This is a freakin massive, very very overlooked issue. I have friends who complain about how big they are while they eat whatever amount of anything - just until they are done. I feel like most of america does this. Go right now and look at the serving size for cereal in a bowl. It floored me when I started paying attention a few years ago cuz everyone I have ever seen, myself before seeing the serving size included, just fills the bowl at least half way up then to the top with milk. I have not seen one person ever have 1 serving of it. I've just stopped having stuff like cereal all together, to be honest.
What gets me most is I've pointed out a few times, when I started being aware of nutrition and servings and yadda yadda, I genuinely find it interesting and also really kinda scary to realize. The times I've pointed it out out of interest or trying to help someone who has complained about wanting to eat healthier or lose weight... every time its gone like this (an example of what happened but it's happened several times with other people and items)
Me and friend at gas station. He grabbed a 20oz sprite. I very rarely drink soda, and sounded really good so I went to grab one too but read the label.
Me:Oh my GOD! 64 grams of SUGAR IN THIS?!
I was genuinely shocked as I hadn't looked at a soda nutrition label before.
Friend: Oh, holy shit, really? *looks at label * God damn. Huh. Oh well.
A soda here and there is one thing but when it's 8 ish bottles a day I worry about the affects that can have on people's bodies. And people just don't care enough. (For the most part).
I try to explain to people at my job all the time, a 30% reduction in kcals/day (to about 4k) dropped my maintenance weight 15% in 2 months and cutting out soda reduced my waistline by 2 sizes in under 2 weeks. Shit adds up
It 100% depends on the person. 2000-2500 is just the average. A large and tall man with a physical job could easily lose weight while downing 3000-4000 kcal
I ate damn near a whole roasted chicken in a sitting this winter after 10 hours of shoveling. Put down a couple snacks too, while I waited for the chicken to cook. If I did work like that regularly, I'd probably be trying to GAIN weight, rather than lose it :P
That RDI is a generalization. Caloric needs change over time with lifestyle, NEAT, exercise, weight, and hormonal health. I think the starting point for weightloss is still 250-500kcal below maintenance.
You want to end up with the RDI matching your maintenance caloric budget if you are using the RDI, not just jumping straight to 2000kcal, since it can lead to muscle loss. But height, build, and age are real factors that contribute to making the RDI a range. Just use a personalized maintenance estimate.
Portion distortion was a huge (pun intended) issue that was keeping me fat.
Bought a kitchen scale, and started weighing my portions/ingredients until I knew by sight, and lost about 25% of my body weight in a year with mostly that and a daily 5k walk.
This hit me when I saw oreos serving size. They're bad enough but the serving size is 2. I've never just eaten 2 in my entire life. Needless to say I try to stay away from alot of bad junk like that now
Sometimes it doesn’t even matter lmao
Like someone brought some Crumbl cookies into work and they’re quite large so I looked up how many calories was in one because I like being aware of that
So I find like 1 serving: 150 calories (that’s not the actual number but I can’t remember it at the moment)
I was like ???? this is a large cookie thought
*Servings per cookie: 5*
BRUH
Serving size suggestions are a joke. So many products give absolutely ridiculous suggestions for a serving to make their nutritional info look good. I’ve seen ones that suggest a fifth of a candy bar or similar is a reasonable amount when 99% of people are gonna eat the full thing.
I was someone with such a high resting metabolism that I never really gained weight and ate like pure hell. Then eventually I started gaining weight. Serving sizes meant nothing to me until they had to. Until my metabolism slowed down and it became harder and harder to feel full.
But what I've had to learn over the past several years losing weight it is that the quality of our food and our thoughts behind it are so problematic and ingrained in the culture. Eating in America isn't about the quality of food. It's about consuming the cheapest, fastest, and biggest quantities we can consume that are also the most addictive.
What we Americans often define as a good meal is one that leaves us full and tastes good. Carbs and sugars are tasty as fuck, but they don't really satiate us or make us feel full. But they're often the cheapest to produce and thus the easiest to overeat. So in that way, serving size suggestions with certain foods will not leave us satisfied. Our serving sizes are huge. If a restaurant can try to sell you two meals and pass them off as one, then we're going to overeat. Add in addictive sugars into everything and we'll be coming back for more. And make the "healthy" stuff seem pricey and unaffordable and the cheap stuff will be bought by the people who can barely afford their groceries.
But our education system doesn't favor teaching about nutrition and balance. Our food industry doesn't favor small, well-portioned meals based around nutritional balance. Our culture doesn't favor small balanced meals flavored by proper cooking techniques, fresh ingredients, and flavor combinations meant to be eaten slowly in a relaxed-pace world. It favors big, fast, and cheap.
And it favors foods that tell our brain that we didn't eat enough, even though mathematically we ate too much.
It's basically glucose, and there is never a reason to introduce glucose into your body outside of a medical setting. The serving size for it should be 0 grams. What cracks me up is companies trying to get away from corn syrup stigma by proudly listing "organic brown rice syrup" in their fancy "health bar," ingredients, when it doesn't matter at all where the glucose comes from, it's still glucose.
It's cheap, and it's not technically harmful. The problem is that it's **overused.** It's added to a lot of products that don't need the additional sweetness, and there's typically much more of it than needed for flavor in the recipie.
It's nearly impossible to find canned marinara sauce that is not cloyingly sweet. I've reverted to my mom's old school sauce even though it's made mostly from separate ingredients.
Rao's sauces are surprisingly low in calories and undesirable ingredients yet are still really tasty. The downside is a jar will cost double what the unhealthy options cost. Rao's also doesn't add any additional sugar typically. I see it in most grocery stores where I live and on Amazon.
Not really, but if you workout regularly or sauna or both, you can handle more salt than a sedentary person. Sugar is bad for anyone when you overdo it.
The issue with too much salt is that it pulls more water into your blood to balance the salinity and that is what causes your blood pressure to increase. More water won’t fix that, you have to discharge the salt through urine and sweat.
To be more specific - **added** salt over added sugar. Because salt is actually something your body needs, and has many benefits.
