You may have heard in the past couple months that the FDA ruled that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and anything that contains it could no longer be labeled "natural".  Surprise, surprise, the Corn Refiners Association has convinced them to change their minds this week.

It turns out that the "synthetic fixing agent for the enzyme used in the process does not come into contact with the high dextrose equivalent corn starch hydrolysate".  So all the ingredients it takes to make HFCS are natural, except the major one that doesn't end up in the product, so it's "natural".  Even though you or I could never cook it up in our kitchens.

A lot of people are not aware that the FDA has rules that strictly govern food labeling in the US.  They are the ones who decided that any food with 0.5 grams or less of trans fats per serving can be labeled "0 grams trans fats".  Even though the medical recommendation is to avoid ALL trans fats and the serving size on most packaged foods is no where near the amount the average American would serve themselves at a time.  But, I digress.  Back to HFCS.

The harder the lobbyists try to convince me that HFCS is no different than the fructose found in fruit and is not bad for me - the harder I find it to believe them.  Maybe I'm getting cynical.  I didn't believe Big Tobacco when they insisted that tobacco wasn't addictive or bad for you either.

A couple of natural food stores in the country have removed all products that contain HFCS.  They were the first to start removing trans fat products too.  The "hippies" in the 60's and 70's were also the first to start advocating a diet of locally grown whole foods, which is turning out to be what the mainstream is advocating 40 years later.

 There's an interesting Medscape study out today about HFCS.  I can't get to it directly through this link, but if you google HFCS in their news search it shows up in the top 5.  My interpretation is that though they cannot find a smoking gun (yet), the increase in fructose consumption is leading to all kinds of health issues. 

"Compared to other sugars, fructose worsens levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, and uric acid, [which] may accelerate heart disease risk," Dr. Dansinger concluded.

High uric acid levels are linked to insulin resistance, and have been for nearly a century.  So all this boils down to we persons with diabetes should probably avoid too much fructose.  That boils down to avoiding processed foods.  So once again, we are back to the hippies and the whole foods diet.