High Fructose Corn Syrup:What Does It All Mean?

High Fructose Corn Syrup:What Does It All Mean?

If High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS is one of the first ingredients listed on a food label, don’t eat it. Make a mental list of the worst culprits, such as regular soft drinks and many highly sweetened breakfast cereals. High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS alone won’t make you fat, but when HFCS is high on the ingredient list, the food is not the best choice. As part of a lifestyle that has many of us eating too much and moving too little, we’re putting our health at risk if we don’t choose our foods carefully.

So what’s the answer? It’s easy. Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS by reading food labels and shopping the grocery store’s perimeter: Produce is on one side, seafood, meat and poultry on another, and dairy products, eggs and bread on the third. Avoid the center aisles, which are mostly stocked with highly processed foods.

The more you stick to fresh whole foods and avoid commercial and highly processed foods, the less HFCS you will consume.
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Understanding Glucose and Fructose

Understanding Glucose and Fructose

Since High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS is a blend of glucose and fructose, it’s important to understand the role each plays in your body. All sugars, indeed all carbohydrates, have four calories per gram.

But that is just part of the story.

Glucose (dextrose) is a monosaccharide (basically, a simple sugar), which is the form of sugar that is transported in the blood and is used by the body for energy. This is what you measure when testing your blood glucose or blood “sugar.”

Fructose is also a monosaccharide and is often referred to as “fruit sugar,” because it is the primary carbohydrate in most fruits. It’s also the primary sugar in honey and half the carbohydrate in sucrose (table sugar). However, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or require insulin to be transported into cells, as do other carbohydrates.
High Fructose Corn Syrup
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HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP HFCS—It’s Here to Stay

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP HFCS—It’s Here to Stay

Today, food companies use High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS—a mixture of fructose and glucose—because it’s inexpensive, easy to transport and keeps foods moist. And because High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS is so sweet, it’s cost effective for companies to use small quantities of HCFS in place of other more expensive sweeteners or flavorings.

For these reasons and others, High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS isn’t going away any time soon.

That is why, to best manage diabetes, you need to know what HFCS is and how to identify it in products.
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