Here's how this little bugger was born: About 30 years ago, food manufacturers figured out that they could make sodas, cereals, yogurts, and some 40,000 other manufactured foods taste sweeter -- for a lot less money than with simple sugar. They did it by developing HFCS (which is derived from corn).
Sounds fine in theory, but here's the problem: When you eat any type of carbohydrate (like bread or fruit), your body releases insulin to regulate your body weight, pushing those carb calories into your muscles to be used as energy or storing them for later. Then it suppresses your appetite. Those carbs are the signal for you to stop filling your tank.
But HFCS doesn't stimulate insulin, so your body doesn't register it the way it registers simple white sugar. (That's why you can drink a few Big Gulps and never really feel full.) So what are you left with? You eat the HFCS-containing foods that are high in calories, but, like a band that stops after one set, those foods leave you wanting more. So you eat more foods with HFCS, stockpiling those calories like they're savings bonds, and the cycle of eating -- and storing fat -- continues.
Today, you can find HFCS in things like ketchup, pasta sauce, and crackers -- it's everywhere. Now, you don't need to eliminate it completely (though that's the ideal), but you do need to treat it like a manipulative ex and find ways to kick it out of your life.
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"Trans fats" may sound like the name of a cross-dressing pool hustler, but the reality is even more bizarre. Artificially made fats, trans fats are like wigs in shower drains -- mammoth cloggers. They gunk up the works by increasing the amount of bad cholesterol in your body. (Trans fats have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.)
You can understand why when you realize how they're made. Trans fats are created by combining vegetable oil (a liquid) with hydrogen to create partially hydrogenated oil, or trans fatty acids. Once infused with the hydrogen, the liquid vegetable oil turns into a solid at room temperature.
And the food industry loves trans fats, because they are cheap and seem to stick around forever. Plus, you can add trans fats to all kinds of foods in a way you can't add regular oil (for instance, normal vegetable oil in a cookie recipe would ooze out when the weather gets warm; with trans fats, the treats stay crisp and solid). So now trans fats -- like HFCS -- get added to chips, fries, muffins, and all sorts of on-the-shelf products.
But the real evil is what trans fat does to you on the inside. Remember, these fats are supposed to be liquid but have turned into solid. So instead of melting, like they would in their natural state, inside your body, they try to revert to their waxy, solid makeup -- inside your arteries.
Tips: Scan the label and eliminate. Like hotel bars on business trips, little good can come from them. Some tips for total avoidance:
• Check ingredients lists for aliases like "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated." The higher these ingredients are on the label, the more trans fats they contain.
• Pick high-protein breakfasts like eggs and Canadian bacon over waffles. If you have toast, skip the margarine. Processed bread products and margarine are two of the most common forms in which trans fats find their way into our bodies.
• At a restaurant, ask what kind of oil the chef uses. You want to hear olive oil, not shortening (another code name for the transfat).
• When eating out, stick to soup or salad and avoid the bread, which can be filled with trans fats.
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excellent new post from Dr. Mercola on HFCS here
ReplyDeletehttp://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/02/HighFructose-Corn-Syrup-Alters-Human-Metabolism.aspx
Excellent.. I try to avoid those two evils and much more ingredients on food that are evils too. :)
ReplyDeleteyup do it.. your body will thank you! all the best!
ReplyDelete