Dreaded corn syrup

[Patriciabuon]

I had been thoroughly enjoying my cream cheese, egg, Splenda and vanilla essence thingy for breakfast every morning. I was using "pure" vanilla essence and feven ound some sugar free syrup without aspartame (what a hunt that involved!). Then I noticed the neck of the vanilla essence bottle felt sticky. Sticky! What's going on here? So ... I read the small print. That "pure" essence wasn't so pure after all. It contained corn syrup, that sneaky sugar that is in almost all ready made foods nowadays. I eventually found some real, pure vanilla essence. Lesson? Always, always, always read the ingredients.

[Chicklady]

Ack! What an awful surprise!!

[ValidRouge]

I found out last year that the UNSWEETENED iced tea I'd been drinking in our cafeteria actually had High Fructose Corn Syrup in it as a "stabilizer". I was stalled out for MONTHS and couldn't figure out what was going on. Cut out the tea, and started losing again. You really do have to be careful.

[LishJustLish]

Constant vigilance! I have learned to be wary of any packaged product, and I ask, ask, ask about food items with no labels (in restaurants, etc.). Those manufacturers are incredibly sneaky when it comes to inserting garbage into our food, and I don't mean just high-fructose corn syrup, I mean partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, MSG (or any other glutamate), and all those chemicals. I guess the lesson here is read the label before you use it.

[Hudson]

What brand of vanilla did you find that did not have sugar or HFCS? And where did you get it? I had to give up on vanilla bucause it all has HFCS here.

[Patriciabuon]

The brand is Simply Organic and it contains water, organic alcohol, organic vanilla bean extractives. Bought in Virginia at Harris Teeter in the health foods section.

[sadie147]

High fructose corn syrup is such a scary thing..apparently it's worse for you than sugar, and they say it does the same damage as trans fats. If you research it on the net, it's in so many products in the US because of tarriffs the gov't has put on sugar, making it too expensive for manufacturers to use, so they use the cheaper (and dangerous) HFCS instead. We are very lucky in Canada that we don't really have this issue. there are very few products here that contain it. Not that they don't sneak sugar in where they shouldn't...I've always been amazed at how many american products have it!

I actually noticed that the Walmart brand dog treats i was feeding my dog (imported from the US) had hfcs in it..i was furious!

I've found the more expensive real vanilla extracts are usually sugar free, and the cheaper imitation vanilla's have hidden sugars in them. I'd check the baking aisle maybe and look for a pure extract rather than 'essense'?

[Chicklady]

I have LorannGourmet Ingredients : vanilla bean in 35% alchohol