Most Popular Articles Tagged: Sweetener

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Corn Free Candy Canes by Caring Candies available this Christmas

The sugar free candy company is also Feingold diet approved

Caring Candies are Made from Isomalt.

All natural corn free candy canes that are also sugar free are hard to find. Caring Candies is a South African company that makes sugar free hard candy using a sugar alcohol called isomalt.

In business since 2002, this family owned company won best product in 2004 in Milan, Italy. If you have corn allergies and you are looking for corn free candy canes this Christmas season you are in luck! Often times isomalt is derived from corn. Not in this case!

I am happy to report that Caring Candies sugar and corn free candy canes are derived from beet sugar. Their candy is also safe for the Feingold diet because it has no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives in it either. The company uses all natural herbs and plants to source their flavors and colors in their candies. They are even vegan.

You are probably asking yourself, “What is Isomalt?” Here’s a little background on this healthy sweetener. Isomalt is a sugar alcohol that is considered ‘low glycemic.’ This makes it perfect for …continue reading »


Dangerous Levels of Mercury found in Products Made with High Fructose Corn Syrup

Sugars GraphThe Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy released two new studies to the public yesterday that have found mercury in common foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.

The report summarizes how this happens: “In making HFCS, caustic soda is used, among other things, to separate corn starch from the corn kernel. For decades, HFCS has been made using mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants. The use of mercury cells to produce caustic soda can contaminate caustic soda, and ultimately HFCS, with mercury.”

According to Environmental Health:

Mercury was found in nearly 50% of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup.” Ben Lilliston of The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) reports that in a followup study they detected mercury in “nearly one-third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient– including products by Quaker, Hershey’s, Kraft, and Smucker.

In his report Lilliston claims that the average American consumes about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS and some kids and teens can be consuming up to nearly 80% more than that. …continue reading »


Corn Sugar 101

Learn about the 15 man-made varieties of corn sugar and how they are used in processed foods

Corn SugarCorn sugar is the most consumed sugar  in the U.S. today. The average person eats about 150 lbs of sugar annually, and about half of that, or 6 lbs a month, is high fructose corn syrup (hfcs). But hfcs is only one of 15 different kinds of corn sweeteners used by manufacturers in processed food products in our country. Should consumers be concerned? Perhaps you are wondering if eating all those prepackaged sweetened foods is bad for your health.

I began to study corn sweeteners after we discovered my son’s corn intolerance in 2007. I quickly discovered that snacks are loaded with corn sugar. 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 a corn sugar, 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. …continue reading »


Bad for our Health? Get High Fructose Corn Syrup and Refined Sugar Facts

sxc.hu | author: Mark Webb

sxc.hu | author: Mark Webb

Corn. It is everywhere these days, and lately it’s been getting some heat. After reading a report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition claiming there’s no health difference between using high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar in beverages, I got suspicious. The AJCN report claims both high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and refined sugar cause the same feeling of fullness and hunger in people surveyed.  Since I already know quite a bit about corn sugar I was immediately suspicious of their claim. I decided to launch my own investigation. Regular readers know how much I despise corn, especially since the kind Americans eat these days is mass produced from genetically modified corn crops.  Didn’t have to dig too deep to learn who was behind the AJCN report.  And it didn’t surprise me in the least bit.  …continue reading »