Processed People?

great post I enjoyed it!!

It's very sad just how quickly we've gone down hill where health is concerned when processed foods and synthetic foods were introduced into the market.

 Namaste-Anora

We are literally killing ourselves with our food.  Look at how cancers have greatly increased over the past few decades and how many differnet additives we've put into our foods.  Additives the FDA say are safe....but are they?  Corn syrup is made to appear to be a natural and healthy sweetner but then why are all our low cal foods that contain this substance making us fatter?   

This is great. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, I had heard about how bad corn crops for ethanol were and it's not helping our environment or saving gas prices.

I am glad to hear your health is getting better. My husband and I are working very hard to slowly cut things out, not hard to do really because of the economy and so little for food anyhow, but we're both making better choices. We just had no idea how many products though had HFCS in it. I mean, things like reported "healthy" foods had the stuff in it that it made me sick. We recently paid 100 dollars to join a local co-op at a health store and we're trying hard to always shop there, though we too sometimes go for quick to the regular shopping mart because it's just across the street. We did though make a change on our meats. We now only buy our meats from a locally owned butcher who doesn't add BGH to their meat.

Thanks for sharing! Anora

After finding the post on the wizard's blog and then your article I have to say that you summed everything up in less than 1 sentence

to "...create mindless drones who conform."

In addition to the effects on the brain and the constant weight gain, the liver cannot process HFCS - therefore it is stored as fat, and the  additional problems caused by obesity ( metabolic syndrome X, PCOS,ADD, mood swings (due to sugar highs and lows)and more recently I found out : fatty liver. 

With a "fatty liver" your body/liver cannot process nutrients or cleanse the body the way it normally does. Therefore it becomes clogged with fat which can lead to scarring and cirrhosis (normally found in alcoholics).

Now they are finding more and more non-alcoholics with fatty liver disease - I know I'm one of them. I don't drink alcohol, but I have a fatty liver- kind of like the rest of me. 

BUT IT IS REVERSIBLE - through diet and exercise. 

The first thing I did  was cut out all soda (pop) - my substitutes included - koolaid, green/white tea, juice, water. OK so water is best, but I'm working on it. It has been 3 weeks and let me tell you the difference is amazing! I even tried drinking pop 1 day - just to be sure. I WAS IN SO MUCH PAIN! MY ENTIRE BODY ACHED! I never knew it was caused by the pop I was drinking - and I only drank clear, decaffeinated pop. I will NEVER drink another soda/pop again! 

My stomach pain ( I thought was an ulcer) - GONE! 

My chronic thirst/dry mouth - GONE!

The sugar his/lows - GONE! no more shaking or irritability! 

CRAVINGS? GONE!!!!

The weight? Well, I'm still working on that...

I'm no longer gorging myself on chocolate - I miss it!!!! 

I do want to add in addition to all this information about the corn crops for HFCS - the corn raised for fuel is not as good as they seem either. THe waste created by raising corn and producing ethanol is destroying our watershed. All the pollutants and waste is running off into the rivers and streams.  While ethanol may be ozone friendly, it is NOT ECO-FRIENDLY.

Just my thoughts... 

Here is an interesting piece on the same subject from an interview with Michael Pollan on PBS...

MICHAEL POLLAN: High fructose corn syrup contributes mightily, as do all sugars, to type 2 diabetes. And we are subsidizing cheap sweeteners in our farm bill by subsidizing corn. And so you, you see, you have a war going on between the public health goals of the government and the agricultural policies. And only someone in the White House can force that realignment of those goals. ...

... Well, how do you grow those giant monocultures of corn and soy? As soon as you plant a monoculture, which is all that is lots of the same thing year after year. You risk depleting the fertility of the soil. So how do you replenish the fertility? Fertilizer. How do you make fertilizer? It's made with natural gas, diesel, oil. So we actually have to spread huge quantities of oil or fossil fuels on our fields to keep the food coming. 

When you grow a monoculture, you also get lots of pests. They love monocultures. You build up the population of the pests by giving them a vast buffet of exactly what they're they evolved to eat. So how do you protect them? Well, you use pesticides made from fossil fuels. When you grow corn and soy, which are not exactly foods, they can't eat any of this stuff. It's raw material for processed food. You then have to process it. And so it takes ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food at the end of that, you know, to make a Twinkie or something like that. It's a very fuel intensive process, with the result that all our food together, if you think of what's in the supermarket, is taking more than ten calories of fossil fuel, one calorie of food.

Look, nobody wants to see food prices go up. Nobody wants to see oil prices go up. But we understand that we are not going to change our energy economy unless we start paying a higher price for oil. We are not going to improve our health around food unless we pay the real cost of food. ...

... Cheap food is actually incredibly expensive. ...

... You know, we're catching so-called sustainable salmon in Alaska. We ship it to China to get filleted and then we bring it back here. ...

... We're selling sugar cookies to the country of Denmark, and we're buying sugar cookies from the country of Denmark. And Herman Daily the economist, said, 'Wouldn't it be more efficient to swap recipes?' I mean, these absurdities can't continue. ...

... When they have too much meat, when they have too much cheese, they send it to the schools, and they dispose it through our kids' digestive systems. ...

Full interview with Michael Pollan...

I don’t mind at all. You can share the info.

Thanks for responding. I love the extra information, do you mind if I share it with others in another forum? Yeah, I agree that even though some things are deemed "safe" or even "natural" doesn't always mean we know the long term effects. I still wince each time I think about what red dye in foods actually is. Makes you really start looking more closely at your food.

Great post Anora!

This is not the only case of an irresponsible business practice in US, but certainly it may become the most costly one and with most dramatic effect for the entire nation.  

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is not only found in carbonated drinks but also in many different types of processed food. A new study indicates that the rise in high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) intake may be one of the primary keys to the growing obesity epidemic in the US.

A staggering 3 million bottles of coke are sold every 4 minutes.

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US Researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University (LSU) examined the relationship between high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) consumption and the development of obesity by analyzing US Department of Agriculture food consumption tables from 1967 through to 2000.
Among the LSU findings:
•    Obesity among US adults has risen from 23 percent to 30 percent in the past 10 years.
•    The average body weight of Americans rose slowly from 1900 to the late 1980s, at which point the average began to climb sharply.
•    The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) increased more than 1000 percent between 1970 and 1990.
•    The increased consumption of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) far exceeds the changes in intake of any other food or food group.
In addition, the researchers also observed that the body doesn't process high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the same way glucose (sugar) is processed, with the result that fructose is more likely to be converted into fat.

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In animal studies, the University of California, Davis (UCD) team found that fructose consumption contributes to insulin resistance, an impaired tolerance to glucose, high blood pressure, and elevated levels of triglycerides.

And although the data in humans is not quite as conclusive as the animal trials, the researchers report that a high intake of fructose may increase body weight and encourage insulin resistance, both of which are risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

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On the other hand....

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently concluded that "high fructose corn syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners."

Research confirms that high fructose corn syrup is safe and nutritionally the same as table sugar.

High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as table sugar and is equal in sweetness. It contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted high fructose corn syrup "Generally Recognized as Safe" status for use in food, and reaffirmed that ruling in 1996 after thorough review.

There we have it - it is 'Generally Recognized as Safe'. In other words, it is not going to kill us immediately...

Like many business minded, the profits blind one to their actions and the result on humanity.  Granted it is not melamine but it is destroying our health and food supply.

Great Post and I look forward to reading more on your Blog.