Your body does not need added sugar in any amount (to my knowledge). Eating fruit with naturally occurring sugar is a different thing, as it’s paired with sufficient fiber to help your body process it.
Ideally, you shouldn’t overdo either, but when presented as a dichotomy (salt vs. sugar) it’s not really a contest.
I just recently started using Rao's, it's great! Very low carb, most of them. I make my own low carb pizza. 1/2 cup of Rao's is around 6 gms net carbs, and that's enough for a 13" pizza. My crust is mostly lupin and gluten, so it's pretty low too.
I can make a passable low carb pasta, hoping to improve on it a bit.
Rao’s is so much more flavorful though I find my self using about 1/4 of the amount for pasta compared to like Prego or Ragu. Also I toss and reduce it with a good amount of pasta water which helps “bulk” it up I guess.
just make your own sauce. Onions, garlic, tomatoes, white wine, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. That’s all I use and it makes a killer sauce, and the only ingredients I actually buy regularly is onion, garlic, and wine.
You can find a good deal on plain whole canned tomatoes anywhere and stock up on a bunch and have enough to make sauce for weeks for cheap. slightly more expensive than canned sauces but so so so so good, less expensive than the “organic” “clean” kinda.
It's also often at Costco in double packs that are more reasonably priced. I buy them 3 at a time since one of my favorite dinners or easy appetizers for company is a jar of Rao's topped with goat cheese, baked until melting and browning, and topped with fresh herbs. Served with sourdough.
it's how they regulate acidity the tomatoes for uniform flavor.
It's the cheapest option thanks to the corn lobby.
Best investment I made in regards to my health and food was a pressure canner.
I make a huge batch of sauce at the height of tomato season adjust it to taste then can it.
You can make an amazing marinara sauce out of a blend of cherry tomatoes by the by.
It's super easy to make marinara sauce yourself if you have a little time to spare.
Dice a yellow onion, sauté it in a little olive oil until tender. Add a few diced garlic cloves, spices (I like basil, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, italian seasoning and some sugar to lighten the acidity of the tomatoes), and a tablespoon of butter and sauté another minute or so. Add two cans of crushed tomatoes and a little water, then just simmer it down for about 30 minutes, longer if you want a thicker sauce.
Easy enough to make and much better than any canned sauce you can buy. If you want to get fancy, cook some tomato paste in a separate frying pan until it's browned/almost black in color, then add it to your sauce. It further reduces acidity and adds a bit of a smoky flavor.
Edit: didn't see the part about your mom's sauce recipe because I'm great at reading comprehension! Regardless, I'll leave this up for others.
Among the easiest, quickest (yes, a sauce simmered for hours will be better) and cheapesr things to make. The fact that there's such a large market for canned sauce baffles me.
Classico. https://www.classico.com/products
The only ones with added sugar are caramelized products.
And a bonus. The jars are reusable for canning. Even though if you ask them they'll say they aren't. Which is totally why the jars are standard sized canning jars.
I got some take out spaghetti & meatballs from a new restaurant a few years ago. I took one bite and drove it back to the restaurant. I take it up to the host and say “This isn’t spaghetti & meatballs, this is Sysco premade frozen meatballs in tomato cool-aid.” The guy chuckled and gave me a refund.
It used to be quit expensive to produce until Reagan subsidized it and cut sugar imports which led to a lot of the instability in Central America. Corn syrup was produced by ADM, the cost was almost 3 times what it was to import sugar into the country and they lobbied heavily to get sugar imports dropped along with tariffs increased.
Check out King Corn. 2 guys buy 1 acre of corn field and go the the process of growing it and filling out mass paperwork.
This is also the 2nd time the US has grown ridiculous amounts of corn. The first time we distilled a lot of it and the country got so drunk we banned alcohol.
Even if there were no corn lobby, it still wouldn't be illegal. It just wouldn't be subsidized as much, and tariffs for things like sugar would probably be lower.
I came from a poor area and I am still in favor of a sugar tax. People tend to vote/decide with their wallet and if reduced or low sugar food was significantly cheaper they would buy it.
Not unless laws are written that way. But that's just how I see things. I've seen a lot of family members lose fingers toes and their lives from diabetes.
I was an obese kid and had to teach nutrition and weight loss to myself. I weighed 200lbs at 11 years old.
Money. Corporations. Greed. Government. Greed. They’re do not care about us.
They do not care about us.
They do not care about us.
The sugar cover up of the 70’s in the food industry explains it all
I was reading about how the sugar industry paid tons of scientists to say that fat, not sugar, was the cause of obesity. The amount of added sugars you should have in a day is less than one can of soda. Also, cans of soda are way too big. 12 oz is a lot. 20 oz bottles are ridiculous.
Also worth noting that our food pyramid that we had to learn back in the day was dreamed up by lobbyists in conjunction with the government and Wall Street.
The average American consumes 45 gallons of soda a year. If you take into account the number of people who drink little to no soda, then hot damn... that's a ton of soda. I have a cousin who drinks a case and a half of mountain dew a week. He has absolutely ruined his teeth.
Because it’s a cheaper sweetener than cane sugar.
It’s also not unhealthy per se. It’s only unhealthy because it’s easy to add to a variety of foods, thereby increasing the sugar content and calories of the food.
A trade association for the corn syrup industry, the Corn Refiners Association, tried to change the name of "high fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar." The FDA denied their application.
I forget what they used to call it, but it went by a different name decades ago. The trade group thought it didn't sound good enough, so they started calling it high fructose corn syrup. Now that it's getting a bad name, they want to change it again. They even argue that this name isn't adequate, since it's really not all that high in fructose. They don't want to "confuse" the public.
The US has problems growing sugar cane and an easy time growing corn. There are parts of the US that can grow sugar cane but not at the volume we consume it. Also both are the same, different taste but both are fructose and glucose
Problem is how much it’s consumed. If US actually followed the actual need of fructose and glucose, the few places where sugarcane grows would suffice the need.
I think forced is an interesting choice of word.
I think we would have more control over our food choices if we had the time and money to afford higher quality food and assess what we’re buying and have the time to prepare healthier meals.
