Sweet but not safe: here's the sticky truth about the sweetener found in everything from soda to salad dressing.(SUPPLEMENTS: HEALTHY SOLUTIONS)

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If you've turned on your TV recently, you've probably noticed that high-fructose corn syrup appears to have a new press agent. I especially love the commercial where two mothers are talking and one questions the other about serving some sweetened fruit punch to her kids. "That stuffs got high-fructose corn syrup in it," the first mother says. "And you know what they say about that." To which the second mother replies, "What? That it's natural and made from corn? And that in moderation, it's perfectly fine?" The first mother quickly changes the subject.

Clever commercial. And totally misleading.

First Things First

In the beginning there was plain old table sugar, also known by its scientific name, sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide (di meaning two, and saccharide meaning sugar). That means it's actually a blend of two simple (mono) saccharides, in this case glucose and fructose. Take a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose, link them with a chemical bond, and presto, you've got yourself a molecule of sucrose. Put a bunch of those sucrose molecules together in a bowl, place the bowl on the table at the local diner with a little spoon in it, and you're in business.

Now, it's pretty much a given that high intake of sugar is bad for you, and a list of all reasons why would pretty much fill this column, so let's save that for another day. What's interesting is that a fair amount of research has been done investigating exactly which of the two components of sugar is worse for you: glucose or fructose. And the hands-down winner in the this-stuff-is-bad category is fructose.

Don't get me wrong. Fructose as a naturally occurring fruit sugar--found for example, in an apple--is absolutely fine. But the difference between fructose in an apple and fructose in a soda is the difference between a beautiful fur coat on a wild fox and that same fur on the back of a lady at the opera. It's gorgeous on its original owner (the fox). On the woman? Not so much.