To “Eat, Drink and be Merry” is expected during the holidays. I always say that if you eat healthy foods most of the time you can indulge in the not so healthy occasionally without feeling guilty. However, the word “occasionally” now needs to be clarified.

New research that studied 50,000 U.S. nurses found that those who drank just one serving of soda a day gained weight more quickly than those who drank less than one soda a month. They also had an 80% higher risk of developing Adult Onset Diabetes and an increased risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. All it took was one soft drink a day to put on the extra pounds and boost the risk of diabetes and fatty liver disease.

The culprit appears to be a plentiful and inexpensive sweetener made from corn. The average American now consumes an outrageous 42 pounds of corn syrup, also known as High-Fructose Corn Sweetener (HFCS) annually. That’s adds an extra 200 calories per day, 1400 per week or a whopping 76,000 calories per year to the average American diet. According to the April 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, between 1970 and 1990, the consumption of HFCS increased over 1,000 percent.

HFCS now represents more than 40% of caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages and as much as 10% of an indiviual’s total daily calories. It can be found in soda, baked goods, breakfast cereals, candies, condiments, ketchup, canned soups, salad dressings, Smucker’s jams, McDonald’s Big Mack and even Wonder Bread. Now that you know the stats, is it any wonder Americans are getting fatter and developing more cases of diabetes?

High-Fructose Corn Sweetener (HFCS) is not the same thing as the natural fructose that God put in fruits. HFCS is nearly identical in composition to table sugar (sucrose), which is composed of 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. HFCS is composed of either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, with the remaining sugars being primarily glucose and some higher sugars. High fructose corn syrup is used in foods and beverages because of the many benefits it offers. In addition to being cheaper, sweeter and easier to blend into beverages than table sugar, HFCS makes foods such as bread and breakfast cereal "brown" better when baked, and gives chewy cookies and snack bars their soft texture.

Natural fructose on the other hand is composed only of fructose. It does not stimulate insulin secretion or require insulin to be transported into cells. It does not raise your blood sugar level like table sugar or HFCS. High Fructose Corn Sweetener contains astonishinglly high levels of very unstable and reactive carbonyl compounds believed to cause serious tissue damage, according to Dr. Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D, a professor of food science at Rutgers University. Combining HFCS with carbonated beverages appears to increase the number of unstable and reactive carbonyl compounds. By contrast natural fruit sugar is stable and does not contain any reactive carbonyl compounds.

HFCS is considered a natural food ingredient under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's definition of the term "natural." Under FDA rules, "natural" means that "nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food." However, HFCS does not exist naturally in corn or anywhere else in nature for that matter. HFCS is made from corn by extracting the starch, breaking it down to glucose, then converting the glucose into fructose and finally blending the fructose back in with glucose and other sugars to make HFCS-42 and HFCS-55, which is either a 42% or 55% blend of fructose with glucose and other sugars. This manufactured combination does not exist naturally anywhere on planet earth.

Both high fructose corn syrup products are similar but each possesses unique qualities that are desirable to food manufacturers and consumers. The sweeter HFCS-55 is predominantly used in carbonated colas and soft drinks because it is easier to blend into liquids. HFCS-42 is popular in canned fruits, condiments, baked goods and other processed foods because it is creamer and a little less sweet and therefore will not mask the fruit’s flavor. The dairy industry uses HFCS-42 in fluid products such as flavored milks and eggnog; yogurt, ice cream and other frozen desserts and novelties.