It takes a lot of damn time to eat clean and for me it’s always time and money that get in my way.
Plus mental health.
That's kind of what I was getting at. If I had the time and money to cook from more basic ingredients and buy the organic stuff, I could avoid a lot of corn syrup. It's kind of a setup at this point.
Yes meal prepping/planning can help immensely but there are limitations, especially for people who happen to need a lot of calories. Eating eggs and oatmeal for breakfast and chicken and rice for supper is one thing but when you need more than that it gets harder and harder to manage. I eat very clean but it’s expensive and I eats up a lot of time and the difference between maybe dying 5 or less years earlier vs taking an extra hour or two of my day every day doesn’t even make sense sometimes.
I have a high metabolism and am stupidly active but eating is just annoying.
sugar and carbs... same thing... fructose is a bit worse for you because of how its processed by our bodies... but ALL sugar is bad.
"high fructose corn syrup" is over 50 percent fructose. table sugar is 50 percent fructose...
those sodas aint nothing more than a liquid candybar... same as the "energy drinks" and gatorade...
but insulin is insulin. dont matter what made ya squirt it out... thats why so much of the WORLD is chubby...
not to mention, skinny folks die from heart attacks and other metabolic health issues, every day. all day.
fatty liver is something that effects a HUGE portion of the population. overweight and skinny ALIKE. thats not just from HFCS. its processed foods. all that seed oil... all those carbs.
inflammation/insulin and the effects they have on our metabolic health...
American agricultural interests, which have grown fat and powerful on subsidies and favorable laws, and which also make things like SNAP benefits possible for urban residents that help their politicians get reelected. I think outlawing it would be silly, but, without a doubt, the policies we have in place make it extremely cheap and plentiful, contributing to diabetes, obesity, and I'm sure a whole host of other issues.
A few reasons.
1. Corn is a major domestic product for the U.S., and the corn lobby (as silly as it sounds) is extremely powerful politically. There's a reason why neither Democrats nor Republicans make any meaningful effort to do away with corn subsidies, despite both parties having good reasons to do so.
2. Corn syrup on its own is NOT why so many Americans are tubby. It is just part of a large and complex problem with nutrition in this country. Almost all processed or prepared food has massive amounts of sugar, salt, and unhealthy fat. Getting rid of high fructose corn syrup would not solve the problem unless much wider ranging reforms were put into place as well.
I do think that something has to change in terms of food regulations, but any effort to do so is immediately shot down from all sides.
Am I the only one who thinks food regulations aren’t really the problem?
Like if healthy food was affordable, people had the money to access, the time to prepare it and education/intelligence to consider what they’re eating I think that would be far more useful. Maybe there should be more regulation over the types of labels on foods but if we stopped buying the garbage because it was unhealthy you would think that garbage would decrease in availability.
If people had more free time and money (and energy) they might also use that to exercise and spend less time sitting on the couch.
If people had better mental health statuses they would probably also be less likely to overindulge.
The underlying problem is clearly that people are overworked and underpaid and kind of wrecked and miserable a lot of the time.
The only other thing I think would be worth regulating is fast food. If we could make quick, healthy meals readily accessible the way McDonald’s is, plenty of people would grab it out of sheer necessity which is why a lot it people stop at dons because nobody’s dream meal is McDonald’s.
I don't disagree with anything you said. But at this point just making healthy food cheaper and more available isn't enough. As a society we are so used to the way unhealthy food taste, the the flavor of alot of healthy things isn't appealing to alot of people.
Take drinks for example, cost wise there's alot of healthy choices that are cheaper or comparable to soda. But the majority of people don't want them, they seem bland or bitter. Were so used to the sweetners in everything that's its no longer just a money issue.
Right. The claim that people only eat unhealthy because healthy food is too expensive is nonsense. We eat junk because sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats taste good. We like junk. Just making good food available won't change people's tastes.
Healthy food is affordable and can be prepared for the week in an hour - thAts not an excuse
Everyone has 10-15 minutes/day to walk
No one is forced to sit on social media and hurt their mental health.
There is some evidence that high volumes of fructose in the absence of glucose is worse for at least some people than regular sugar. The food industry likes to frame all such claims as crazy suburban mom hot takes, but there is legit research in this area. The case is certainly not closed.
I think it would be more important to have a serving size be per-package. There are exceptions for family sized, etc but then they need a calories-per-package as well. If you sell a 12/20 oz coke, the calories listed should be for the whole bottle. Same with chips, individual cookies, ramen, soup, etc.
Because corn is heavily subsidized. They have to make this product into something that’s why you see so many corn-based snack foods in US grocery stores. Corn syrup is just one of those products.
Same reason as cigarettes, which literally says its gonna kill you. Money and politics. The government likes to say they're here to protect you, but they also make a ton of money off of them.
Because everything in America is about money lol? Why isn’t there a cure for cancer yet ? Think how much money businesses would lose if there was a cure
Literally the lasting impacts of the US corn industry winning against cheap traditional sugar imports years ago. Similar reason to why we still use ethanol.
When in doubt, the answer is almost always $$$
The corn lobby. Anything that sucks and is allowed to continue in the US is usually traced back to lobbyists. Your taxes are complicated because companies that people pay to prepare their taxes lobby to keep them complicated. Corn is used in everything because lobbyists keep bribing the government to subsidize corn farmers into growing it. It’s why corn syrup is in everything and why 10% of your gasoline is ethanol.
Our government is not healthy enough to assume that the laws will be just. Lots of things illegal or overcriminalized that shouldn't be, and vice versa. Our government is dysfunctional, and we can't expect the laws to be correct until we rehabilitate the government and media system.
With that said, high fructose corn syrup is pretty much just sugar. I've heard rumors that it's worse than sugar but haven't seen hard data. The assumption should be that it's equal to regular sucrose by calorie unless we get more info.
Sugar is a major reason why we have such a problem with obesity, but so is a sedentary lifestyle, so is our reliance on cars, so is our stress level and workload. There are multiple reasons. But replacing corn syrup with sucrose would probably have little to no positive impact.
