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I don't eat any HFCS. You just have to read the labels. If you compare two salad dressings made by the same brand, for example, one might contain HFCS and one might not.

When it comes to cereal and snacks, many organic brands don't contain HFCS, but you'll find HFCS-free kinds in the regular supermarket, too. Triscuits, for example, are fine, and so is Ben&Jerry's (and as I recall, Total cereal and Original Cheerios).

Baking your own cookies, brownies, and cakes will eliminate HFCS from your sweets. Whole foods are HFCS-free: eat your unprocessed fruits and veggies! Read the labels on yogurt. Stonyfield, Brown Cow, and Dannon's All-Natural don't contain HFCS.

Basically, read the labels. Make whatever you can't find. It's actually not hard for me now, though it was when I started avoiding HFCS two years ago.

"it's in just about everything, you know?"

The easiest way to avoid it is to not eat processed foods. Period. No more snacks, no more sodas, no more cheap candies. Definitely read labels on anything that has more than one ingredient in it. If you must have snacks, make your own. For example, you very easily make your own granola or the equivalent of "chex mix" with clean ingredients. Instead of reaching for a cookie or a bag of chips, have a yogurt or an apple, or some nuts.

This was our New Year's Resolution in my household and it's been surprisingly easy. KarynMC and seyo are right: as long as you avoid processed foods and pay attention to labels, it's very easy.

Not once have I felt constrained by shopping for foods without HFCS, nor have I felt like I'm missing or craving anything. If you want sweets, make your own. If you want bread, there are plenty of breads that don't have HFCS in them or, again, just make your own. If you want soda, drink a Jones. If you want ice cream, make your own! It's easy and fun. :)

Remember: just read labels and stay away from processed foods. It's pretty much that easy. :) Good luck!

I read a lot of labels, and it is getting easier and easier to find stuff without the HFCS, but the frustrating one for me is that a lot of my favorite products have MSG, and I think that crap is even more toxic for the body than HFCS, and more invasive in the American market.

What do you think?

Of course, when I suggested eating more yogurt, I should have explicitly stated UNSWEETENED, or plain, yogurt. If you must sweeten it, use honey, pure maple syrup, a good organic jam sweetened with real sugar, or, if you are watching your sugar intake, use agave syrup.

And yes, MSG is bad for you, avoid it too.

The scary and sad thing is, it's our tax dollars that are paying for HFCS. We pay for the farm subsidies that turn into a massive glut of extra corn. Instead of feeding it to starving people, we feed the corn to cows (who are meant to be grass-fed -- the corn fattens them up faster but makes them sick, so they then get pumped full of antibiotics, which in turn make humans sick... but I digress...) and we manufacture massive amounts of that super-cheap sweetener/stabilizer, HFCS, which is basically poison.

As a food editor, I make it a point to never write about products that contain HFCS, and I tell that to all the packaged goods companies that pitch me new products. But ultimately it's consumer demand that makes a difference. So it's great that you're going off it, chisai and others on this list -- let's hope your families and friends will follow suit!

erinlovestoeat, I don't know if you happen to have H-E-Bs where you are, but most of their store brand items don't have HFCS. Their pasta sauces in particular are fantastic and have all natural ingredients, no HFCS or anything else you can't pronounce. :)

CookiePie, it's so wonderful that people like you in the industry are taking a strong stance against HFCS. When you tell the companies about your views on HFCS, what is their reply (if any)? I'd be very curious to hear...

I eat a lot of CANDY and I still don't eat HFCS (well, every once in a while for something I'm tasting). It's really not that hard to avoid, but then again, I've never had a soda habit, I don't like salad dressing or condiments period and I rarely eat processed foods (besides the previously mentioned candy).

Yes, the Gin & Tonic issue is one of my biggest hurdles. I tried something called Dry Soda at the Fancy Food Show, but at $2.25 for a 12 ounce bottle, it's an expensive habit. I stopped eating fruited yogurts about 10 years ago, mostly because of the high sugar content (I just wanted fruit!) and now eat Fage or Mountain High plain every once in a while but mostly Cottage Cheese (because it's easier to go sweet or savory with it).

I too am making an effort to reduce the HFCS in my diet...and by avoiding that, and trying to buy products that have only the ingredients I would put in if I were making it myself....I have lost over 20 lbs since last fall.
It's all about reading the labels, and like everyone else is saying....staying away from too many processed foods.
I do like my soda though...and recently discovered a brand....Blue Sky....that uses all natural ingredients, sugar & no colorings in their soda. That is my treat once a day.....I found it at my local store for less than .50 can, and the cherry creme soda is heavenly! (You do have to read the label though, as they do still have some products w/HFCS.)

We've been trying to avoid it in my house for some time now. Izze soda, if available in your area, is great - it's not really soda at all, but fruit juice and seltzer (which, of course, you could also mix yourself.)
Read "In Defense of Food", Michael Pollan's book, and you'll be inspired to rid your diet of all processed foods.

