Much like the walk of shame in an evening’s best the morning after a one-night stand, I walked into Caribou today and bought a mocha cooler. Ooh, it was good. Chocolatey, HFCS-y goodness. Yum. Except the cool whip was kinda icky (I think it was the oil in it). And it was really sweet. Sweeter than I’d had in a month. So I was sucking down the last of my cooler, which was all icky cool whip, I realized that if I were still on hfcs-free diet, I wouldn’t be slurping this white substitute for whipped cream. I wiped off my greasy lips. It was still good until I got to the end.
Later, I thought I’d just go all out, and I went into the break room and bought a cold can of Pepsi. Oooh, I had been looking forward to this for a month. And….I was disappointed. I could barely finish the can. After a month of drinking pop made with cane sugar (vanilla cola, vanilla cream soda, root beer, etc.), Pepsi was just not holding up. Much like switching back to hfcs-infested Pepsi after drinking throwback for a month, this really left me with a bad aftertaste (figuratively and literally).
Ok, my theory is that I didn’t notice much of a difference while I was easing into the diet, but suddenly going back to a corn-fed lifestyle, it is VERY noticeable. HFCS is not a good-tasting sugar substitute. Not to mention the social implications will hardly be affected by one person’s month of fasting.
Well, Nate and I went to the store tonight and guess what I did? I continued looking at labels. I bought myself a can of cane-sugar pop. I didn’t buy tuna tetrazzini on sale because it contained corn syrup (I guess it’s tuna sandwiches for me).
So I’m back. All it took was one can of regular Pepsi and a mouthful of greasy whipped-cream substitute.
Corn’s going down.