The New York Times recently published an article about Fructose increasing the risk of heart attacks, taking care to note that, "The study did not test high-fructose corn syrup ... and judgments should not be made about it from the findings." And the grey lady published another article noting that American shoppers were eschewing High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) for our old friend, Sugar.

My wife and I have been avoiding products with HFCS for quite some time now, and spending a little more to do so. We had noticed that products with HFCS seem to aggravate her Irritable Bowel Syndrome and my Acid Reflux. Drinking a Big Gulp of iced tea or soda from 7-11 almost guarantees me a night of chewing Gaviscon tablets to stop the bubbling feeling deep in my gullet. So I, as the Doctor in the joke says, "Don't do that!" We also later read in various places that HFCS affected the balance of leptin and ghrelin that tell us that we've eaten enough.

Now Scicurious at the blog, Neurotopia v2.0, takes on the bad reputation of HFCS, distinguishing between pure Glucose, pure Fructose and the mixes of these sweet substances that are called Sucrose and HFCS.

The skinny is that Scicurious concludes that HFCS might not be so much worse for you than table sugar, not that you want to be eating so much of either.

UPDATE: Scicurious bases her comparison on HFCS-42 and HFCS-55, which are 42% and 55% fructose respectively, thus not too different than Sucrose in fructose content. However, HFCS-90 is commonly used as well, for mixing with HFCS-42 to make HFCS-55, for sweetening of baked goods, and as noted in this ADM infopage for sweetening of diet foods:

Cornsweet® 90, containing about 90% fructose, is ADM's sweetest high fructose corn syrup. Its high sweetness makes it the ideal choice for reduced calorie foods such as beverages, jellies and dressings. Normal room temperature storage is sufficient to prevent crystallization and minimize color development.

Given that any listed HFCS might be 90% fructose, I can't simply accept Scicurious' conclusion that HFCS is not much worse than ordinary sugar.

Aristophanes comes to Kenya as the Women's Development Organization tries to use a week-long sex ban to protest the political infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The wives of the President and Prime Minister have been asked to just say, "not tonight, honey."

"Even commercial sex workers should join in the campaign which is so vital to the country," says Lysistrata wannabe Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida).

Money quote:

"But the BBC's Anne Waithera in Nairobi says the campaign is likely to meet stiff resistance from some men. "