***Fructose Corn Syrup Is One Product that Really Should be Banned

In my last physical my blood sugar level was higher than where I would like to see it and when I meditated upon what was causing it to go up, I got that I was drinking too much soda. So over the last two months I have been making a very challenging transition of moving from drinking a lot of soda each day to drinking a lot of unsweet iced tea each day to drinking a lot of water each day. I try to break down huge changes into baby steps as much as possible and the idea of giving up both sugar and caffeine at the same time felt like a huge leap that I would crash and burn on.

But in the process of shifting my eating behaviors, I have read a lot of great books on nutrition and weight loss and healthier eating. I am currently reading two books called “Eat This, Not That” and “Drink This, Not That” and both books make a very compelling case that the reason so many people in the United States struggle so much with obesity is that artificial sweeteners like fructose corn syrup cost so little to produce that restaurants have hugely oversized the serving portions. Supersizing your meal is one of the most successful marketing strategies in history but we literally pay a HUGE price for it.

High fructose corn syrup is chemically configured very differently from the sugars naturally found in fruit and it really is screwing up our natural systems. I really feel that it should be banned by a food additive and normally I am not that fond of government banning.

It is so odd to me that the food regulators allow food processing companies to add fructose corn syrup to everything under the sun but herbs and herbal remedies which have been effectively used to help people for hundreds of years are being banned in the EEC and may be banned in the US if the pharmaceutical companies prevail.

In “Drink This, Not That,” David Zinczenko makes a very convincing case that if we truly want to lose weight we need to focus as much as we can on what we drink as much as on what we eat. A lot of the calories that are pushing us over the edge into obesity are coming from the stuff we drink as much as it is from what we eat.