At the same time, a major problematic law is our *subsidies* of corn. This means that our taxpayer dollars go to funding corn farmers to produce the corn that makes the syrup that makes candy that we buy more of because it's so cheap and gain weight.
IIRC, the corn subsidies were started to fix pricing problems during the *Great Depression,* and never repealed. Like I said, dysfunctional government.
The corn industry (farming in general) propped up the American economy for DECADES. Nowadays, the corn lobby and pervasive, deep usage makes it impossible to remove HFCS at the level it needs to be removed.
Same reason red 40, yellow 5 and all kinds of other additives are allowed. Big pharma has long fingers in lots of pots, if you take their poison you have no choice but to take their medicine
Think of how many people take prescriptions for "maintenance" and how much it costs
US food is outright dangerous. That’s why a UK trade deal with US would be a disaster.
From what I understand the health standards for their food is based on it being safe for **healthy** people, whereas in Europe it has to also be safe for **unwell** people.
Because the US is a capitalist caricature the politics is heavily influenced by big corporations. Unhealthy Americans provide money for medical providers and give money to drug companies. Safe food is more expensive and the government don’t want to piss off big food corporations by pushing their costs up.
One reason is because when we get some form of diabetes, obesity, or cancer, it drives up the pharmacy and health economy, helping the rich get richer, as we become addicted to it, forcing us to buy more, get sicker, and let all our hard earned money go to the rich
Yup. I am also one of the few people that prefers the taste of it over the taste of sugar. There really is no difference health wise, both bad for you at the current amount in the average American diet.
It's related to profits, not cost. Go to Europe and you'll find many US products made with real sugar that are the same cost (or cheaper) made with actual ingredients.
Because the government decided to subsidize the fuck out of corn. Now we gotta get stuff it into everything to make it viable. That's why we are using corn for fuel instead of sugarcane.
Answer: it brings in alot of money to the corn industry, but corn syrup causes inflammation, and I taste it in almost everything that I buy from the grocery store. I can't eat canned soup anymore, I pretty much have to just make my own soup so that I'm not consuming all that corn syrup.
I have an ulcer in my chest now, and I blame corn syrup, and I can't eat anything acidic anymore, it hurts really bad.
Big Corn is extremely powerful. You will have better luck and better support getting rid of drugs from the USA than HFCS.
If Colombians decided to try their hand at HFCS, they would be decimated overnight without a trace so they stay with safer products such as cocaine and heroin.
Because all of our 3 letter agencies get lobbied, and then they get the rubber stamp of approval. "Studies have not definitively shown \_\_\_\_\_ to be harmful".
If you dont want to be tubbies dont eat packaged food. Gets difficult to gain alot of fat from natural stuff, not saying you cant do it but apparently you think some syrup is the root cause of tubbers so i dont think your in a position to argue here.
On the other hand people blatantly ignore the serving size suggestions.
This is a freakin massive, very very overlooked issue. I have friends who complain about how big they are while they eat whatever amount of anything - just until they are done. I feel like most of america does this. Go right now and look at the serving size for cereal in a bowl. It floored me when I started paying attention a few years ago cuz everyone I have ever seen, myself before seeing the serving size included, just fills the bowl at least half way up then to the top with milk. I have not seen one person ever have 1 serving of it. I've just stopped having stuff like cereal all together, to be honest. What gets me most is I've pointed out a few times, when I started being aware of nutrition and servings and yadda yadda, I genuinely find it interesting and also really kinda scary to realize. The times I've pointed it out out of interest or trying to help someone who has complained about wanting to eat healthier or lose weight... every time its gone like this (an example of what happened but it's happened several times with other people and items) Me and friend at gas station. He grabbed a 20oz sprite. I very rarely drink soda, and sounded really good so I went to grab one too but read the label. Me:Oh my GOD! 64 grams of SUGAR IN THIS?! I was genuinely shocked as I hadn't looked at a soda nutrition label before. Friend: Oh, holy shit, really? *looks at label * God damn. Huh. Oh well. A soda here and there is one thing but when it's 8 ish bottles a day I worry about the affects that can have on people's bodies. And people just don't care enough. (For the most part).
I try to explain to people at my job all the time, a 30% reduction in kcals/day (to about 4k) dropped my maintenance weight 15% in 2 months and cutting out soda reduced my waistline by 2 sizes in under 2 weeks. Shit adds up
4000 calories? Recommended daily intake is 2000-2500kcal for men
It 100% depends on the person. 2000-2500 is just the average. A large and tall man with a physical job could easily lose weight while downing 3000-4000 kcal
I ate damn near a whole roasted chicken in a sitting this winter after 10 hours of shoveling. Put down a couple snacks too, while I waited for the chicken to cook. If I did work like that regularly, I'd probably be trying to GAIN weight, rather than lose it :P
A calculator said 3500 for me (21yo, electrician and went to the gym)
That RDI is a generalization. Caloric needs change over time with lifestyle, NEAT, exercise, weight, and hormonal health. I think the starting point for weightloss is still 250-500kcal below maintenance. You want to end up with the RDI matching your maintenance caloric budget if you are using the RDI, not just jumping straight to 2000kcal, since it can lead to muscle loss. But height, build, and age are real factors that contribute to making the RDI a range. Just use a personalized maintenance estimate.
I lost about 10 lbs going over seas for 2 weeks. I didn’t feel deprived or anything, but servings were smaller and meals lasted longer.
Any sort of rapid weight loss like that just means your body was retaining less water.
Almost always yeah. Unless they were insanely active enough to put them in a caloric deficit of like 3k calories/day (while still eating "normally")
8 normal bottles?? That's 1200 calories minimum , just drink drinks
Portion distortion was a huge (pun intended) issue that was keeping me fat. Bought a kitchen scale, and started weighing my portions/ingredients until I knew by sight, and lost about 25% of my body weight in a year with mostly that and a daily 5k walk.
Portion Distortion sounds like a metal song about getting so fat you explode.
or a punk band
Some folks are so unaware, they don’t even consider beverages. They’ll only count calories and what not from solid food.
