Those new McDonald’s Mocha Frappes taste so good – too good. And so addicting. After a few trips through the drive-through wondering what was in them, I asked. The answer: “It’s an iced coffee.”

Iced coffee can’t be that bad, right? Well, maybe if the whipped cream and chocolate topping were eliminated it might not be too bad?

Meanwhile a relative was told by his doctor, “You have the worst case of insulin resistance that I have seen in my 20 year career.” Ouch…major dietary changes are on the way at his household. But where does he start?

Maybe with the high fructose corn syrup?

An article titled “Calorie Restriction NOT Key to Increasing Life, Lowering Insulin Level Is” caught my eye this morning on www.drmercola.com. “For an excellent, in-depth review of just how damaging sugar (especially fructose) is to your health, please watch this lecture by Dr. Lustig if you haven’t done so already. It’s a shocking eye-opener that explains the many intricacies of how sugar impacts your health.”

Robert H. Lustig, MD, is UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology. His You Tube video is 1 hr and 29 minutes in length, and it may very well save your life. Here is a sampling of what you will learn from the video:

• We each weigh 25 pounds more today than we did 25 years ago. We even have an obesity epidemic with our six month olds.

• Leptin is a hormone that says to the brain, “I have eaten enough.” The mechanism is not working.

• Fat intake has gone down, yet the percentage of obesity has gone up. Something else is happening. What is it?

• The “Coca Cola Conspiracy” – Consume one 20 oz coke a day = 26 lbs of fat per year. A 44 oz guzzler = 56 lbs of fat per year. Coke contains caffeine and sodium. Caffeine is a diuretic that eliminates free water. Caffeine + sodium = you are thirstier. The combination of the two is by design.

• There is a significant rise in Type II Diabetes related to sugar consumption.

• High fructose corn syrup is sweeter and cheaper – and is in almost all processed foods.

• We each consume 63 pounds of high fructose corn syrup per year.

• Sucrose is the same thing as high fructose corn syrup.

• “Fructose is a poison. We are being poisoned.”

• “Fat is going down and sugar is going up, and we are all getting sick.”

• Nixon’s war on poverty? We are still suffering the effects today. In 1975 came the introduction of high fructose corn syrup. It is cheap, about ½ the price of sugar, so it has found its way in to almost everything – hamburger buns, pretzels, almost everything. It is being added to every processed food.  “We are being poisoned by this stuff.”

• Most recent data: we are up to 141 lbs of sugar per year – each of us.

• Fast food = fiber-less food, fast cooking, fast eating.

• Fructose alone causes the metabolic syndrome that we see today.

Back to that Mocha Frappe? I wonder how much sugar is in it? A Google search produced the following. Hmmm,  it looks like there is more in there than “iced coffee.”

In 12oz

The bottom line? Read the labels. Avoid processed foods. Avoid sweetened drinks, including juice.

Yeah, and avoid those “iced coffee” Mocha Frappes.

Today I ran across the published Purdue University artificial sweetener study from February, 2008. The study, which received a lot of press, compared two sets of rats: those fed yogurt with zero-calorie saccharin, others fed yogurt sweetened with glucose (a simple sugar with 15 calories/teaspoon, the same as table sugar).

When both groups were later given a sugary snack, the rats accustomed to artificial sweetener ate more. In fact, the rats that consumed the zero-calorie saccharin later consumed more calories, gained more weight, put on more body fat, and didn’t make up for it by cutting back later, all at levels of statistical significance.

The study theorized that problems with self-regulation might explain in part why obesity has risen in parallel with the use of artificial sweeteners. Quite disheartening, when you consider the number of people using diet drinks as a way to control calories and weight gain.

“Our bodies have ways of judging how many calories a food has from how it tastes, and artificial sweeteners may mess up that natural regulating process,” reported Susan Swithers, Ph.D., associate professor of psychological sciences at Purdue and one of the study’s lead authors.

Well, what about aspartame? I Googled “aspartame” and found a very lengthy research article posted on http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/dangers.htm. The headline reads:

 “Aspartame is, by far, the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to foods.”

Aspartame is the technical name for the brand names NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure.

The article reads:

“Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death.

A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame include: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.”

Even scarier is the following cited information:

According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting of aspartame:

1) Brain Tumors

2) Multiple Sclerosis

3) Epilepsy

4) Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

5) Parkinson’s Disease

6) Alzheimer’s

7) Mental Retardation

Lymphoma

9) Birth Defects

10) Fibromyalgia

11) Diabetes

Hmm, steep price to pay for all those good tasting diet drinks?