Thanks for all the info guys. The thing that really threw me for a loop was Heinz Ketchup, which I dearly love, and which does not have a decent substitute. I mostly make my own pasta sauce, and if I don't I use Rao's, which doesn't have HFCS. I've been searching about on the web, looking for food lists of have's and have-not's. Why I am surprised at how many brands of packaged breads are loaded with the stuff I do not know. My shock that Sunbeam Hot Dog Buns uses this weird chemical fake sweetener does seem unreasonable. I don't actually eat packaged bread, yet find myself clomping around all over the virtual supermarket hunting for it's own sake. Which has been quite educational and fun.

You know what? When I started hunting around I saw that many of the foods I eat and love are just fine. Not everything, but enough. And I'm totally covered on the candies and drinks thing from FF, so I'm really pretty much set.

@chisai - I think Heinz has an organic version. Check it out - maybe it's HFCS-free?

This is so funny! I just bought Heinz Organic because it didn't have HFCS. I know, it's dying by knife rather than gun, but I just like the taste of sugar better.

It's almost time for Passover Coke!

I have to respectfully disagree, LoCo. Yes, you're right that we're eating too much sugar in all its forms in general, but the body processes HFCS differently, and it is worse:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL

This is by no means meant as a license to chow down on cane sugar if you've given up HFCS -- it's a good idea to keep all sugar consumption in check. But some are worse than others.

I try not to eat a lot of processed food and do pretty well, but lately have been eating a lot of store-bought sweets. This thread has really inspired me to start looking at labels more regularly and to make a concentrated effort to reduce or eliminate HFCS in my diet. Thanks - many of you make it sound pretty easy to do!

Erm... you do all realise that a lot of the 'glucose syrup' found on ingredient lists is, in fact, HFCS?

But although a lot of the arguments against this stuff (LoCo covered them quite throughly) are valid, I think it's a mistake to get too overwrought about its 'poisonousness', since if you eat fruit, you're eating fructose, too. HFCS tastes nasty and fake, and it's not particularly natural, but then again, neither is plain table white cane sugar.

I've been trying to cut down the amount of HFCS I intake, and one of the things that was hard for me to find was bread without it. But something that helped me is that a lot of fresh breads (made in a bakery) don't include HFCS in their recipies.

Do you eat honey? Jam? Ever make a simple syrup? Candy? They’re all inverted sugars. People have been eating them for millennia.

Invert Sugar. Sucrose that has been broken down into fructose and glucose by combining it with an acid (citric, etc.) and/or invertase (an enzyme, usually obtained from yeast), and/or heating the sucrose. When table sugar (from cane or beet) is inverted, it is usually 50% fructose and 50% glucose.

Honey. An invert sugar. Sucrose (from flower nectar) is combined with invertase when the bees chew the nectar before spitting it out. Basically, it is partially digested sucrose. It is approximately 38% fructose, 31% glucose, 17% water, 14% other.

High Fructose Corn Syrup. An invert sugar. Sucrose (from corn) is combined with invertase (usually from yeast). HFCS 55, the most commonly used form, is 55% fructose, 45% glucose. The other common form, HFCS 42, is 42% fructose and 58% glucose.

When you eat sucrose, it is broken down into fructose and glucose by the body when it combines with sucrase, an enzyme like invertase.

If you are consuming soda made from sugar (sucrose), you may be avoiding HFCS, but you are still consuming inverted sugar. It is created when the sugar is cooked and combined with citric or phosphoric acid to make the syrup base. It probably tastes a whole lot better than HFCS soda, but is it nutritionally better or safer? Hard to say.

Fructose is often cited as the “bad” sugar in HFCS, but there has not been any conclusive scientific evidence to support this theory. In fact, if you were to live a primitive lifestyle — one in which food could only be obtained simply, with few tools and technologies — pretty much the only sugars you’d have ready access to are fructose, from fruit, and invert sugar, from honey. Fructose is, arguably, the sugar we are best designed to process, albeit in quantities that can be obtained through a normal diet of fruit consumption, which does not even remotely resemble the amounts of fructose being consumed today. Maybe it’s the problem. Maybe it’s not. But if it is, we’ll have to cut way back on consumption of ALL inverted sugars.

Now, I’m not naïve enough to believe that there is no possibility that HFCS is more of a problem than other simple sugars. And in no way am I advocating its use — in my opinion, it is inferior in flavor and quality to sugar or honey. However, while there is a measurable correlation between its increased consumption and obesity, etc., there has been an overall radical increase in the consumption of simple sugars. The evidence only demonstrates that we are eating way too much sugar, and that it happens to be largely in the form of HFCS. To date, there has been no scientific evidence to conclusively determine that HFCS is somehow worse than any other simple sugar, or that it's more responsible for these health issues than the general increase in sugar consumption. The jury is out. Logic dictates that it should be regarded as comparable to other invert sugars until there is sound, scientific evidence showing that it is specifically worse than others.

Avoid HFCS if you dislike the taste. Avoid it as an aide in identifying better quality foods. Avoid it as a means of reducing your overall consumption of simple sugars. But please don’t be a sheeple. Do your own homework, and think twice before giving into HFCS hysteria.

