'Added Sugar': How Sweet it Isn't

I went grocery shopping this morning, only to come home and clean out the fridge of almost as many vegetables as I had just bought. Because I deal with this high-waste cycle each week, it seems that I might welcome a product that "prolongs product freshness," which Domenica mentions (quoting the president of the Corn Refiners Association) in her recent post on high fructose corn syrup. I don't.While food that can survive a nuclear winter has its place, as I mentioned in a previous post, I think that as with almost everything else we consume, the best plan is to buy less and use it to better advantage. (It's a goal, though not one I always succeed at, as with my vegetable purchases.) One of the reasons I enjoyed Molly Wizenberg's book, "A Homemade Life," so much when I read it over the summer is that she repeatedly demonstrates her ability to turn a couple of rogue radishes and a crust of bread, say, into dinner. It's a quality I've always associated with the French -- rather like being able to tie a scarf or to eat brie in moderation.

There are many personal reasons I decry the proliferation of processed foods. After several years of writing about food for U.S. News & World Report, I came to understand that eating is possibly one's most intimate act -- to my mind, it's even more so than sex. So it seems to me that when you eat, you at least ought to know what's in your food. And why.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is just one example. Is "retain(ing) moisture in bran cereals, help(ing to) keep breakfast and energy bars moist, maintain(ing) consistent flavors in beverages and keep(ing) ingredients evenly dispersed in condiments" -- just some of HFCS's virtues, as the president of the Corn Refiners Association writes to Domenica -- a good reason to ingest more added sugars? That's something that every eater has to answer for herself.

For me, the trade-off is too high. My father recently died of complications from diabetes, and I have seen what the disease can do to eat a body alive. While HFCS is not the sole culprit, obesity is the leading cause of Type II diabetes, and, according to the American Heart Association, "high intake of added sugars, as opposed to naturally occurring sugars, is implicated in the rise in obesity."

Eating well is so important that Michelle Obama made getting the word out one of her first projects as first lady. But we need more than a vegetable garden in the White House's south 40 to heighten awareness of how our food is produced, what it's made of, and what the ramifications are. A public health campaign similar to the 5 A Day program could help start to connect the dots.

Americans are by nature a label-conscious lot. If we can pay attention to Juicy Couture stitched inside a pair of sweatpants, surely we can also read what's on the back of a soda can -- and then drink responsibly.