HFCS discussions abound these days! I guess Mark and I picked the right time for HFCS Awareness. Yesterday, I found this great blog called Almost Fit.The author is currently in the process of giving his reasons for avoiding HFCS, which can be found here.

The author is not a nutritionist, but his point is that you need not be. If you read and pay attention to the world around you, you too can learn about food and make good decisions. If you can read all the posts on HFCS you should because they’re really interesting and educational. In one of the clearest explanations of sugar v. HFCS I’ve read says:

“Both sugar and HFCS contain fructose, but the form that it takes in HFCS (monosaccharide) is vastly different in chemical terms than the bound version that occurs in natural sugar (disaccharide).

So does it matter that much of the fructose in HFCS is not bound to glucose?

Fructose, in the form of either sugar or HFCS, is processed by the liver almost exclusively. This is important because the liver converts a good portion of fructose into triglycerides in the body. The unbound, synthetically produced fructose component of HFCS is processed differently than the bound fructose component of sugar.

Fructose in HFCS is “shunted”, meaning that it skips any processing that occurs in the cells of the whole body to extract that fructose and then send it to the liver. The unbound version goes straight to the liver, quickly. And even more important: in its unbound state (meaning fructose that is not bound to glucose), it is processed much more quickly into fat than a natural, whole food.”

Last Night’s Dinner - Grilled Hummus And Tomato

I love a grilled cheese sandwich. Last night I wanted the crispy bread part of a grilled cheese, but I also wanted hummus. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and make a grilled hummus and tomato sandwich. Let me tell you, hummus melts wonderfully.