Various and sundry things
Found an interesting article about corn syrup today.
Summary: Basically, fructose has to be absorbed through your liver, whereas glucose can be absorbed just about anywhere. If you get a ton of fructose in your bloodstream, it'll wait until the liver's free to absorb it--and if it waits too long, it gets shunted straight to fat. Having too much fructose for your liver to process fucks it up, and makes you produce more insulin to absorb the fructose. Insulin blocks leptin, which is responsible for telling people they're full, so you get hungry more and eat more food (probably with high fructose corn syrup in it), and the cycle repeats itself.
Fruits have sucrose in them, which has about the same amount of frutose (by percentage) as HFCS, but fruit also has tons of fiber and relatively low calories for its size. A candy bar does not.
Therefore, eating HFCS causes you to eat more, both directly and indirectly making you gain weight.
Fun. There's more in the article (like the "food manufacturers know that and deliberately include it to get people to eat more" theory, and how burning calories is the worst reason to exercise), but that's the gist.
Getting married is complicated. We finally got softlykarou's replacement driver's license, and unified our bank accounts (which took a month, since it took that long for the marriage certificate to arrive) but we can't get our auto insurance sorted out until she has an Illinois driver's license. To do that, we need to get a county-certified copy of her birth certificate, her passport, and proof of residence. Two of those are easy, but her parents have been waiting for the county to send it, and it's taking forever. Then she needs to go to the DMV, and get the license, then we go talk to the insurance people...blarg. Hopefully we get that birth certificate soon.
Making budgets is scary. Hopefully I'm overbudgeting for things... Admittedly, I probably am for food. Making meals ourselves is dirt cheap, especially since I'm a rice fanatic. My current year budget is massively skewed anyway, since it treats the wedding as a "Fun" expense and...oh, hey, look, an "exclude from budget" option. ^^;;;
Speaking of cooking, I've discovered something odd. Consistently cooking for myself has made me less hungry. At least, I assume that's what it is. Unless it's that living on my own has made me less hungry, which has to have less of an immediately obvious connection. I eat three meals a day (I used to eat 3 + 2 snacks, usually) and I always eat less at those meals. It's not just the concept of poverty that has made me fear to eat food, either. I'm genuinely less hungry. Maybe it's trying to cut all the HFCS out of my diet.
Summary: Basically, fructose has to be absorbed through your liver, whereas glucose can be absorbed just about anywhere. If you get a ton of fructose in your bloodstream, it'll wait until the liver's free to absorb it--and if it waits too long, it gets shunted straight to fat. Having too much fructose for your liver to process fucks it up, and makes you produce more insulin to absorb the fructose. Insulin blocks leptin, which is responsible for telling people they're full, so you get hungry more and eat more food (probably with high fructose corn syrup in it), and the cycle repeats itself.
Fruits have sucrose in them, which has about the same amount of frutose (by percentage) as HFCS, but fruit also has tons of fiber and relatively low calories for its size. A candy bar does not.
Therefore, eating HFCS causes you to eat more, both directly and indirectly making you gain weight.
Fun. There's more in the article (like the "food manufacturers know that and deliberately include it to get people to eat more" theory, and how burning calories is the worst reason to exercise), but that's the gist.
Getting married is complicated. We finally got softlykarou's replacement driver's license, and unified our bank accounts (which took a month, since it took that long for the marriage certificate to arrive) but we can't get our auto insurance sorted out until she has an Illinois driver's license. To do that, we need to get a county-certified copy of her birth certificate, her passport, and proof of residence. Two of those are easy, but her parents have been waiting for the county to send it, and it's taking forever. Then she needs to go to the DMV, and get the license, then we go talk to the insurance people...blarg. Hopefully we get that birth certificate soon.
Making budgets is scary. Hopefully I'm overbudgeting for things... Admittedly, I probably am for food. Making meals ourselves is dirt cheap, especially since I'm a rice fanatic. My current year budget is massively skewed anyway, since it treats the wedding as a "Fun" expense and...oh, hey, look, an "exclude from budget" option. ^^;;;
Speaking of cooking, I've discovered something odd. Consistently cooking for myself has made me less hungry. At least, I assume that's what it is. Unless it's that living on my own has made me less hungry, which has to have less of an immediately obvious connection. I eat three meals a day (I used to eat 3 + 2 snacks, usually) and I always eat less at those meals. It's not just the concept of poverty that has made me fear to eat food, either. I'm genuinely less hungry. Maybe it's trying to cut all the HFCS out of my diet.