Research on hormonal factors suggests that fructose actually promotes disease more readily than glucose. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of test animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics.

Pure fructose contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals and robs the body of its micronutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use. While naturally occurring sugars, as well as sucrose, contain fructose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains a good deal of "free" or unbound fructose. Research indicates that this free fructose interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals like magnesium, copper and chromium. Lysl oxidase is a copper-dependent enzyme that participates in the formation of collagen and elastin. Fructose seems to interfere with copper metabolism to such an extent that collagen and elastin cannot form in growing animals--hence the hypertrophy of the heart and liver in young male rat fed high amounts of HFCS. Females did not develop these abnormalities, but they resorbed their litters.

Among other consequences, HFCS has been implicated in elevated blood cholesterol levels and the creation of blood clots. It has been found to inhibit the action of white blood cells so that they are unable to defend the body against harmful foreign invaders.

Fructose reduces the affinity of insulin for its receptor, which is the hallmark of type-2 diabetes. This is the first step for glucose to enter a cell and be metabolized. As a result, the body needs to pump out more insulin to handle the same amount of glucose.

Consumption of fructose causes a significant increase in the concentration of uric acid; after ingestion of glucose, no significant change occurs. An increase in uric acid can be an indicator of heart disease. Furthermore, fructose ingestion in humans results in increases in blood lactic acid, especially in patients with preexisting acidotic conditions such as diabetes, postoperative stress or uremia. Extreme elevations cause metabolic acidosis and can result in death.

Fructose is absorbed primarily in the jejunum before metabolism in the liver. Fructose is converted to fatty acids by the liver at a greater rate than is glucose. When consumed in excess of dietary glucose, the liver cannot convert all of the excess fructose in the system and it may be malabsorbed. The portion that escapes conversion may be thrown out in the urine. Diarrhea can be a consequence. A study of 25 patients with functional bowel disease showed that pronounced gastrointestinal distress may be provoked by malabsorption of small amounts of fructose.

Fructose interacts with oral contraceptives and elevates insulin levels in women on "the pill."

In studies with rats, fructose consistently produces higher kidney calcium concentrations than glucose. Fructose generally induces greater urinary concentrations of phosphorus and magnesium and lowered urinary pH compared with glucose.

In humans, fructose feeding leads to mineral losses, especially higher fecal excretions of iron and magnesium, than did subjects fed sucrose. Iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc balances tended to be more negative during the fructose-feeding period as compared to balances during the sucrose-feeding period.

There is significant evidence that high sucrose diets may alter intracellular metabolism, which in turn facilitates accelerated aging through oxidative damage. Scientists found that the rats given fructose had more undesirable cross-linking changes in the collagen of their skin than in the other groups. These changes are also thought to be markers for aging. The scientists say that it is the fructose molecule in the sucrose, not the glucose, that plays the larger part.

Because it is metabolized by the liver, fructose does not cause the pancreas to release insulin the way it normally does. Fructose converts to fat more than any other sugar. This may be one of the reasons Americans continue to get fatter. Fructose raises serum triglycerides significantly. As a left-handed sugar, fructose digestion is very low. For complete internal conversion of fructose into glucose and acetates, it must rob ATP energy stores from the liver.

Not only does fructose have more damaging effects in the presence of copper deficiency, fructose also inhibits copper metabolism--another example of the sweeteners double-whammy effect. A deficiency in copper leads to bone fragility, anemia, defects of the connective tissue, arteries, and bone, infertility, heart arrhythmias, high cholesterol levels, heart attacks, and an inability to control blood sugar levels.

Although these studies were not designed to test the effects of fructose on weight gain, the observation of increased body weight associated with fructose ingestion is of interest. One explanation for this observation could be that fructose ingestion did not increase the production of two hormones, insulin and leptin, that have key roles in the long-term regulation of food intake and energy expenditure.

The magnitude of the deleterious effects of fructose varies depending on such factors as age, sex, baseline glucose, insulin, triglyceride concentrations, the presence of insulin resistance, and the amount of dietary fructose consumed. Some people are more sensitive to fructose. They include hypertensive, hyperinsulinemic, hypertriglyceridemic, non-insulin dependent diabetic people, people with functional bowel disease and postmenopausal women.

Everyone should avoid over-exposure to fructose, but especially those listed above. One or two pieces of fruit per day is fine, but commercial fruit juices and any products containing high fructose corn syrup are more dangerous than sugar and should be removed from the diet.

Just as a heads-up, in Canada high-fructose corn syrup is listed as "glucose-fructose" on product labels. So the Coke up here is just as bad as in America!

Free Fructose is the evil sugar but when bound up as it is in cane sugar beet sugar and fruit is it fine so avoid HFCS invert sugar, crystline Fructose and Fructose

Just moved to Israel and I find that I can eat more (yay!), especially bread, because there is no HFCS in foods.

We discovered on our honeymoon 8 years ago that European Coke and Fanta are made with real sugar and boy does it make the American version tase icky; like the difference between regular and diet (yes, reformed diet soda drinker...)