Welcome to my first entry of the 2006 fiscal blogging year (which mere mortals
know as the 2006 calendar year). If you’re an astute reader, you may remember
that I did a similar entry to this two
years ago. In that entry I lamented about being fat and not finishing the
bible. Fast forward to 2006, I still haven’t finished the bible, but I’m not
as fat, although I need to loose the excess weight I’ve gained over the
last few weeks in Texas and Minnesota.
Also, you may recall that I said that I don’t usually make new year’s
resolutions. Well, a lot of stuff can change
in two years that cause you to rethink that. That means that this
year I’ve decided to do some new years resolutions. As I formulate them
better I’ll post them in this blog. Here’s my first one:
High Fructose
Corn Syrup (HFCS) is the incredibly popular sweetener found in just about everything.
From Coca-Cola, to Smucker’s Jam, to Frosted Mini-Wheats. If it tastes good
and is sweet, there is probably high fructose corn syrup in there. There are
some good aspects of the sweetener, it provides additional income for farmers
and reduces reliance on foreign sources of sweeteners. It’s also good
virtually forever, which is why so many sweets last forever. More information
can be found on HFCSFacts.com - a project
of the corn refiners association. This page makes HFCS look like pretty
good stuff, and it might be.
But you had better beware. Because even though HFCS is found everywhere,
there are questions about the actual ramifications of HFCS. A few weeks ago,
Sprol did a nice writeup of the possible
dangers of HFCS, however, like many Sprol items, it’s a little speculative.
Fortunately, I’ve found some other articles from The Washington Post,
and The Seattle Times indicating that HFCS might be highly related
to the increase in obesity in the United States. Personally, I think that
American’s are just lazy.
Well, in any case, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and eliminate it. This
means no regular pop, no regular jelly, no frosted mini wheats. I also will
be staying away from diet colas because I find they cause joint problems. I’ll
post an update in a few weeks on my progress here.
As a full disclaimer, I’m not eliminating HFCS immediately. Any products with
HFCS laying around the house will be eaten rather than thrown away. I’ll try
to make sure new products have no HFCS. I’m not sure what I’ll do when I need
a product with HFCS - we’ll cross that bridge when we reach it.