We have an obesity pandemic, OK? -- What is causing it? In a word: fructose. Professor Robert Lustig explains the metabolism of fructose in very simple terms and explains how fructose is as toxic to the liver as alcohol. He also makes the comment that Americans pay twice: once by their subsides to corn farmers and then again for emergency care of the obese when they hit the health system. The solution is complicated by politics and vested commercial interests.
This is a video that everyone must watch at least once.
Daedalus
A Note to the above article:
Sucrose is commonly known as table sugar and sometimes called saccharose. A white, odorless, crystalline powder with a sweet taste, it is best known for its role in human nutrition. The molecule is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose and traditionally it was obtained from sugar cane.
Glucose syrup was the primary corn sweetener in the United States prior to the expanded use of High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) production. HFCS is a variant in which enzymes are used to convert some of the glucose into fructose. The resulting syrup (90% fructose) is sweeter and more soluble. Corn syrup is also available as a retail product. In the U.S., HFCS is among the sweeteners that have primarily replaced sucrose (table sugar) in the food industry. Factors for this include governmental production quotas of domestic sugar, subsidies of U.S. corn, and an import tariff on foreign sugar; all of which combine to raise the price of sucrose to levels above those of the rest of the world, making HFCS less costly for many sweetener applications.