The Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup

The average American consumes an astounding 2-3 POUNDS of sugar each WEEK. No lie!

Prior to 1900, the average consumption was only 5 lbs of sugar per person per year. Cardiovascular disease and cancer were virtually unknown.

Since then, we have steadily increased our sugar consumption in the US at an alarming rate. In the last 20 years, our annual sugar consumption increased by 26 pounds a year. We now consume an average of 135 lbs of sugar per person per year!

Today we can point to sugar and high fructose corn syrup (and corn sugar) for not only cardiovascular disease and cancer but high blood pressure, diabetes, and dementia. Yep. You read that right.

Since I’m assuming that (even before you started Plan Z) you weren’t pulling up to the sugar canister with a spoon and digging in, you’ve got to be wondering where all that sugar is coming from…

It’s more than just table sugar. Sugar comes in lots of different shapes and sizes. 

Highly refined sugars in the forms of sucrose (table sugar), dextrose (corn sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup are being processed into so many foods it’s crazy; and those foods include bread, breakfast cereal, mayonnaise, peanut butter, crackers, ketchup, canned soup, spaghetti sauce and a plethora of microwave meals.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any processed meal in a box in the freezer section that does not contain some kind of sugar. It might say meat and potatoes on the box, but there’s sugar in there. You can’t even find cough syrup these days that doesn’t have sugar or an artificial sweetener in it. It’s everywhere, and the names for sugar just keep on coming so every time you think you know all the names for sugar, they come up with a new one.

In an effort to sneak out from behind the demonization of the descriptor “high-fructose corn syrup,” the corn refiners got together and thought they’d fool us by re-naming it “corn sugar.” They thought if it sounded more natural we wouldn’t notice.