Posts Tagged diet fads
High Fructose Corn Syrup is Not Special in the Sugar Debate
Posted by Jesse Thornton in Food myths on May 7, 2014
“I don’t have the time, desire or the need to check every label to see if it contains this one little ingredient.”
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has become the latest target in the war against the obesity epidemic. The very fact that it exists because it is a highly processed corn product makes it ripe for sensationalized headlines like “5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You.” The name of the product itself makes it sound ominous. So what is the truth? Will HFCS kill you and, perhaps, more importantly, is it really anymore dangerous than the thing that it commonly replaces, table sugar? The short answer is, no. It is almost exactly the same as regular sugar and is no more harmful than sugar when consumed in amounts that are within or below the recommended dietary guidelines.
Raw vs Cooked Vegetables
Posted by Jesse Thornton in Food myths, Nutrition and Health on April 8, 2014
Credit: San Francisco Citizen
Many new diets make claims that raw food, particularly vegetables, is better for you based on the assumption that our ancestors evolved to eat food that way and cooking destroys some of the nutrients. As I write this sentence I am neutral on the claims made of consuming raw vegetables. The claims do make sense to me because I know that heat tends to destabilize the structure of proteins, essentially rendering them inactive, and alters the structure of chemical compounds (please note I use the word chemical here in a general sense to describe naturally occurring chemicals, such as those made by plants, as well as synthetic chemicals). But I also know that the process of digestion is designed to do exactly that. With that said, does it even matter if you eat your vegetables raw if everything going down your gullet will be broken down to basic molecular units? Read the rest of this entry »
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Critical Examiner 