If you drive by a field of cows you think of milk. You drive by a pumpkin field and a jack ‘o’ lanturn pops into your head. You drive by a field of corn and you think of corn on the cob. Well, that’s not all that corn is used for. That’s where most of your sugar comes from.

The process of making corn into the sweetener high fructose corn was developed in the 1970’s. The use of high fructose corn syrup grew rapidly, from almost 3 million short tons in 1980 to 8 million short tons in 1995. People in 1970 consumed less than a pound of this stuff in a year, and in 2005 the average person ate 42 pounds of it a year. So now, we eat more high fructose corn syrup than actual sugar!

High Fructose corn syrup is used to sweeten jams, condiments (such as ketchup) and soft drinks (including soda). Many so-called health foods use this stuff too (such as Quaker rice cakes). And when people read the word fructose they associate it with fruit, so they believe that it’s good for them.

Okay, All I’ve been talking about is numbers of how popular high fructose corn syrup is. But this is what it does to you. Scientists gave this sugar to lab rats and they developed multiple health problems because lack of certain nutrients, such as copper. In high fructose corn syrup, there is glucose, and fructose. The scientists needed to know which was harming the rats. so taking two groups of rats, they tested them. one group was given large amounts of glucose, the other group large amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected, but the fructose group had horrible results. The male rats couldn’t reach adulthood, there hearts enlarged until they exploded, and they had delayed testicular development. The females weren’t so affected, but they couldn’t produce live babies. The liver on the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the liver of alcoholics. They were plugged with fat and cirrhotic.

So many people could benefit from my article, because they’d be so much healthier. If they all read this, they would know to stay away from high fructose corn syrup as much as possible. Think of all the healthier hearts and livers we would have without this product. I’m guessing there would be less heart and liver diseases.