Nowadays, most of us are very accustomed to scanning the nutrition facts on all the food and drink we buy. We first check for fats, then maybe for sugar, and sometimes the fiber, but most people don’t make their way to the ingredients list. There is one ingredient in particular that should make you think twice about picking up those fat free sweets. High fructose corn syrup has almost completely replaced sugar in most of our commercially made sweets. In 1966 we weren’t eating a gram of the stuff per year, and 40 years later we are downing over 70 pounds per person a year! That is a scary number, mostly because most people don’t know what they are putting in their body.

So what is high fructose corn syrup? According to the USDA, it is made from corn starch, and is a thick liquid that contains two basic sugar building blocks, fructose and glucose, in roughly equal amounts. Sucrose, most familiar to consumers as table sugar, is a larger sugar molecule that breaks down into glucose and fructose in the intestine during metabolism.

So why is high fructose corn syrup so bad for you? Here is an exerpt from the Washington Post on an article titled, “Sweet but Not so Innocent?”

Consumption of glucose (normal sugar) kicks off a cascade of biochemical reactions. It increases production of insulin by the pancreas, which enables sugar in the blood to be transported into cells, where it can be used for energy. It increases production of leptin, a hormone that helps regulate appetite and fat storage, and it suppresses production of another hormone made by the stomach, ghrelin, that helps regulate food intake. It has been theorized that when ghrelin levels drop, as they do after eating carbohydrates composed of glucose, hunger declines.

Fructose or high fructose corn syrup is a different story. It “appears to behave more like fat with respect to the hormones involved in body weight regulation,” explains Peter Havel, associate professor of nutrition at the University of California, Davis. “Fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin secretion. It doesn’t increase leptin production or suppress production of ghrelin. That suggests that consuming a lot of fructose, like consuming too much fat, could contribute to weight gain.” Whether it actually does do this is not known “because the studies have not been conducted,” said Havel.

The first step in stopping your intake of HFCS is to stop drinking soda. A 12 ounce can of soda, on average, contains 13 teaspoons of sugar. You also need to start looking at the nutrition labels of everything you buy. You will be surprise at what products contain this nasty stuff. Things like Ketchup, yogurt, and even bread have HFCS. A good trick to making sure you aren’t getting HFCS is to buy organic. Because it isn’t a natural ingredient, it isn’t approved in organic products.

Just cutting high fructose corn syrup from your diet won’t get you into shape. So, cut the crappy fructose and get back on your bike and start seeing results in your health, and energy levels!