When life gives you lemonade, you... uhh... hmm.

For the last few years in Kansas City, I've been buying a local brand of lemonade. It's made by Anderson-Erickson Dairy. But wait a minute, I hear you cry. Cows don't produce lemons! That is very true. The dairy also makes orange juice, so maybe they've got a citrus plant on call.

Anyway, the first time I bought lemonade, I noticed they had two kinds: regular and "reduced sugar." Oh, I get it: diet lemonade. Sure. The first time, I purchased the reduced sugar kind because it was the one on sale, and I studiously buy things on sale from my local grocery. I can't afford to shop there otherwise.

It was everything I needed from a lemonade. It was sweet, it was cool and refreshing, and it tasted like it had at least been in close proximity to lemons. But after a couple of times buying the reduced sugar kind, the knowledge of forbidden fruit drinks tempted me. Was I one of those phony "dieters" who "watched what they ate?" Hell no, I'm not one of those weirdos!



So I bought the full-sweetened lemonade - a turbo-lemon-XL-experience, if you will - in order to prove myself just as capable of causing my own diabetes, thank you very much!

Only it's not to my taste. It's too sweet and it doesn't taste as much like lemons as I think lemonade should. And there's a strange feeling in my mouth afterwards. What's the difference between the two? The full-strength one is made with high-fructose corn syrup - the reduced sugar one is made with sugar.

I admit to exorcising most of the HFCS out of my diet after my tour in Europe in 2011. Over there, nothing has it. At all. Probably not even corn! And when I returned to the US after paying attention, I saw it was in a lot of things. Like some pasta sauces. Salad dressings. Yogurt. Bread? Yuck.

And now my diet is largely HFCS free. I actively look at ingredients and purchase items that don't contain it, for the most part. Gone is the soda, and I try to buy natural sugar ones when I feel the need (once or twice a year). I buy the simple ketchup that contains just tomatoes, water, vinegar, and sugar. I switched to yogurt that doesn't use it. I never bought the bread that had it - blech. And the few things that I can't avoid it, I buy less of and eat less of.