This is going to be tedious...

I'm sure you have heard about high fructose corn syrup being the devil lately. It's kind of the new diet trend. There are quite a few products on the shelves at the grocery store now that claim to use "Real Sugar", others that simply claim "No HFCS", and there's even a commercial or two running in it's defense with someone saying it is "like sugar - fine in moderation".

I've been half-heartedly thinking that I want to cut it out of my diet, but hadn't taken the time to read every label when I'm shopping for the week... but this article, and this one, turned me around.

Not only do they talk about the difference between sugar and HFCS, they explain WHY the latter is considered to be worse for us than plain old sucrose. I had never really understood that part, and now I get it. Apparently, sugar in it's original form is more complex, and is less easily broken down and absorbed into our bodies. The processing that is done to HFCS allows it to be absorbed more easily, which makes it much more of a threat to our health.

So, tonight I went grocery shopping and was determined to bring home zero items containing this crap. It took me twice as long to shop, since I was reading every single label, but once I do that a couple of times  and find out which brands I'm okay with and which I'm not, it will be easier.

I was not surprised to find that ketchup has HFCS in it. I found one brand without it, Clearly Organic. It is more expensive than the Hunt's and Del Monte types by .50 cents or so, but I believe it's worth it. Especially since we don't go through a gallon of ketchup at a time. Same thing goes for barbecue sauce. Most of the more common brands I looked at listed it as one of the first three ingredients - shockingly, many of them had it as the FIRST ingredient. This means that there is more HFCS in those products than any other ingredient! Bull's Eye brand was the only one I found with sugar instead.

So, maybe it's not hard to believe that ketchup and barbecue sauce have HFCS in them, but what about crackers? And bread? Um, yeah. In crackers, it's listed a little further down in the list of ingredients, but I'm doing the "No HFCS" thing, so I had to look at several boxes of crackers before finding that the Kashi brand had what I was looking for. Also, saltines don't have any. The only thing we really use crackers for is to eat with a few slices of cheese, so basic is good anyway.

Now, the scary stuff - bread. I buy whole wheat, so I read every loaf of wheat on the shelf, and all of these have HFCS:
Mrs. Baird's
Wonder Bread
Sara Lee
Home Pride
Best Choice
Autumn Harvest

Nature's Own and Oro Wheat brands both have sugar in them instead, and Oro Wheat's ingredient list is smaller - meaning fewer fillers and chemicals. The really amazing thing (in my opinion) was that in the breads with the HFCS, it was listed as the third ingredient behind flour and water. I'm seriously considering baking my own bread from scratch.

Finally, let me make you feel better with some good surprises I found. These items, which I thought would be sure to contain HFCS, are no threat to my new shopping habits:
Peanut Butter - Jif and Peter Pan are both safe;
Jello pudding cups (shocking, right?? But Yoplait yogurt is on the no-no list - get Hiland Dairy brand instead);
Prego, Ragu, and most other brands of spaghetti sauce in a jar;
Salsa of all kinds (even Pace, which is too sweet for my taste).

So, there you go. A little bit of important info for you, because I care. It's no wonder that our country has become so obese in the last few decades - and that the change in our weight seems to run parallel to the timeline of inclusion of HFCS in our pre-packaged foods. Here's a parting shot...  check out the map of the U.S. on this page and click on "play" to watch the change from 1985 to 2008. Ewww.

Stalled

Last month I started contributing to a local website called NWAMotherlode writing about weight loss and making healthy choices. As a result, I've completely neglected this blog. I suck. I know.

Well, I'm back, and let me tell you, it's become very obvious to me that writing about weight loss and making healthy choices somehow doesn't translate into ACTUAL weight loss and the certain ability to MAKE healthy choices. I truly thought that it would be easier to stick to me guns when I'm around my weaknesses if I were accountable to all the people reading my personal account. Somehow, it's not working. Maybe I'm smart enough to know that no one (or at least not many) who reads the stuff I write will actually SEE me. So... the numbers on the scale can be between me and myself, and that's not helpful since I'm way to easy on myself.

That said - I have been better over the last week. I haven't eaten out as much, I've refused sweets at work and elsewhere, and I have been refusing coca cola more easily as well.Un-sweetened tea is my new friend. And this week I lost another pound. So, thus far, I've lost 5.5 pounds.That leaves me with a lot more to go to get to my 40 pound goal, but I'll take it one step at a time, right??

Okay, enough whining...

My brother told me I should read Food Rules by Michael Pollan to learn what he has to say about food choices. It's been really interesting, to say the least. It's a small tome, and very easy to read. Pollan says things like "If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it." And "if you can't prounounce the ingredients, don't eat it." Even if you don't follow all of the rules that Pollan lays down, this book is really a good thing to refer to as you start making decisions about changing your dietary habits. They are simple, and basic, and a lot of them have made me say "well, DUH!"

I'm putting a lot more fresh veggies and fruits on the counter at the grocery store lately, and reading almost every label. I'm amazed at the misleading things on the labels on the foods we eat. For example - I was looking at Cool Whip recently, and saw that there's a "Sugar Free" variety. Great, right? But I'm skeptical, so I look to see if it's got corn syrup or some other sucrose variety... In fact, it does. High Fructose Corn Syrup, right there on the label. But here's the REALLY stupid thing - the ingredients are exactly the same on the Sugar Free version as on the regular version! They are playing on our wish to cut out sugar by labeling their product as sugar free... hoping we won't notice their deception. I chose to buy a carton of whipping cream, and add my own little bit of sugar instead. YUMMY!

I just don't want so much processed and "____________ added" foods in my kitchen anymore. I'll do my best to take things back to basics and eat stuff that takes a little more prep time. It's healthier, and much of the time it's also cheaper than all the crap that's boxed and packaged and pre-prepared. I have time to make my family's food healthier - it's important.