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.