Real Food is Better For You.

…in almost every single case.

Take this picture from Regina Wilshire’s blog, for instance:

While corn isn’t the best of all possible choices for you (it is a cereal grain, after all), you can easily see how eating the actual foodstuff is far, far better than its synthetic counterpart (that’d be high fructose corn syrup).

Corn growers would have you believe that high fructose corn syrup isn’t bad for you.  In fact, “it’s made from corn, has the same calories as sugar, and it’s fine in moderation.”

Well, that would be great if:

1. Corn were “good” for you in the first place (being a cereal grain, it’s not).
2. Sugar were “good” for you in the first place (it’s not).
3. Eating things in moderation were “good” for you in the first place (would they say eating lead paint chips was fine “in moderation”?).

All this skirts the issue of whether or not high fructose corn syrup is worse for you than sugar – and it is (I’ll go through the specifics in a detailed post later).  It has more to do with the metabolic effects of high fructose corn syrup (effects on hormonal tone, proteins, and the liver) than mere calories.

Jonny Bowden gives some sage advice: When shopping for food at your local supermarket, stick to the perimeter (where the meat and produce are) and avoid the center (where all the processed and manufactured items are).