There's a blue ocean waiting to be traversed
Imagine the natural sweetness of good old-fashioned Cane Sugar returning to candy bars, jams, jellies, syrups, sodas and every other food and beverage which has a sweetener in it including ketchup and ice-cream! Imagine that smooth delicious taste of sugar. Nothing can compare with that taste. Cane Sugar has been the sweetener used for hundreds of years until some bright spark decided to replace sugar with corn syrup…. High Fructose Corn Syrup.
When I came to America 15 years ago that was the first thing I noticed. Coca Cola and candy and chocolate bars did not taste as good as I was used to and as for the syrups, ugh! All because of High Fructose Corn Syrup.
The next thing I noticed was that I was slowly but steadily gaining weight despite the fact that I had not changed any of my eating habits. I was told I was getting older and my metabolism was slowing down. That might have something to do with it I thought, so I stopped drinking Coca Cola. That was very hard because I had been totally addicted to it for more years than I care to mention.
A couple of years ago I returned to South Africa for two weeks. Since I was on vacation I broke down and drank coca cola again and ate more than my usual share of candy bars because of their simply delicious cane sugar taste rather than that of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Almost all of their candies and soda products are made with cane sugar and NOT High Fructose Corn Syrup. I lost weight. Yes, I lost 5lbs in two weeks despite those tasty sweet sensations.
On my return to the US, I once again stopped drinking coca cola. It isn't good-tasting anyway and you can only understand that when you've tasted it with cane sugar. In fact, my daughter's boyfriend who travelled with us to South Africa who'd never tasted coca cola with sugar brought back 4 litres to the US because he liked it so much.
I now buy my candy bars, jams, ketchup, syrup and everything else I can from an International Store where sugar is used instead of high fructose corn syrup. It's difficult to eliminate high fructose corn syrup entirely but I am doing my very best not to buy anything with corn syrup in it. I am slowly starting to lose weight without any other change to my lifestyle. Interesting isn't it?
I have learned that high fructose corn syrup breaks down differently in the body from sugar. I've learned that corn syrup is metabolized in the liver and sends fat out into the bloodstream whilst cane sugar is metabolized in all the cells of the body.
Maybe this has an impact. I'm not a scientist but I do have common sense. All I can go on is the fact that we Americans are more obese than anywhere else in the world and that that phenomenon correlates to the substitution of high fructose corn syrup for sugar as a sweetener in the 1970's.
We are the only ones who are consuming these large quantities of high fructose corn syrup because it is in everything from salad dressing to bread. Common sense indeed tells us what we want to know and we don't need to wait for scientific studies.
The comment that it doesn't matter whether you eat foods with high fructose corn syrup or sugar since you are still ingesting sugar doesn't wash. Sure you are and that goes right back to us all having to be personally accountable for the amount of sugar we eat but it’s a poor state of affairs that if eating the same food we would have eaten anyway, we are getting fatter because it has high fructose corn syrup in it instead of sugar! And added to this insult is the fact that we are not even getting the full delicious flavor of sugar!
If anyone has read the Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne they may just realize that there is a Blue Ocean out there for anyone who is brave enough to go for it. Change the last 40 years of high fructose corn syrup for Cane Sugar. It does seem as though there are some food companies taking that tentative step. PepsiCo is one of them but how serious they are in promoting it to the general public is another matter. Snapple it appears is to introduce tea brewed with cane sugar. At last!
I say, come on America we have the power to bring back delicious cane sugar! Don't let industry hoodwink you into believing that high fructose corn syrup is healthy whilst sugar, which has been around for hundreds of years, is not!!! Imagine losing sugar forever! Imagine losing that delicious taste forever. Let your voice be heard somehow because your single voice can make a difference.
[Pamela McMonagle]