In the continuing debate over the cause of obesity and its
cure and the elements of a healthy diet--a debate with powerful food, beverage and
additive lobbyists doing much more than holding their breath while awaiting the final
outcome--there are two new controversial, and contradictory, claims being attributed to
high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In a report carried by href="http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100256046">MSN
Health News on March 19, 2010 derived from a Duke University Medical Center,
news release dated March 18, 2010, science asserts a link established between liver
scarring in nonalcoholic liver disease that is attributed to the consumption of corn
syrup sweetened soda and other beverages on a daily basis. Corn refiners of course have
contested the study suggesting the results were biased since the participants' diets
contained many sources of fructose besides HFCS sweetened
beverages.
Another news article in the href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Corn+syrup+villain+childhood+obesity/3292523/story.html">Montreal
Gazette, dated July 18, 2010, discusses Michelle Obama's timely campaign
against childhood obesity, which leads to life-threatening, life-shortening, and
extremely costly diseases like cardiac arrest and type 2 diabetes (the cost may not be
of great concern if the child has wealthy parents but when the child is from a working
class or poverty class family, the cost of health is staggering and can not usually be
supported without government intervention and assistance that allocates costs to the
public coffers).
The focus of Michelle Obama's campaign is
to advocate a total caloric intake that is accurately balanced by physical exercise.
Obama is endeavoring to switch the burden of obesity from off food selection and onto
food intake balanced by physical exertion. While this is a truthful and wise advocacy,
it may be naive to rule out the correlation between a product introduced about 35 years
ago, which has become ubiquitous (all-present) during that time, and an obesity epidemic
that began to arise about 35 years ago. Science and wisdom and traditional healthful
food habits suggest a combination of calorie intake balanced by exercise
and food selection is the only way to restore a waistline
and to restore health along with that waistline to America.
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