It sounds easy: You grab a product off the shelf and continue your grocery shopping. No, not really. You have to build time, significant time into the outing, to read, digest the food labels. Who would suspect that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is in so many products? Why is it there in the first place? Do we need it or is its presence just interfering with what we consider healthy grocery purchasing?
I doubt we need it. Taste can be adjusted with the simplest of spices: Salt and pepper. Artificial sweeteners can be replaced with good old-fashioned sugar. Flavor can be enhanced with fresh herbs or a sprinkle of a dry product. What does adding HFCS do except increase our chances for diabetes, heart disease, or obesity? The corn lobby would say otherwise; health experts remain divided and many continue to advocate moderation in all purchases rather than blaming a single ingredient.
We are an overweight society with a quick hand at grabbing simple solutions to meal preparation. We need help and manufacturers have to side with us, the consumer, on this one. Processed foods are quick solutions to dinnertime blues, but are most likely to contain unnecessary extra ingredients.
Kraft Foods announced a further commitment to eliminating HFCS from more of its products. Many of their salad dressings and sauces are already being made without the fructose additive. When you read the article you are struck with the fact that the popular Wheat Thins has the unnecessary ingredient (in the 7th line of ingredients), but not for long. The question is what happened to wheat, to the concept of the crunchy easy to snack on cracker without needing HFCS? It probably always had the ingredient, but we had no idea what was killing us. Studying labels was a rare consequence of shopping. Now we are more critical purchasers and attempting to be in greater control of our lives. We question ingredients and try to stay with the fewest.
Seeing HFCS in a label should motivate us to return the product to the shelf. This summer in the good news for Starbucks column, they eliminated HFCS from their pastries. We are seeing more elimination strategy with soft drinks and natural flavors grabbing headlines. The ball is in our court: Time to strike back and show manufacturers they can lighten the load.
We can take charge and manufacturers can continue to show they get it. Do not be confused by a barrage of television commercials and print ads from the corn refiner folks saying that HFCS is not the enemy. Be practical.
Limit your ingredients to words you recognize. Keep it Simple.
