What do you do when you have a corn allergy and you want something sweet to eat? After keeping careful watch and reading labels for a year, I have come to the conclusion that our only best bet is to make our own ‘on the go’ snacks from scratch. And drinks? Just forget about them. As a matter of fact, I challenge anyone in America to read the ingredient listings on every snack product in their favorite vending machine. It would not surprise me if every item had some association with corn, however odd or far removed as it may seem. Heck, even the water bottles are more than likely made from a corn byproduct! I digress. I really want to focus my attention on America’s romance with sugar, corn sugar to be specific, its prevalence in our lives, and a little history about how we became so addicted to the sweet stuff that grows in abundance over our midlands, and now even clutters the landscape surrounding the rocky mountain region. (more…)

In lieu of the recent report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition claiming that the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup in beverages affects fullness and hunger the same way as refined sugar, I decided to investigate further the use of both products. The result of this study is not surprising, given that it was sponsored by a grant from the American Beverage Association, by the Corn Refiner’s Association, and by a fellowship from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Used as a decoy in the current war on processed and refined food products currently canvasing our grocer’s shelves, this article claims that there was no difference in participant perceptions on “sweetness, hunger and satiety profiles, or energy intakes at lunch” during the study they conducted. It just looks like one piece of manufactured “science” designed to push blame in our current nationwide obesity epidemic on another camp in our nation’s current witch-hunt on fattening foods. (more…)

“Losing weight would improve your health” - I was telling my patient last week during a consultation. His light-hearted response concerned me: “I am not obese, doctor, you’re too skinny. Everybody in my neighborhood is this size. And I like being big.”

Everyone in his neighborhood is indeed getting bigger. As the average size of the typical American grows each year, so does the tolerance for being big. I am concerned that our mass media “experts” have taken the social stigma out of fatness and made people blissfully ignorant of its health risks. Advertising, television programs, and movies that promote obesity as normal directly ignore its threat to health and well being. (more…)