www.huffingtonpost.com - September 5th, 2012
High-fructose corn syrup, the cheap, prevalent and much maligned sweetener, is famously in foods like soda, candy and cake. If you look out for it, you may know that it's also in many sauces and dressings. But what about macaroni and cheese? Or frozen pizza?
After the Healthy Living team found corn syrup solids printed high on the ingredients list of some nuts we were snacking on here at the office, we decided to investigate. Just how often did we find corn-based sweeteners in surprising places?
The jury is still out on whether or not high-fructose corn syrup (a subtype of corn syrup) is more, or differently, damaging than any other amount of sugar. One Princeton rat study found that HFCS, as it is known, causes more weight gain than sucrose in the same amount. But criticism of the study design left the finding in doubt.
What we do know is that, given its cheap price it is easy for companies to pack more sugar into a food using HFCS and other corn-based sugars. And thanks to myriad names and formulations, those looking for sugar may gloss right over many of the sweeteners on ingredient lists. Overall, we eat too much sugar -- much of it hidden by different names. Part of that overconsumption has to do with disregard of the recommendations, but some of it can be attributed to the prevalence of sugar in unlikely foods. Here are some surprising, insidious sources of corn-based sugars that we found at our local grocery store. What unlikely place have you found sweeteners?
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