Peer reviewed articles

1. A Not So Sweet Story High Fructose Corn Syrup, Jacqueline Jacques ND.

This article talks about how HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) came to be. How up until around the mid-80's most products in the U.S. were sweetened with cane sugar, but when it became a lot cheaper to use HFCS instead of importing sugar companies switched over. The rest of this article talks about how people are trying to connect HFCS in sweetened to drinks to the obesity epidemic. One fact that I found interesting was "U.S. soft drink consumption grew 135 percent between 1977 and 2001." The article discusses how fructose is different from glucose and how they are both used in your body and what they do to it when you consume it. I liked how this article says at the end that while it seems likely that HFCS are causing all of this obesity not enough evidence has been found or shown to prove this to be completely true.

I can use this article to talk about HFCS and how bad they are. I think it is a good place to start when looking at why American's grow so much corn. It has links at the bottom of it where she used to sources so I could definitely dig around those to find other information too. The author of this article is also a Naturopathic Doctor so her knowledge of how your body handles fructose and glucose is going to be correct.


2. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
The Author of this article is recounting when he went into the factory of a company that produces most of the flavor and scents in America's food. He talks about how using different chemicals can give different foods the flavors and smells they should have. How you can add to acids together and make it smell like a hot dog. It talks a lot about how for something to taste good it has to look good, and also how food tasting good is the main priority for food companies. He talks about the FDA and their restrictions on flavors and food and IFF (International Flavors and Fragrances) which is one of the largest in the world.

This website is good for when I want to talk about fast food companies basically making whatever they want because they can decide what their food is going to taste like.