The Whole30: Why I Actually Support This One

Generally I can't stand the latest vogue diet. The Potato Diet, the Alkaline Diet, the Cookie Diet, The Master Cleanse, or the myriad of other oddball diets that try to get you to eat anything but real, unprocessed food.

However, my natural skepticism of fad diets got thrown out the window when the Whole30 started catching on. I find it rather sad that eating whole, unprocessed foods in their natural state gets called a "fad" in the first place. A lot of people think...

Why You Should Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) dominates the American food supply. It's in soda, bread, condiments, yogurt, salad dressings, and nearly every packaged food on grocery store shelves.

The food industry loves it because it's cheap, shelf-stable, and sweeter than sugar. Your body hates it because it metabolizes differently than any sugar humans evolved eating.

Here's what HFCS actually is, how it differs from natural sugars, and why it's wrecking metabolic health at a population level.

What Is High-Fructose Corn Syrup?

HFCS is sugar extracted and concentrated from corn. In the early 1970s, food scientists developed industrial processes to break down cornstarch into glucose, then convert some of that glucose into fructose.

The result: a syrup that's 55% fructose and 45% glucose (HFCS-55, used in soft drinks) or 42% fructose and 58% glucose (HFCS-42, used in baked goods and processed foods).

The problem: Fructose and glucose exist a...