sugar

It seems as though the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) industry - apparently reeling from all of the negative press over the years, has aired a couple of television spots to "clear up" the "misconception" that HFCS is any different than sugar. Let's take a look at the commercials and discuss...

We like it sweet. Too sweet - and I can't help wondering how our obsession with sweetness is tied to our expanding waists.

Food mega-giant Kraft recently scored a hit in China with Oreos cookies - but not the kind that Americans eat. According to the Wall Street Journal: "Kraft learned that traditional Oreos were too sweet for Chinese tastes".

So they reformulated the flavor - and Oreos are now the No 1 cookie in China.

The No-S Diet is the simplest diet I've ever come across. It has just three rules: No snacks No seconds No sweets Except (sometimes) on days that start with an S.

Here's a useful "diet dodge": Enjoy an ice cream shortly before lunch - it will prevent overeating at lunchtime.

Good advice? Am I serious?

A genuine affliction or part of a victim mentality? Now that carbohydrates are the shunned macro-nutrient of choice, the term "addiction" has been attached to them - particularly refined carbohydrates and sugars. Let's take a look at both sides of the argument:

In the world of nutrition - nothing is as it seems. Despite the popularity of diet foods - we keep getting fatter. So what gives?For some time now research has been unclear. Why does diet soda seem to correlate with weight gain? and is there a link to heart problems or metabolic syndrome?Now another study shows that rats fed with saccharin gained more fat then their sugar-fed counterparts.

Corn Syrup is a form of sugar that everybody loves to hate. Various forms of sugar are found everywhere - but corn-based sugars have become increasingly prevalent due to the heavy subsidies paid to US corn farmers over the last decade or two.

So does corn syrup impact appetite in a different way to standard table sugar? Do you end up eating more?

So says the propaganda in an old advertisement from "Sugar Information Inc".

The ad (below) was an attempt to stave off the commercial threat from the burgeoning artificial sweetener industry.

Nutrition advice can be frustrating. It's often confusing and sometimes flat out contradictory. Fruit juice consumption is a perfect example.

New research concludes that consumption of fruit juice in children has no association whatsoever with risk of being overweight.

Hang on. Just two months ago, Australian research concluded the complete opposite.

So which is it?

Added sugars are the bane of our modern diet - and drinking sugar is arguably the easiest way to over-indulge.

What are the most sugary drinks?

99% fat free has to be one of the most idiotic labels known to mankind - particularly when applied to a carbohydrate food. Just this morning I was reading a "healthy food guide" I picked up from the supermarket. It turned out to be an advertising feature. One product featured was jasmine rice - claiming that it was "99% fat free".

An Australian parents group (Parents Jury) is going after food manufacturers - in particular those who use "fat-free" labels.

Sugarest is a tablet based on the Indian herb Gymnema sylvestre. You place a tablet in your mouth for a few minutes, and apparently for the next 20-30 minutes sugary foods lose their sweetness.

According to the manufacturer Genotec Nutritional this is "long enough for a dieter to defeat their sugar cravings and lose their desire for sweet but fattening foods".

Research from Australia has concluded that children who drink 2 cups of fruit juice or fruit drinks per day were more likely to be overweight or obese than those who did not.

It seems that the more fruit juice consumed, the more chance of being overweight: "Children who drank more than three glasses of soft drink - three quarters of a litre or 750ml - or four glasses of fruit juice/drinks on the day in question were more than twice as likely to be overweight or obese compared with children who did not drink these drinks," (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21413273-2862,00.html">source)

When I think of corn - I think of a tasty cob - freshly picked at the height of summer.

If only it was really like that. Corn (Zea Mays) is actually a major ingredient in a phenomenal number of processed foods (corn syrup in particular).

A new feature-length documentary - King Corn - explores the whole corn industry and exposes some surprising and sobering issues.

Sugar (in one form or another) is added to more food products than you can imagine. There are also a large number of "variants" of sugar - depending on the kind of processing that has occurred.

Here is a list to get you started in identifying sugars. I'm sure you can come up with many more names for sugar.

Data from over 74,000 supermarkets and convenience stores across the UK shows some interesting trends. The top selling brands reveal much about eating habits.

Dear readers of Diet-Blog, This is Connie again. As you may recall from my previous post, I'm a former sugar addict, holistic health counselor and author of the new book SUGAR SHOCK! from Berkley Books (part of the Penguin Group). Anyhow, Jim is being kind enough to allow me to guest blog over here again as I continue my worldwide SUGAR SHOCK! Blog Tour. Today, I'd like to educate you a little about reactive hypoglycemia, a condition that not enough doctors recognize or accept -- and one that's been tied to weight gain and carb cravings.

Greetings, Diet-Blog readers, I'm thrilled that Jim was kind enough to let me join you here for my blog tour. So allow me to introduce myself. My name is Connie, and I'm a former sugar addict and author of SUGAR SHOCK!, which was recently published by Berkley Books (and is available online and at bookstores everywhere).

The No Flour, No Sugar Diet is written by Dr Peter Gott - a popular health columnist and medical practitioner. Subtitled "The Simplest Way to Lose Weight", the book is based on a simple answer: Eliminate all foods that are flour-based or contain added sugars.

British consumer group Which? has published a comprehensive survey of breakfast cereals. They found "that more than three quarters (76 per cent) of cereals had high levels of sugar, a fifth (19 per cent) had high levels of salt and 7 per cent had high levels of saturated fat."