of HFCS that has evaded chemists - it's because if you eat too many simple carbs in general you're going to develop insulin resistance. And yes, having a diet flooded with cheap simple carbs (which we have, thanks to HFCS) will have an increased rate of diabetes.

Get it right.

you are wrong. Science says you are dead wrong, and nutritional science is anything but simple. Just like those idiots that bray abouthow counting calories is alway determinant of weight gain, or posit that all that is necessary to lose weight is to hit the gym, science has debunked all of you. The human body is a biochemical marvel that we barely understand, and unless you have done a lot of reading in the feild of endocrinology and can converse intelligently about eicosanods, YOU personally don't even begin to have a clue what's going on inside your own body.

What are you talking about. What Science are you quoting? Blah blah blah wave hands say science a few times and magic? In my body magic elves convert HFCS into crack cocaine. They then sell the crack cocaine for eicosanods which are intern converted back to crack because ... why not? The crack is then traded to dwarven masters who create scaled armor for the elves. This armor is sold to for peppermint schnapps and that is then piped directly to my blood stream by the schnapps trolls that live in my kidneys. Now that is a biochemical marvel that I didn't hear about from Deepak Chopra.

Lunaville: BullBearMS: Spend some time in the Fark cooking threads and learn how to make real food out of real ingredients that instead of eating processed foods full of chemical crap.

Between crock pots and pressure cookers, you can work full time, cook healthy meals and still have plenty of time to sit on your ass in front of your television, Murica.

I have a phobia of pressure cookers and won't have one in my house. I accidentally blew one up as a teen. Thankfully, only the dogs and I were in the kitchen at the time and none of us were standing very close to the stove. The dogs had already freaked and started running for the door before it actually blew so they incurred only a few minor burns. I got hit a bit more, but it was still minor. The scary part was that both my parents got home from work while I was still cleaning it up. I was supposed to have supper on the table. Instead, I was wobbling on a stool, stacked in a chair, scraping food off the ceiling with the handle of a broom. I'll eat Death-O's, unheated, out of a can before I use a pressure cooker again.

Modern pressure cookers have a built in relief valve that will pop and release the pressure long before the pressure cooker could blow.

It's the old ones that were the problem. Right after World War II, pressure cookers were much in demand and manufacturers started making them with cheap metal and those really did explode. A bad reputation like that is hard to move past.

Modern pressure cookers are awesome though. You can make tender BBQ ribs in about 30 minutes. Nothing else will allow you to cook tough meats so fast.

If you're the think ahead sort, you could toss the ribs n a crock pot on low and let them go all day while you're at work, but some people just can't seem to think ahead.

Veggies cook in a couple of minutes and taste much, much better than veggies prepared other ways. Heck, you can cook dried beans in half an hour or less depending on the type. Dried lentils cook in just a couple of minutes.

Metalithic: it is much harder to eat too much fruit than it is too drink too much soda or eat too many Twinkies.

You won't need to worry about eating too many Twinkies anymore - so one problem solved!