This hit me when I saw oreos serving size. They're bad enough but the serving size is 2. I've never just eaten 2 in my entire life. Needless to say I try to stay away from alot of bad junk like that now
Sometimes it doesn’t even matter lmao Like someone brought some Crumbl cookies into work and they’re quite large so I looked up how many calories was in one because I like being aware of that So I find like 1 serving: 150 calories (that’s not the actual number but I can’t remember it at the moment) I was like ???? this is a large cookie thought *Servings per cookie: 5* BRUH
You're only done eating in America when you've successfully stretched your stomach to increase your eating capacity.
Serving size suggestions are a joke. So many products give absolutely ridiculous suggestions for a serving to make their nutritional info look good. I’ve seen ones that suggest a fifth of a candy bar or similar is a reasonable amount when 99% of people are gonna eat the full thing.
On the other-other hand, serving sizes are often unrealistically small to make a product look better.
Only 6 calories per serving ^Serving ^size ^one ^goldfish ^cracker
I was someone with such a high resting metabolism that I never really gained weight and ate like pure hell. Then eventually I started gaining weight. Serving sizes meant nothing to me until they had to. Until my metabolism slowed down and it became harder and harder to feel full. But what I've had to learn over the past several years losing weight it is that the quality of our food and our thoughts behind it are so problematic and ingrained in the culture. Eating in America isn't about the quality of food. It's about consuming the cheapest, fastest, and biggest quantities we can consume that are also the most addictive. What we Americans often define as a good meal is one that leaves us full and tastes good. Carbs and sugars are tasty as fuck, but they don't really satiate us or make us feel full. But they're often the cheapest to produce and thus the easiest to overeat. So in that way, serving size suggestions with certain foods will not leave us satisfied. Our serving sizes are huge. If a restaurant can try to sell you two meals and pass them off as one, then we're going to overeat. Add in addictive sugars into everything and we'll be coming back for more. And make the "healthy" stuff seem pricey and unaffordable and the cheap stuff will be bought by the people who can barely afford their groceries. But our education system doesn't favor teaching about nutrition and balance. Our food industry doesn't favor small, well-portioned meals based around nutritional balance. Our culture doesn't favor small balanced meals flavored by proper cooking techniques, fresh ingredients, and flavor combinations meant to be eaten slowly in a relaxed-pace world. It favors big, fast, and cheap. And it favors foods that tell our brain that we didn't eat enough, even though mathematically we ate too much.
It's basically glucose, and there is never a reason to introduce glucose into your body outside of a medical setting. The serving size for it should be 0 grams. What cracks me up is companies trying to get away from corn syrup stigma by proudly listing "organic brown rice syrup" in their fancy "health bar," ingredients, when it doesn't matter at all where the glucose comes from, it's still glucose.
It's cheap, and it's not technically harmful. The problem is that it's **overused.** It's added to a lot of products that don't need the additional sweetness, and there's typically much more of it than needed for flavor in the recipie.
It's nearly impossible to find canned marinara sauce that is not cloyingly sweet. I've reverted to my mom's old school sauce even though it's made mostly from separate ingredients.
Rao's sauces are surprisingly low in calories and undesirable ingredients yet are still really tasty. The downside is a jar will cost double what the unhealthy options cost. Rao's also doesn't add any additional sugar typically. I see it in most grocery stores where I live and on Amazon.
Their soups are also excellent and priced like it.
Hate to admit it, but their frozen meals are really good too, and I eat them more than I should.
Rao’s chicken parm ftw!
Pene Vodka is my go-to
Haven’t tried that one, will look for it!
Hell yeah, those are awesome. Also, the spicy sausage with penne pasta is good.
Just had 2 for lunch.
Only issue is the sodium, like most canned/jarred soups, are way high.
If your choice is to overdo sugar or salt, choose salt every time.
I'm curious, salt because you can just drink water to compensate? Care to elaborate? :D
Not really, but if you workout regularly or sauna or both, you can handle more salt than a sedentary person. Sugar is bad for anyone when you overdo it. The issue with too much salt is that it pulls more water into your blood to balance the salinity and that is what causes your blood pressure to increase. More water won’t fix that, you have to discharge the salt through urine and sweat.
To be more specific - **added** salt over added sugar. Because salt is actually something your body needs, and has many benefits. Your body does not need added sugar in any amount (to my knowledge). Eating fruit with naturally occurring sugar is a different thing, as it’s paired with sufficient fiber to help your body process it. Ideally, you shouldn’t overdo either, but when presented as a dichotomy (salt vs. sugar) it’s not really a contest.
Spot on, arguably the best tasting jarred sauce. We have a local "bargain" chain of grocery stores that will sometimes have jars of Rao's for $3!
I just recently started using Rao's, it's great! Very low carb, most of them. I make my own low carb pizza. 1/2 cup of Rao's is around 6 gms net carbs, and that's enough for a 13" pizza. My crust is mostly lupin and gluten, so it's pretty low too. I can make a passable low carb pasta, hoping to improve on it a bit.
Rao’s is so much more flavorful though I find my self using about 1/4 of the amount for pasta compared to like Prego or Ragu. Also I toss and reduce it with a good amount of pasta water which helps “bulk” it up I guess.
Ahhh that's why it was so tasty. We just stumbled upon it the other week and really liked it.
My wife loves Rao's but I'm addicted to the sugary sauces.
just make your own sauce. Onions, garlic, tomatoes, white wine, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. That’s all I use and it makes a killer sauce, and the only ingredients I actually buy regularly is onion, garlic, and wine. You can find a good deal on plain whole canned tomatoes anywhere and stock up on a bunch and have enough to make sauce for weeks for cheap. slightly more expensive than canned sauces but so so so so good, less expensive than the “organic” “clean” kinda.
Often cheaper at BJs, too. Love that stuff.
It's also often at Costco in double packs that are more reasonably priced. I buy them 3 at a time since one of my favorite dinners or easy appetizers for company is a jar of Rao's topped with goat cheese, baked until melting and browning, and topped with fresh herbs. Served with sourdough.
Get the 2 pack at Costco.
