This Common Food Ingredient Is Why America Has A Problem!

Jan. 26, 2010 - PRLog -- What if you were to learn that every day, 25 percent of your calories came from a poison, disguised as a food? And what if you discovered that this chemical imposter was responsible for your insulin resistance and weight gain?And elevated blood pressure ...
And elevated triglycerides and LDL ...And depletion of vitamins and minerals ...And even gout, heart disease and liver damage?What if you were to discover that this toxic substance had been dumped into your food in gradually increasing quantities for the last thirty years, with the full knowledge and blessings of the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the USDA and the FDA?Would you be angry?I wish I could tell you that this is just a dramatic plot from some fiction novel, but it’s actually a shocking reality.The substance dealing such a crushing blow to your health and responsible for many, if not most of the chronic diseases that are so rampant in our society, is sugar -- and more specifically, fructose. We now know without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on the health of this nation. By the end of this article, you will have a solid understanding of how and why this has happened. In order to really grasp this material, you’ll have to learn a little of the biochemistry of energy, which is rather technical. But hang in there -- the knowledge you’re about to gain, and the impact it will have on your health, will be well worth the effort.I will try my best to make the more technical aspects as simple as I can for you. Big Gulp, Meet Big BeltWe are eating far more than we were 25 years ago. On average, men are consuming 187 more calories per day, and women 335 more calories. People who were never heavy before are becoming overweight, and the obese are becoming more so. We are now a “supersized” population.
But why?Modern science has shown that the obesity epidemic isn’t simply about lack of self-control, but rather a phenomenon driven by biochemical changes that have altered the way your body regulates energy. Something has caused your appetite regulation system to go awry. Leptin, the hormone responsible for satiety, isn’t working. It isn’t simply a matter of calories in and calories out. Six-month old babies are the latest victims of the obesity epidemic--diet and exercise cannot explain that. So, what are you eating now that you weren’t eating thirty years ago? What are you doing to yourself that started the day you were born?Studies show that all of those extra calories are coming in the form of carbohydrates.
What carbohydrates in particular?Sugar -- specifically, sugared drinks. Soft drinks (41 percent) and fruit drinks (35 percent) make up the majority of these extra calories.
Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In fact, the average American drinks 60 gallons of soda every year.High Fructose Corn Syrup Has Only Been Around One Generation! HFCS was invented in 1966 in Japan and introduced to the American market in 1975. Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup when they discovered that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was far cheaper to make -- sucrose costs about three times as much as HFCS. HFCS is also about 20 times sweeter than table sugar. So it was expected that less sweetener would be needed per product. Instead, the amount of sweeteners has steadily risen.The switch from sugar to fructose drastically altered the average American diet. The statistics are beyond alarming:
Corn syrup is now found in every type of processed, pre-packaged food you can think of. In fact, the use of HFCS in the U.S. diet increased by a whopping 10,673 percent between 1970 and 2005, according to a report by the USDA. The current annual consumption of sugar is 141 pounds per person, and 63 pounds of that is HFCS.Adolescents are taking in 73 grams per day of fructose, mostly from soft drinks and juice drinks -- and 12 percent of their total caloric intake is from fructose alone.In the past century, fructose consumption has increased 5-fold.Processed foods account for more than 90 percent of the money Americans spend on meals.You’ve probably heard the statistic that one soda a day is worth 15 pounds of fat per year. However, one soda today does not equal one soda of yesteryear. The original coke bottle was 6.5 ounces. Now, you have 20-ounce bottles and a 44-ounce Big Gulp. Tragically, many infant formulas are more than 50 percent sugar -- 43 percent being corn syrup solids. You might as well be giving your baby a bottle of Coke or Pepsi.No wonder there is an obesity epidemic.The War on FatSugar’s rise to power was really an accidental by-product of three political winds, beginning with the Nixon administration:In 1972, Richard Nixon wanted to reduce food costs as part of his “war on poverty.” He partnered with the USDA to do whatever means necessary to bring food costs down.In 1975, HFCS was introduced, replacing sugar because it was cheap and readily available.In the mid 1970s, dietary fats were blamed for heart disease (more about this later), giving rise to the “low-fat craze.” Market response was an explosion of processed convenience foods, all nonfat and low fat, most of which tasted like sawdust unless sugar was added. Fructose was used to make fat-free products more palatable.
In 1982, the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) reduced fats from 40 percent of your diet to 30 percent. You eagerly complied, believing you were lowering your risks for both obesity and cardiovascular disease. Yet, as the low-fat craze spread, so did rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity -- the very illnesses you thought you were preventing. Clearly, the plan wasn’t working.But how did the war on fat start, in the first place?
It began with a study called the Seven Countries study by Ancel Keys[ii], a Minnesota epidemiologist who used multivariate regression analysis to examine diet and disease. He compared the diets of seven countries, and his main conclusion was that saturated fats were responsible for cardiovascular disease. After much heated public debate, this notion that saturated fats caused heart disease was widely adopted, especially once he made the cover of Time Magazine in 1980.Keys’ study laid the foundation for nutrition science, education, and public policy for the next three decades. There was only one problem. His conclusions were dead wrong.Keys’ neglected to perform the converse analysis demonstrating that the effect of saturated fat on cardiovascular disease was independent of sucrose. In other words, sucrose and saturated fat were co-mingled into his data. In retrospect, it is impossible to tease out the relative contributions of sucrose versus saturated fat on cardiovascular disease in this study because the original data is long gone and Keys has passed on. Additionally he never separated out the issue of how the fat was consumed. There is a major difference in raw and cooked animal fat, especially fat cooked at high temperatures, which clearly produces known carcinogens.
Nevertheless, lowering fat (without regard to sugar) became the nutritional model that persists to this day, despite copious evidence that it doesn’t work.As your fats went from 40 percent to 30 percent, your carbohydrates went from 40 percent to 55 percent. And this carbohydrate increase was of the worst possible kind: SUGAR.Proof that Sugar Cause ObesityThe American Beverage Association claims there is “no association between high fructose corn syrup and obesity.  www.ThinkVapor.com
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