This week I watched a video called Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert A. Lustig, a biochemist. In it, he described one of the greatest health calamities Americans face- High Fructose Corn Syrup as a sweetener. It turns out that High Fructose Corn Syrup is a cheap sweetener, cheaper than regular sugar, made from corn. Unfortunately, it blocks the production of Leptin, a substance in the body that tells you that you are done eating and lets you feel full. In additon, it blocks another substance in the body that allows you to regulate high blood pressure, causing blood pressure to rise. It causes a bad reaction in arteries due to it's "browning" ability(it browns the insides of arteries just like it browns steak on the grill, doctors have seen the color change during operations), weakening them, which combined with high blood pressure and the obesity caused by leptin suppression and poor regulation of HFCS in the liver, is deadly. It's processed in the liver differently than regular sugar, it's treated more like a fat and causes your body to store it as fat. In short, HFCS is a poison. It is much sweeter than regular sugar so that it bombards your pancreas like nothing ever used before, making it the crack of sugars. Now companies have even started using Crystalline High Fructose Corn Syrup which is even sweeter than regular HFCS. Crystal...hmmmm. This has the effect on you body of doing shot after shot of alcohol, without the buzz since HFCS is not metabolized in the brain.
Corn is notoriously hard to digest, is an allergen for some people, and most people of European or Scandinavian heritage have metabolisms that are used to Wheat, Barley or Rye, not corn. Columbus discovered corn along with the American continent. History of Corn
So here is Dr. Lustig's video where he breaks down the chemistry of exactly WHAT HFCS is doing to us, and WHY. It's a 90 minute video so watch it when you have time to do so, and stick with it, it's well worth stretching to try to understand what he is saying.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is very available because it is one of the products that is produced from Corn. Corn is the largest crop in the USA and is "subsidized" by the Govt. each year by millions of dollars- according to one article, the govt. had paid $56 BILLION in Corn Subsidies between 1995 and 2006. Why? Because when the price of corn is down, certain companies(hmm, I wonder who the shareholders are?) save A LOT of money buying corn for various uses. Chicken, pork and beef producers (yes, those same people with the huge and horrible antibiotic and growth hormone ridden slaughterhouses of which you've seen terrible photos on the internet), and of course producers of High Fructose Corn Syrup and Ethanol. Cheap toxic meat and sweetener, and ethanol, a crappy low mileage fuel that unbeknown to most drivers, is mixed with gas that you buy from gas stations. This is often why you get lower gas mileage than expected, due to the corn ethanol in the mix. This was supposed to reduce gas prices but it really hasn't.
The cheap US corn undercuts other countries' markets and makes it so that farmers in Mexico and other places really can't really make money with this crop, worsening their conditions considerably.
Why This Is A Scam:
To make things cheaper for certain companies, corn gets subsidies from the US Government every year(millions of dollars). *Who voted on THAT?* This makes Corn Syrup much cheaper than any other sweetener. It is also easier to handle and transport, so combined with the low price, it makes it more attractive for companies to use.
In addition, it's addictive properties of slamming sugar right to the bloodstream and not letting the person know when they've had enough cause them to consume more product and come back for more, more frequently. Sneaky companies add corn syrup in order to purposefully addict "consumers" to their branded flavor. We found HFCS in products where you would never think there was any added sweetener- condiments, pasta meals, bread, salad dressing, supposedly "healthy" snacks like Granola Bars and "low fat" cakes and cookies (if it tastes like crap after the fat has been removed, they add more sweetener....) The fact that people would eat "health" products thinking they were being healthy and losing weight, only to have their livers, pancreases and other organs bombarded by High Fructose Corn Syrup's ill effects should be criminal. The "cooler" the label, the higher HFCS was on the label. Stuff like "Jack Daniels" brand BBQ sauce and other brand names. They want you to eat it all up and come back for more, and there's hardly any better way to accomplish this than to add a product that is known to cause this. Nobody cares when you have a heart attack at 45- as a matter of fact, this is GOOD for the USA- it will churn your insurance if you have any, and create jobs for others. And they don't need us living to be 100, right? What if everybody did that- how would they pay everybody's Social Security and Pension and still rake in billions? SOMEBODY has to die, RIGHT?
Make sure that "somebody" is not YOU.
