by Fit Women Staff

Ear of corn on plant
Have you seen the ads by the agribusiness public relations departments describing high-fructose corn syrup as “healthy” and “all-natural”?
According to the Corn Refiners Association, high-fructose corn syrup contains the same amount of calories as cane and beet sugar, is metabolized by the body the same way as these sweeteners are, and is an all-natural product.
So why are the Corn Refiners Association, spending up to $30 million to convince consumers it’s inherently safe to eat?
There is something missing from these ads if they are defending corn syrup as a natural, healthy, and safe sweetener.
Even more alarming is when the American Medical Association issued a statement explaining that “high-fructose syrup does not appear to contribute more to obesity than other caloric sweeteners” … but of course they qualified it by adding that they also said that “consumers [should] limit the amount of all added caloric sweeteners to no more than 32 grams of sugar daily.” Most sodas contain about 40 grams of high-fructose corn syrup.
Why High Fructose Corn Syrup IS Worse For You than Sugar
According to Dr. Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and lead author of a recent study on fructose in the Journal of Nutrition:
“Our study shows for the first time the surprising speed with which humans make body fat from fructose. Once you start the process of fat synthesis from fructose, it’s hard to slow it down. The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body.”

So if you need to lose weight, or if you want to avoid diabetes and heart disease, fructose is one type of sugar you’ll want to avoid, particularly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
HFCS metabolizes to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar, making it the worst sugar you can eat. One of the best things you can do right away is to STOP drinking soda and processed fruit juices that are sweetened with about eight teaspoons of fructose per serving! Switch to pure water as your beverage of choice.
Read the Paleo Solution for more detailed information. >>
Need more ideas for Cooking Healthy Meals, then check out: The Healthy Urban Kitchen Cookbook The Healthy Urban Kitchen is a simple, step by step system for shopping, cooking and eating the world’s healthiest foods. It was created for busy people who want to improve health, have more energy, and prevent disease.

by Fit Women Staff
The End of Overeating: Sugar, Fat & Salt
A Book Review
There is a new book out called: The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
by David Kessler, MD
David Kessler is a former FDA commissioner who reinvented the food label and tackled the tobacco industry, and now has taken on the food industry. He explains how the food industry has hijacked our brains into overeating when we consume foods that contain sugar, fat & salt. He goes on to say that since the 1980’s the food industry has created products that stimulate our appetites into a cycle of desire and over consumption. He explains why its difficult for people to resist certain foods and why its so easy to over consume.
Millions of people struggling with weight loss, are having their brains manipulated by everything from brand advertisers to fast food super sizes, to chain restaurant foods filled with sugar, fats and salt.
He says that the food industry has been remarkably successful at designing foods to capture the attention of people who have lost control of their eating habits and are totally at the mercy of food. Food designers, food manufacturers and restaurants all understand that sugar, fat & salt added to foods makes a juicy meal that many people simply can’t resist. There’s not a short of people who lack control around such targeted foods and not all of them are overweight. Many people don’t have eating disorders that we’ve all heard about, but for a lot of these people food and eating and over indulging is never far from their minds.
For thousands of years, our bodies were the perfect biological systems, then in the 1980’s, something happened. A senior researcher at the Center for Disease Control noticed an alarming trend. She found through a government survey on health and nutritional status that the number of people who were overweight had spiked dramatically. What had caused this phenomenon? Well by the 1980’s we had larger portion sizes, more chain restaurants, and convienence stores and a culture that promoted going out to eat. But he says that still didn’t answer the question of why we overeat?
Those people that can’t stop eating literally spend billions of dollars a year trying to find a cure to their weight loss. Those in search of a weight loss formula are wasting most of their money for a short weight loss cure that they hope will last. We all know that it basicly comes down to people get fat because they eat more than people who are lean. Apparently some people are still denying this or are confused about it, but we have strong evidence to prove that this is true.
Here is what the food industry knows and doesn’t tell you. “Higher sugar, fat, and salt make you want to eat more”, says a high-level food industry executive who didn’t want to be named. They make it indulgent and hedonistic so that it has a high pleasure value. Restaurants where Americans spend 50% of their food dollars have introduced countless new foods with high hedonistic values. Everything from Potato skins to Cheese fries, a high fat food with more fat layered on top of it, to Buffalo wings, the fatty part of chicken which are then deep fried and served with a sweet dipping sauce that’s heavily salted. Chicken tenders are the worst because I know many Mom’s gives their kids these “unidentified fried object”, loaded with batter and fat and then fried with salt and sugar added. And the list goes on and on.
Dr. Kessler observes that the food industry is “the manipulator of the consumers’ minds and desires.”
To order this book: The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
by David Kessler, MD
Need more ideas for Cooking Healthy Meals, then check out: The Healthy Urban Kitchen Cookbook The Healthy Urban Kitchen is a simple, step by step system for shopping, cooking and eating the world’s healthiest foods. It was created for busy people who want to improve health, have more energy, and prevent disease.