Walking down the aisles of my health food stores, I naturally look to the products that seem least likely to contain any form of sugar. Obviously, I’m a low carber. But to those who don’t avoid the carbs and look simply to “something more natural” (a phrase I hear often), the substitution of what they consider “better than sugar” actually has a shocking effect.

Don’t believe it? Look for yourself. Go to any health food store or that section of your grocery, and start reading labels. You’ll see a huge number of products that have substituted “raw” sugar (just as unhealthy) and even worse, high-fructose corn syrup.

If you consider fructose a safe, natural sugar, think again. You’ve been had by one of the biggest nutritional bait-and-switch ploys in years.

First, you should know that while most people associate the word “fructose” with “fruit sugar”, more than 95% of fructose in America comes from cheaply processed corn and not from fruit at all. High-fructose corn syrup is sort of like “fructose-plus”. More concentrated, more dangerous. And a it gives food makers a much higher profit margin.

You see, there’s been a quiet revolution going on in America since 1970: the gradual replacement of cane and beet sugar by corn syrups. And little wonder. Corn syrup, particularly high-fructose corn syrup, is cheap to produce, sweet to the tongue, and easy to store safely. According to the USDA, the average American consumed a half pound of high-fructose corn syrup in 1970. By the mid-1990s, that figure had jumped to 55.3 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per person per year. This year, we’ll see the number jump to 66 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup.

The problem comes with the sheer quantity of “hidden” fructose being consumed in processed foods. For example, conventional and “new age” soft drinks almost universally contain eleven percent high-fructose corn syrup by weight — more than two pounds per case. Just because you stay away from soda and sweets doesn’t count you out as a corn syrup consumer: high-fructose corn syrup finds its way into everything from sauces to bacon to beer.

The truth is that fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, as large-scale commercial sweeteners, didn’t exist 25 years ago. Now, they’re almost as common as sucrose — plain old white sugar. High-fructose corn syrup is routinely added to processed foods and beverages including many health food products.

And, despite the FDA’s assurances to the contrary, a growing number of researchers are beginning to think high-fructose corn syrup is a constant dietary companion we’d be better off without. In fact, a trail of medical studies dating back a quarter of a century points to the negative health effects of fructose. High fructose consumption has been fingered as a causative factor in heart disease. It raises blood levels of cholesterol and, worse, of triglycerides. It makes blood cells more prone to clotting, and it can accelerate the aging process. The trouble may lie with the particular form fructose assumes in corn syrup. While naturally occurring sugars, as well as the sucrose we spoon into our coffee, contain fructose bound to other sugars, high-fructose corn syrup contains a good deal of “free” or unbound fructose. And it may be this free fructose that interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals, like magnesium, copper and chromium.

Fructose and other sugars contribute to heart disease in yet another way. Dietary sugars increase what doctors call “spontaneous platelet aggregation”, an unnatural tendency toward blood clotting. But according to a study published in the August 1, 1990, issue of Thrombosis Research, fructose promotes abnormal clotting much more than does any other common sugars.

Isn’t it interesting that the FDA has allowed fructose and high-fructose corn syrup based products to enter the market without any rigorous testing?

“Fructose is part of the sucrose sugar. Sucrose is affirmed as GRAS (generally regarded as safe),” explained Judy Folke, a spokesperson at the FDA’s Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Press Office in Washington, D.C. “Fructose is not GRAS, but it was treated under prior sanction because it had been used for so many years.”

So it’s in the food supply without being classified as “Generally Regarded as Safe” because no one has challenged it over the years. Wow, I feel better now.