How to CUT AND RUN:
1) Recognize that you have been messed with. It's not normal to consume 156 POUNDS OF SUGAR PER YEAR like the average USA "consumer" (I really loathe that word but it suits the purpose here). Sugar is being added to EVERYTHING- in order to ADDICT YOU. Recognize this- that the Food And Drug Administration did nothing to place a cap on the amount of sugar companies are allowed to put in any food, and do not care if your organs wear out at 45 or if you have a heart attack or become a diabetic or obese. That they act as the gatekeepers to money (YOUR money) and do not in actuality give a damn about your or anybody else's true health. This is one of those "anchors" that you must sacrifice in order to free yourself from being a "consumer" and turning into an active, healthy CITIZEN and HUMAN BEING, that I spoke about in the first blog.
2) Find and Recognize the Sources of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Anything Government Subsidized will be the cheapest possible which means HFCS will be the sweetener- that means cheap grocery stores in bad neighborhoods which are Government Subsidized(those weird brands that you never see anywhere outside Govt. subsidized stores and dollar stores). WIC programs for mothers with kids are notorious for only allowing the cheapest products and therefore tons of HFCS sweetened products as opposed to natural products- READ YOUR LABLES and try to find the products that don't have HFCS if you are in this situation right now. HFCS has even been found in BABY FORMULA- do NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES give HFCS to a baby, infant or toddler. There is an epidemic of obesity in babies toddlers right now due to HFCS, this could cause lifelong health problems for your child. READ ALL LABLES and you will quickly see how pervasive HFCS has become. If you see it on the lable, AVOID- in addition, watch out for the other names for it like CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, FRUCTOSE/GLUCOSE, and anything else that sound suspicious. Better safe than sorry.
3) In order to promote the best health of both mind and body, try to AVOID LABLES ENTIRELY. If someone could put a patent on a flavor, it means they have a motivation to try to addict you to that flavor- and here in SCAmerica, nobody is going to stop them since this is the Land of Constant Scams. Choose things that people could never possibly patent, Vegetables and Fruits, Whole Grains and Lean Cuts of Meat and Fish. I realize this is a tall order when money is tight, but it is much cheaper than some people realize. Learn how to make your own condiments like Spaghetti Sauce (it is a lot easier than you think, buy cans of tomato sauce and add the spices, onions, garlic, etc yourself, it's not that hard and it's much cheaper than buying it), salad dressing, etc- use the internet to look up recipes. We have the technology, we can do this! Stop your sugar addictions, give your organs and brain a break and increase your ability to concentrate and your lifespan!
Other articles of interest:
WHY ARE WE PROPPING UP CORN PRODUCTION, AGAIN?
WHAT EATING TOO MUCH SUGAR DOES TO YOUR BRAIN
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On another note, I watched Children of the Corn again, originally written by Steven King. It came out in 1984. At first I was just having some fun watching an old 80s horror flick, but I started to quickly realize that there are some paralells between what I wrote in this blog and what the movie was showing. SOME people, apparantly, knew about the disaster that was being created by this new "cult of corn" and were making very clear statements about it. Mr. King, care to comment?:)
1) The premise is a very old and ancient Corn Demon that kills you before you can get old- teens are sacrificed to it on their 19th birthday. It has been here since before the settlers. Kills you before you can get old? SOUNDS LIKE CORN TO ME!
2) The demon has possessed a child who was taught to be a preacher and appointed him to be his priest and way to communicate with the people of the town. A connection with religion? Everybody knows that towns in the Midwest where corn is grown are overly religious to the point of being oppressive. Could Steven King have been making a statement about how religious leaders are pushing corn production on these towns, using religion to do it? (possibly for favours, kickbacks, etc?)
3) There is a clear reference to Ethanol in one part, where one of the children has killed the gas station attendant that they were allowing to live because he provided needed gas for the town. He said "we don't need him any more, we have our own fuel "from the corn!" when Isac, the demon posessed kid, says "you know it is not enough." That was a statement about how corn production was pushed as a possible fuel source through Ethanol, but as we all know, Ethanol is not enough to truly be a fuel source.
4) Sacrificing adults to the ancient demon in corn? What is Stephen King trying to say with this? This message hinted to me, as I pondered EVERYTHING I had struggled to understand as a member of the "counterculture" over the years, of a diabolical system set up by corporations and government that sucks the best working years out of it's members and kills them off before they can become wise enough to figure out a way out of it, and also makes it so that they don't benefit from their work by living out their Golden Years in comfort- they die early, and someone else gets to absorb the profit of the work of their lives(let me guess- corporations and govt which now don't have to pay a pension, medical bills, etc)
5) the way the Demon was eventually conquered in this movie was to burn the cornfields with gasoline. So the message was clear- use gas and not corn(ethanol), that corn is a threat, a danger and part of a vicious and evil scheme to drain people's lives and well being. It could be possible that the basic premise of this movie was to protest massive corn production as a supposed fuel source. But it said so much more.
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