I Hate the US Food Industry

I'm losing weight.  I was for awhile then I seemed to stop but now I have had 3 non-related individuals mention that I seems to be losing weight.  I also have noticed that some of my pants no longer stay up without a belt and recently I can wear some shirts that before were a bit tight, while many of my comfortable shirts are now a bit too roomy.  Mostly I attribute this do my eating.  I don't eat out much, I am eating a lot of vegetables, beans and whole grains.  I have cut back on starches, red meat and dairy.  I am also again working on portion control.  But the main thing is trying to cut out processed foods, and specifically avoiding high fructose corn syrup and anything that says hydrogenated.  I don't eat a lot of sugar, but if I am going to I try for actual sugar or some other type of sweet like maple syrup, agave or honey.  Despite the massive number of commercials and websites paid for by the corn industry, I tend to believe the Princeton independent study more.  Mainly because it makes sense.  Especially if you factor in the fact the U.S. obesity problem seems to correlate with the start of the use of high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar.  This is because the government subsidy of corn let farmers sell corn at a lose, meaning the highly processed corn syrup became cheaper than cane or beat sugar.  Now it is used in everything and not just as a sweetener.  You can find it in stuff like corn chips because it is also used as a preservative.  I sort of took this for granted for a bit until this weekend when it again hit home.  I have a foster son and he has a lot of food issues.  Saturday he was griping about the pancakes I made claiming they didn't taste right.  I made the pancakes from scratch and when I told him, he freaked out.  Pancakes were supposed to come in a big box and be put in the microwave and then covered in syrup and eaten.  My pancakes consisted of flour, baking powder, eggs, milk and a little vanilla flavor and sugar.  The syrup was Lob Cabin Natural which is sweetened with sugar and soy syrup.  I had the same pancakes but drizzled a Mexican caramel sauce made with sugar and goat's milk on it rather than drenching in syrup and thought they were great.  He ate them all so couldn't have been too bad.  But he keeps complaining about stuff and I originally started by trying to gradually change things, so I bought some of the food he likes and it's all has the HFCS in it.  Most of the time it's one of the first 4 ingredients which means it's one of the main ingredients.  The canned pastas have it.  It's in the frozen pizzas and the juices he likes.  He will drink 100% apple juice fortunately.  He prefers pre-bottled drinks to mixes I do at home, even the pre_sweetened ones.  And the healthy snacks they suggested for breaks at school?  He won't eat Goldfish.  Fruit roll ups seem the best.  They contain sugar and corn syrup and dried corn syrup and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil.  The fruit gushers are worse, they have sugar, corn syrup and dried corn syrup all as part of the first five ingredients, then they have frucose and partially hydrogenated cotton seed oil.  Four different kinds of sweetener.  The worst offender was the yogurt tubes that claimed to be low fat.  The second ingredient was sugar the forth HFCS.  There was a lot of stuff in there I can't pronounce and a little research on the internet revealed one of those tubes has more sugar than a can of Coca Cola.  Low fat, well so are soft drinks, but we don't think they are healthy.  This is nuts, no wonder we are so fat.