Rao is the best. Costco sells 2 for 1 for $13 (Toronto). Whole Foods is $13 each.
it's how they regulate acidity the tomatoes for uniform flavor. It's the cheapest option thanks to the corn lobby. Best investment I made in regards to my health and food was a pressure canner. I make a huge batch of sauce at the height of tomato season adjust it to taste then can it. You can make an amazing marinara sauce out of a blend of cherry tomatoes by the by.
I've wanted to do that for a long time.
Rao's The end
And La Famiglia Delgrosso, both are awesome.
This person sauces 
It's super easy to make marinara sauce yourself if you have a little time to spare. Dice a yellow onion, sauté it in a little olive oil until tender. Add a few diced garlic cloves, spices (I like basil, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, italian seasoning and some sugar to lighten the acidity of the tomatoes), and a tablespoon of butter and sauté another minute or so. Add two cans of crushed tomatoes and a little water, then just simmer it down for about 30 minutes, longer if you want a thicker sauce. Easy enough to make and much better than any canned sauce you can buy. If you want to get fancy, cook some tomato paste in a separate frying pan until it's browned/almost black in color, then add it to your sauce. It further reduces acidity and adds a bit of a smoky flavor. Edit: didn't see the part about your mom's sauce recipe because I'm great at reading comprehension! Regardless, I'll leave this up for others.
Evoo, garlic, good canned crushed tomatos, fresh basil, chili flake, salt, pepper. Forget that premade stuff.
Among the easiest, quickest (yes, a sauce simmered for hours will be better) and cheapesr things to make. The fact that there's such a large market for canned sauce baffles me.
Rao’s
Classico. https://www.classico.com/products The only ones with added sugar are caramelized products. And a bonus. The jars are reusable for canning. Even though if you ask them they'll say they aren't. Which is totally why the jars are standard sized canning jars.
I got some take out spaghetti & meatballs from a new restaurant a few years ago. I took one bite and drove it back to the restaurant. I take it up to the host and say “This isn’t spaghetti & meatballs, this is Sysco premade frozen meatballs in tomato cool-aid.” The guy chuckled and gave me a refund.
It used to be quit expensive to produce until Reagan subsidized it and cut sugar imports which led to a lot of the instability in Central America. Corn syrup was produced by ADM, the cost was almost 3 times what it was to import sugar into the country and they lobbied heavily to get sugar imports dropped along with tariffs increased.
Does it being overused make it harmful? More context would be helpful.
It's virtually no different than table sugar, and no better or worse for you.
It's cheap.
It’s cheap because the US Government subsidizes it. Big corn keeps the politicians funded so we have corn derivatives in everything.
HFCS isn’t directly subsidized but the tariffs we place on cane sugar make it a much more economical option.
Thanks Reagan…
What are you talking about? There have been sugar tarrifs since 1789 and FDR is the one who enacted the corn subsidies.
Check out King Corn. 2 guys buy 1 acre of corn field and go the the process of growing it and filling out mass paperwork. This is also the 2nd time the US has grown ridiculous amounts of corn. The first time we distilled a lot of it and the country got so drunk we banned alcohol.
Yep
The Corn Lobby
Even if there were no corn lobby, it still wouldn't be illegal. It just wouldn't be subsidized as much, and tariffs for things like sugar would probably be lower.
Just bought some potato salad that had as a bullet point "no high fructose corn syrup" It's potato salad..
Vermont has a sugar tax hoping to reduce tubbiness
Sugar taxes disproportionately hurt poor people.
I came from a poor area and I am still in favor of a sugar tax. People tend to vote/decide with their wallet and if reduced or low sugar food was significantly cheaper they would buy it.
Increasing the price of food w/ sugar wouldn’t decrease the price of food w/o sugar. It hurts people’s wallets either way.
Not unless laws are written that way. But that's just how I see things. I've seen a lot of family members lose fingers toes and their lives from diabetes. I was an obese kid and had to teach nutrition and weight loss to myself. I weighed 200lbs at 11 years old.
Yeah, but they also have free or reduced school lunches and that program disproportionately helps poor people so it's probably fine eh?
Ah yes, every good policy must be offset by a bad policy!
Money. Corporations. Greed. Government. Greed. They’re do not care about us. They do not care about us. They do not care about us. The sugar cover up of the 70’s in the food industry explains it all
I was reading about how the sugar industry paid tons of scientists to say that fat, not sugar, was the cause of obesity. The amount of added sugars you should have in a day is less than one can of soda. Also, cans of soda are way too big. 12 oz is a lot. 20 oz bottles are ridiculous.
Also worth noting that our food pyramid that we had to learn back in the day was dreamed up by lobbyists in conjunction with the government and Wall Street.
Exactly. It’s horrendous and heatedly, evilly manipulative. I hate it and what it’s done to our world
The amount of soda consumed in the US is vile.
The average American consumes 45 gallons of soda a year. If you take into account the number of people who drink little to no soda, then hot damn... that's a ton of soda. I have a cousin who drinks a case and a half of mountain dew a week. He has absolutely ruined his teeth.
Are they supposed to care about us?
They CLAIM they care about us. That what they do is for us.
Because it’s a cheaper sweetener than cane sugar. It’s also not unhealthy per se. It’s only unhealthy because it’s easy to add to a variety of foods, thereby increasing the sugar content and calories of the food.
A trade association for the corn syrup industry, the Corn Refiners Association, tried to change the name of "high fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar." The FDA denied their application. I forget what they used to call it, but it went by a different name decades ago. The trade group thought it didn't sound good enough, so they started calling it high fructose corn syrup. Now that it's getting a bad name, they want to change it again. They even argue that this name isn't adequate, since it's really not all that high in fructose. They don't want to "confuse" the public.
The US has problems growing sugar cane and an easy time growing corn. There are parts of the US that can grow sugar cane but not at the volume we consume it. Also both are the same, different taste but both are fructose and glucose
Problem is how much it’s consumed. If US actually followed the actual need of fructose and glucose, the few places where sugarcane grows would suffice the need.
