Pepsi Free - Week 3

courtesy of my blog: http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/
Week Three. Officially 21 days of no soft drinks, and no eating past 9PM. They say when you do something consistently for 21 days, it becomes a habit. I don't know. At any given moment, I still automatically reach for a Pepsi, then have to remind myself to go for Snapple or water instead.

Also, my research has got me looking at labels. Whenever I crave an iced tea, I have to check. Most iced teas on the market use HFCS, except Snapple, and I believe, Gold Peak. I'm also noticing it in juice concentrates, and Hershey Syrup, and even Karo Corn Syrup.

Now, I'm thinking many opposers of High Fructose Corn Syrup are under the impression that it is somehow different from regular corn syrup. Not so. The explanation comes from my idol, Alton Brown.

In his Marshmallow episode of Good Eats, he briefly talks about HFCS, which he adds to the marshmallows to prevent the sugar from crystalizing. The starch found in corn tastes bland, so they cook it to break it down into glucose. Glucose is sweet, but not sweet enough for our taste buds. It needs the addition of Fructose to make it palatable. Adding an enzyme, a naturally occuring enzyme, to Glucose converts some of it into Fructose, and then they mix it in with more glucose to get the 55/45 ratio of Fructose to Glucose. (Table sugar is 50/50) This solution results in corn syrup. Because it can be mixed 55/45 or 25/75, which isn't as sweet, the former is referred to as High Fructose Corn Syrup. And again... nothing about this process scares me in the least.

It's been compared, in coversations I've had, to Trans-fats. Trans-fats are unsaturated fats to which Hydrogen is added, in a very natural way, I'm sure, to make it saturated. This Hydrogenated oil is now solid at room temperature, to that it can substitute for butter or lard. But it's basically oil, which before it's hydrogenated, is liquid and can't be spread on toast.

I believe that the difference here is that hydrogenated fats or trans-fats are unnatural. You're taking a molecule and messing with its natural state, which is why it reacts to the body differently than butter does. Butter is supposed to be saturated, oil is not. (Which is why I never use margarine or even smart balance.) If you were to turn Sucrose (table sugar) into a syrup by melting it in water, then somehow add a little fructose, perhaps from apple juice, you'd have a product very similar to HFCS. You're cooking the sugar, you're molecularly altering the oil. See the difference?

Anyway, as for health, I notice no difference. I'm hungry in the morning because I hadn't snacked the night before. I still have that annoying gut. I haven't weighed myself, but my pants don't seem as tight as before. I sense no more or less energy than before the fast, in fact I feel very low on energy. After all, I'm consuming less sugar than before.

For more on my Lenten Fast :
http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/2010/02/hfcs-free-week-1.html
http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/2010/02/hfcs-free-week-15.html
http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/2010/03/pepsi-free-week-2.html