Geek. Gamer. Reader. Non-Compliant.

It's in what??

Originally published at Jen’s Corner. You can comment here or there.

So I’ve been trying to read food labels more lately; basically trying to avoid food from China, and high fructose corn syrup. My $DEITY, that crap is in everything. I’m also less enamored of artificial sweeteners too.

  • Jif peanut butter? HFCS. I bought organic. Hope I like it.
  • Smuckers jelly? HFCS. I bought HEB brand More Fruit – it’s got a minimum of ingredients.
  • The husband likes Smart Start cereal. High Fucking Fructose Corn Syrup. o_O I bought him Cap’n Crunch Crunch Berries instead – fewer calories, less sodium, and I think less fat, though it does have a lower vitamin percentage. No HFCS though. I bought myself some Cheerios instead. Lucky for me, with the exception of Lucky Charms, I prefer plain cereal: Total, Cheerios, Grape Nuts Flakes. No HFCS in those, although the Lucky Charms does have corn syrup. I probably should avoid that as well.
  • Campbell’s Tomato Soup? HFCS. I’m really disgruntled about that. I love that stuff. Got nine cans of it in the pantry at the moment.
  • All of the brand name “maple” syrups? HFCS and corn syrup.
  • My bread has HFCS – Sara Lee Whole Grain White (yeah, yeah, I know).

I’m appalled, and shocked, though I shouldn’t be. It’s really kind of weird sliding more and more towards organic foods. Last month I decided to give organic milk a shot. Now, I don’t really like milk – I never have. I use it in cooking a lot, and for cereal, but drinking it is a rarity. Before the husband, I’d buy it in quarts and it’d still go bad before I used it. Rob likes to drink milk at meals, so now I’m buying gallons. Anyhow, I bought some 2% organic milk, and tried a glass. It was actually almost good! I mean, it was still milk, but it tasted 100% better than the milk I’ve always had before.

Well, I gotta think about getting to my hair appointment now, so I guess that’s all the griping about HFCS I’ve got for today. I’m going to try to slowly cut that crap out, and buy food with ingredients I can understand.

Bread. What in the bleeding hells is it doing in bread??

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10 Comments

  1. I should be reading labels more, too. I have been looking into organic foods more, though. My husband is kinda reluctant to try them, but I’m winning him over. I’m also trying to cook more from scratch so I know more about what is in my foods. I swear they are trying to poison us with all that processed stuff.

  2. Yeah, it’s insane everything that you can find HFCS in. I never used to pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing until I was diagnosed with diabetes. Then I started reading the labels for everything.
    As I understand it… these companies use it because, as a result of subsidies, HFCS is cheaper to use than sugar for sweetening. And even though studies have been done that show it can raise hell with the bodie’s sugar absorption and may be partly responsible for obesity, they’re still putting it in freaking EVERYTHING.
    Like you guys, we’re trying to avoid it wherever we can… but it’s nearly impossible to totally remove it from your diet.
    I agree with phoena, though… it’s like they’re out to mess up people as much as they can in this country by replacing natural foods with processed, engineered crap. If you ever want to do some reading about the political nature of places like the FDA (including how the almighty dollar dictates what we get to eat moreso than potential health considerations), do some research into stevia, and how it got banned here in the US… despite the fact that it’s used extensively as a sweetner in other countries.
    Meanwhile, we get artificial sweetners that have been linked to cancer and a myriad of other physical problems.
    Anyways… sorry. Rant done now. :)

  3. HFCS is truly a scary food additive. Once one gets beyond the fear of liver damage and the addictive elements of the sweetener, the sheer omnipresence of it in everything makes it very hard to avoid it without tons of label reading. It almost seems like a conspiracy, that something as simple as price supports for corn farmers could lead to HFCS’s presence in the majority of packaged, pre-made foods in less than 20 years.
    Now it looks like it is also likely a GMO, since most of the major manufacturers of the substance engage in crop tinkering. Ugh!
    Okay, off the HFCS rant. (BTW: It’s in bread because the sweetener has a property that gives baked goods a nice, golden brown color.)

  4. Cereal is weird; my Apple Jacks are WAY healthier than Rusty’s “healthy” sticks-and-leaves cereals.

  5. We try to avoid HFCS as well, mainly because I can TASTE it. Ever since that weird pregnancy with Ganon, my taste buds are entirely different. I can taste things distinctly that normally wouldn’t bother me, and they gross me out. HFCS is one of them. Our main reason for the change to organic is taste. Both Bryan & I prefer foods that have a subtle sweetness, not the hit-you-in-the-face sweetness of HFCS. I don’t want Ganon growing up on sugary cereals & Pop-Tarts, either. (OMG you should’ve seen me the day I found organic pop-tarts at Kroger, complete with evaporated cane juice sweetener instead of HFCS.) And the above person has it right: not only is it a sweetener, but HFCS has some properties that make it good for other things as well. One of them is giving baked goods a good, even color. If I’m not mistaken I think it’s heat transfer; it causes things to cook evenly.
    For some good reading material on the uses of HFCS and chemicals in the modern American diet, read “Fast Food Nation” and “Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World”. (On the other hand, that title bothers me. I’m an organic, minimal-process, make-my-own-food eater, and I’m still a size 16, so I wish they’d all stop blaming it on my eating habits.)

  6. Welcome to the Label Reader Club. You will never look at food the same way again.

  7. When you eat like we do, label reading is a MUST! Certain ingredients are hidden under names that you’d never think of like mono- and di-glycerides (which can also be plant-based), or stearic acid, or “natural flavors” and “natural colors”.
    You’ll be a pro in no time! Your eyes will get to where they just ZIP right exactly where you want them to be, and you’ll find your shopping trips aren’t quite so long despite all the reading.
    You guys should try nut milks. No GMO’s, no hormones, no HFCS, etc., and organic.

  8. Admittedly I’m not in a country where HFCS is a huge problem, but it’s not a problem for me anyway, because on the whole I don’t buy processed food.
    There are three main reasons why I buy ingredients and then cook from scratch rather than buy processed foods: I enjoy it, the food tastes better but most of all, I want to know what’s in my food.

  9. Ooh, try Pacific Organic Creamy Tomato Soup, if you can find it. It’s made in Oregon, but it’s stocked all the way out here, so maybe they have it where you are. REALLY YUMMY and no HFCS.

    http://www.pacificfoods.com/pu_product.php?id=85

  10. Jen

    Hmm. That package looks vaguely familiar, I’ll have to see if they have it next time I go shopping! Thanks for the tip! :)

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