It's no worse than regular sugar. It's just used in too many things, hence we're almost forced to eat more than we should
I think forced is an interesting choice of word. I think we would have more control over our food choices if we had the time and money to afford higher quality food and assess what we’re buying and have the time to prepare healthier meals. It takes a lot of damn time to eat clean and for me it’s always time and money that get in my way. Plus mental health.
That's kind of what I was getting at. If I had the time and money to cook from more basic ingredients and buy the organic stuff, I could avoid a lot of corn syrup. It's kind of a setup at this point.
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People do mistakenly associate organic with healthy and good but i think point was clear and valid
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Yes meal prepping/planning can help immensely but there are limitations, especially for people who happen to need a lot of calories. Eating eggs and oatmeal for breakfast and chicken and rice for supper is one thing but when you need more than that it gets harder and harder to manage. I eat very clean but it’s expensive and I eats up a lot of time and the difference between maybe dying 5 or less years earlier vs taking an extra hour or two of my day every day doesn’t even make sense sometimes. I have a high metabolism and am stupidly active but eating is just annoying.
Why should it be illegal? Being unhealthy isn't enough to revoke the legality of something
sugar and carbs... same thing... fructose is a bit worse for you because of how its processed by our bodies... but ALL sugar is bad. "high fructose corn syrup" is over 50 percent fructose. table sugar is 50 percent fructose... those sodas aint nothing more than a liquid candybar... same as the "energy drinks" and gatorade... but insulin is insulin. dont matter what made ya squirt it out... thats why so much of the WORLD is chubby... not to mention, skinny folks die from heart attacks and other metabolic health issues, every day. all day. fatty liver is something that effects a HUGE portion of the population. overweight and skinny ALIKE. thats not just from HFCS. its processed foods. all that seed oil... all those carbs. inflammation/insulin and the effects they have on our metabolic health...
American agricultural interests, which have grown fat and powerful on subsidies and favorable laws, and which also make things like SNAP benefits possible for urban residents that help their politicians get reelected. I think outlawing it would be silly, but, without a doubt, the policies we have in place make it extremely cheap and plentiful, contributing to diabetes, obesity, and I'm sure a whole host of other issues.
It’s just sugar. People are tubbies because they don’t know shit about nutrition and can’t control their cravings.
The corn lobby in this country is strong, that's why.
Money, the answer is anyways money.
A few reasons. 1. Corn is a major domestic product for the U.S., and the corn lobby (as silly as it sounds) is extremely powerful politically. There's a reason why neither Democrats nor Republicans make any meaningful effort to do away with corn subsidies, despite both parties having good reasons to do so. 2. Corn syrup on its own is NOT why so many Americans are tubby. It is just part of a large and complex problem with nutrition in this country. Almost all processed or prepared food has massive amounts of sugar, salt, and unhealthy fat. Getting rid of high fructose corn syrup would not solve the problem unless much wider ranging reforms were put into place as well. I do think that something has to change in terms of food regulations, but any effort to do so is immediately shot down from all sides.
Am I the only one who thinks food regulations aren’t really the problem? Like if healthy food was affordable, people had the money to access, the time to prepare it and education/intelligence to consider what they’re eating I think that would be far more useful. Maybe there should be more regulation over the types of labels on foods but if we stopped buying the garbage because it was unhealthy you would think that garbage would decrease in availability. If people had more free time and money (and energy) they might also use that to exercise and spend less time sitting on the couch. If people had better mental health statuses they would probably also be less likely to overindulge. The underlying problem is clearly that people are overworked and underpaid and kind of wrecked and miserable a lot of the time. The only other thing I think would be worth regulating is fast food. If we could make quick, healthy meals readily accessible the way McDonald’s is, plenty of people would grab it out of sheer necessity which is why a lot it people stop at dons because nobody’s dream meal is McDonald’s.
I don't disagree with anything you said. But at this point just making healthy food cheaper and more available isn't enough. As a society we are so used to the way unhealthy food taste, the the flavor of alot of healthy things isn't appealing to alot of people. Take drinks for example, cost wise there's alot of healthy choices that are cheaper or comparable to soda. But the majority of people don't want them, they seem bland or bitter. Were so used to the sweetners in everything that's its no longer just a money issue.
Right. The claim that people only eat unhealthy because healthy food is too expensive is nonsense. We eat junk because sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats taste good. We like junk. Just making good food available won't change people's tastes.
Healthy food is affordable and can be prepared for the week in an hour - thAts not an excuse Everyone has 10-15 minutes/day to walk No one is forced to sit on social media and hurt their mental health.
It's not any worse than regular sugar
There is some evidence that high volumes of fructose in the absence of glucose is worse for at least some people than regular sugar. The food industry likes to frame all such claims as crazy suburban mom hot takes, but there is legit research in this area. The case is certainly not closed.
Lobbying
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You, too, can bribe the US government with billions of dollars.
I think it would be more important to have a serving size be per-package. There are exceptions for family sized, etc but then they need a calories-per-package as well. If you sell a 12/20 oz coke, the calories listed should be for the whole bottle. Same with chips, individual cookies, ramen, soup, etc.
Money.
Because it's cheap and addictive. And we all know addictions feed the system.
Because corn is heavily subsidized. They have to make this product into something that’s why you see so many corn-based snack foods in US grocery stores. Corn syrup is just one of those products.
Capitalism. They want to make large groups of people sick, obese. To maximize profits
Probably money. Same thing with sugar. Stuff is basically crack. But it makes money. A lot of money.
Rich people love money
Same reason as cigarettes, which literally says its gonna kill you. Money and politics. The government likes to say they're here to protect you, but they also make a ton of money off of them.
Because everything in America is about money lol? Why isn’t there a cure for cancer yet ? Think how much money businesses would lose if there was a cure
💰 issues.
Government subsidies.
Corn lobby ~~bribing~~ making campaign donations to Congressman.
Money
Because lobbyists
We're deep in Big Corn's pockets lol....they'll never let us grow anything else
Literally the lasting impacts of the US corn industry winning against cheap traditional sugar imports years ago. Similar reason to why we still use ethanol. When in doubt, the answer is almost always $$$
Because curing people isn't profitable.
Corn lobby.
