 During my college summers I spent up to seven hours a day on the tennis court either teaching, practicing or competing. I also happened to be living in Cleveland, Ohio, at the time, where the summer heat was thickened with stifling humidity, the kind that had my wristbands and headbands drenched and dripping within minutes. To survive the elements, I would often take a break by heading into the student union to pour myself a large, ice-cold Coke. Nothing tasted better, and I drank a couple a day. But by the end of summer I realized that my hours of tennis were no match for my sneaky soft drink opponent. I was gaining weight even with all the exercise. That's when I stopped drinking sodas and got smart and started drinking water.
After that experience, I didn't need any study to tell me that too much sugar--no matter in what form--equaled too many unnecessary calories that resulted in gaining weight. Now, a study released by the Journal of the American Medical Association ties drinking soda to an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, also known as adult-onset diabetes, and excessive weight gain. And experts say the troublemaker causing the problem is high-fructose corn syrup, which is used to sweeten sodas. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it shouldn't take a "landmark" study to figure out what I discovered on the tennis courts years ago.
Whether it's from foods laced with good old-fashioned sugar or beverages mixed with high-fructose corn syrup, sugar adds pounds and we Americans are consuming massive amounts. The Big Gulp from the convenience store is the size of a bucket. The average fruit smoothie is 24 ounces--three cups if anyone is doing the math--and all those mocha lattes and frappacinos are just milkshakes in disguise. When you consider that one 12-ounce soda equals 10 1/2 teaspoons of sugar, if you are drinking two or three a day, you are already over what the U.S. Department of Agriculture advises as the limit--10 to 12 teaspoons daily. We are all definitely swimming upstream on this issue. Why? Because besides the sugar we think we know about, high-fructose corn syrup is added to the vast majority of foods we eat.
Next time you go shopping, check the labels on wheat bread, crackers, cereal, fruit drinks, yogurt, soups and anything else you buy that's boxed, bagged or canned. Odds are that the second or third ingredient on the list is high-fructose corn syrup. That's what's doing us in--or should I say "out" when it comes to our waistline. Hidden sugar is in just about everything we consume. Unless you go organic and buy fresh, which also means spending a significant amount of money at the supermarket, you are the victim of corn syrup.
It's a problem that started when the food and beverage industry switched from old-fashioned sugar to fructose-added products in the 1980s. The Japanese developed a reliable way to convert cornstarch into sweet syrup and because it was a liquid, it was easier to blend into drinks and foods and it was cheaper. Add to it that the U.S. government began subsiding farmers who were already growing too much corn and you had the perfect storm. Americans went from consuming about a half pound of high fructose corn syrup in 1970 to 55.3 pounds per person by the mid-1990s. So it's no coincidence that obesity rates shot up.
The other problem with high-fructose corn syrup, according to doctors and nutritionists, is that it metabolizes differently--not releasing insulin from the pancreas like table sugar does, which means if it's not burned up right away, it's stored as fat. And, this substance seems to confuse the body and brain so it doesn't turn off our sense of hunger, and we overeat.
Unfortunately, unless a consumer religiously reads the labels, eating high-fructose products is inevitable. But here's something that has helped me navigate through the problem. I look at the carbohydrates listed on the back. If the carb number is high--double digits in the 18-plus range--it usually means high-fructose corn syrup or corn syrup is also present. Check it out yourself. The fat content may be low, but the sugar content is off the charts if the carbs are high. So I changed the yogurt I eat, which was loaded with carbs, and I rarely drink vegetable juices and fruit smoothies, but do eat fresh fruits and vegetables. And I rarely drink a can of pop. There isn't a soft drink on the market that isn't mixed with high-fructose corn syrup, except for one brand I found at Whole Foods.
Realistically, manufacturers will probably never go back to adding plain old sugar, so we will need to be more vigilant about what we buy. But in the long run, our bodies will thank us for it.
Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@svcn.com.
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