Last Sunday, the NYTimes’ lead business article devoted more than a page of precious "all the news that’s fit to print" space to trying to prove that high-fructose corn syrup <i>isn’t</i> responsible for America’s obesity epidemic. It found a few scientists who had tried to pinpoint high-fructose corn syrup, which is so widely pervasive in American foods, for the surge in obesity over the last 25 years, and then spent hundreds and hundreds of words trying to prove them wrong. A big part of the argument? High-fructose corn syrup is no worse than sugar! But we now know that sugar isn’t good for us either. It’s a classic case of setting up a straw man to argue an otherwise questionable viewpoint.
The cause of America’s obesity epidemic isn’t high-fructose corn syrup. Few respected nutritional experts would try to make that simplistic argument. Rather, the problem is in the over-consumption of foods that raise blood sugar and stimulate insulin production. High-fructose corn syrup is merely one of many such foods that do a number on blood sugar levels, and thus are a prime factor in America’s diabetes epidemic (which is a direct result of the obesity epidemic).
Dr. Mark Hyman, author of the recently published <i>UltraMetabolism</i>, categorizes all the sugar-raising foods (including sugar in any form, together with flour products like pasta and bread, and large starchy potatoes) as "high glycemic load" foods. He explains that "…the key to balancing your meals so that you don’t develop insulin problems revolves around…the glycemic load of a meal…Eating meals that have a high glycemic load means that the combination of foods that you eat will cause all the carbohydrates in the meal to be absorbed very rapidly and raise your blood sugar just as rapidly."
The NYTimes article read almost like an investigative report. What a waste of resources.
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