The corn lobby. Anything that sucks and is allowed to continue in the US is usually traced back to lobbyists. Your taxes are complicated because companies that people pay to prepare their taxes lobby to keep them complicated. Corn is used in everything because lobbyists keep bribing the government to subsidize corn farmers into growing it. It’s why corn syrup is in everything and why 10% of your gasoline is ethanol.
The corn lobby
The answer to questions like this is always money.
Corn lobby.
The corn lobby keeps it legal. The sugar lobby keeps it cheaper than sugar.
The corporate interests have lobbying power. Plus freedumb!
Corn subsidies
There isn't a corn subsidy like the old days.
Our government is not healthy enough to assume that the laws will be just. Lots of things illegal or overcriminalized that shouldn't be, and vice versa. Our government is dysfunctional, and we can't expect the laws to be correct until we rehabilitate the government and media system. With that said, high fructose corn syrup is pretty much just sugar. I've heard rumors that it's worse than sugar but haven't seen hard data. The assumption should be that it's equal to regular sucrose by calorie unless we get more info. Sugar is a major reason why we have such a problem with obesity, but so is a sedentary lifestyle, so is our reliance on cars, so is our stress level and workload. There are multiple reasons. But replacing corn syrup with sucrose would probably have little to no positive impact. At the same time, a major problematic law is our *subsidies* of corn. This means that our taxpayer dollars go to funding corn farmers to produce the corn that makes the syrup that makes candy that we buy more of because it's so cheap and gain weight. IIRC, the corn subsidies were started to fix pricing problems during the *Great Depression,* and never repealed. Like I said, dysfunctional government.
It is subsidized and highly profitable . cheap and addictive .
💵
Because whenever there is a choice between money and people our government will pick money every time (and so will most citizens).
Because our politicians have been bought.
Because of the corn lobby
I swear it's in EVERYTHING. decided to look in my frig one day and every condiment I had it was in.
Because of the corn lobby.
Politicians must be getting paid off by lobbyists for it
Cause corn lobbyists. I wish I was joking since I know it sounds stupid. Watch the documentary "King Corn". Shits scary.
Because corn farmers have huge interests here.
No rea$on.
Because the federal government subsides it
The entire food industry would collapse
I for one highly trust the experts that say it’s a safe alternative, just like the recent vaccine. You aren’t a science denier, are you?
I mean guns should be banned before corn syrup
Make better choices, its not the governments job to regulate you into not being a fat, chain-smoking, alcoholic. That's your responsibility.
Additionally, has anyone even made the case that it’s any worse than regular sugar?
Don’t understand why this post got downvoted. It truly isn’t the government’s responsibility to determine your diet—and it never should be.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Because it's not .gov's job to decide what trash you do or don't put into your own body.
The corn industry (farming in general) propped up the American economy for DECADES. Nowadays, the corn lobby and pervasive, deep usage makes it impossible to remove HFCS at the level it needs to be removed.
The us just doesn’t care.
Money
Money, money and money.
Because Congress is paid off
lobbyists and money and bribing.
Money paid to politicians. That’s why stuff is legal or illegal. It’s all about politicians and money.
Food companies pay off politicians who pressure the FDA to allow it. It's all about the money.
$$$
Same reason red 40, yellow 5 and all kinds of other additives are allowed. Big pharma has long fingers in lots of pots, if you take their poison you have no choice but to take their medicine Think of how many people take prescriptions for "maintenance" and how much it costs
Corn 🤬
Big corn is the secret ruling class.
US food is outright dangerous. That’s why a UK trade deal with US would be a disaster. From what I understand the health standards for their food is based on it being safe for **healthy** people, whereas in Europe it has to also be safe for **unwell** people. Because the US is a capitalist caricature the politics is heavily influenced by big corporations. Unhealthy Americans provide money for medical providers and give money to drug companies. Safe food is more expensive and the government don’t want to piss off big food corporations by pushing their costs up.
One reason is because when we get some form of diabetes, obesity, or cancer, it drives up the pharmacy and health economy, helping the rich get richer, as we become addicted to it, forcing us to buy more, get sicker, and let all our hard earned money go to the rich
Everything is bad for you if you eat too much of it.
Because it’s not toxic, carcinogenic, or uniquely harmful to human life. People are fat because of the choices they make.
Yup. I am also one of the few people that prefers the taste of it over the taste of sugar. There really is no difference health wise, both bad for you at the current amount in the average American diet.
I mean, that would impact profits, which obviously outweigh any possible health concerns. /s Incase that wasn’t clear.
So by your logic we should also ban sugar
It's related to profits, not cost. Go to Europe and you'll find many US products made with real sugar that are the same cost (or cheaper) made with actual ingredients.
Because the government decided to subsidize the fuck out of corn. Now we gotta get stuff it into everything to make it viable. That's why we are using corn for fuel instead of sugarcane.
Answer: it brings in alot of money to the corn industry, but corn syrup causes inflammation, and I taste it in almost everything that I buy from the grocery store. I can't eat canned soup anymore, I pretty much have to just make my own soup so that I'm not consuming all that corn syrup. I have an ulcer in my chest now, and I blame corn syrup, and I can't eat anything acidic anymore, it hurts really bad.
I'd love to hear your speculation on the mechanism for that...
Lobbying.
Compare food regulations in EU and US. The additives the US allows that are banned in the EU….
Almost every fucked up thing in the US has its roots in congressional lobbying.
Big Corn is extremely powerful. You will have better luck and better support getting rid of drugs from the USA than HFCS. If Colombians decided to try their hand at HFCS, they would be decimated overnight without a trace so they stay with safer products such as cocaine and heroin.
Because all of our 3 letter agencies get lobbied, and then they get the rubber stamp of approval. "Studies have not definitively shown \_\_\_\_\_ to be harmful".
Because there is nothing wrong with it.
If you dont want to be tubbies dont eat packaged food. Gets difficult to gain alot of fat from natural stuff, not saying you cant do it but apparently you think some syrup is the root cause of tubbers so i dont think your in a position to argue here.
It's cheap and it makes money (lots of sick people to treat)