Im addicted

I'm addicted but I don't know to what exactly and that scares me. I'm addicted to Mt. Dew. But, can you really become addicted to a soda? Everyone says oh its the sugar or oh its the Caffeine but if that was true then why is it so easy to do without cake, candy,pies? I like them, I like to eat them, but I can stay away from them without a problem.

So okay then it must be the caffeine. So why doesn't drinking tea with caffeine or even coffee make it better? Tea just makes me more thirsty and coffee sends me running for the bathroom but neither do anything to help curb my desire for a Mt. Dew.

I may have stumbled onto something though. We say its the Sugar but truth is very few sodas use real sugar. They pretty much across the board use high fructose corn syrup. Now when I said earlier that I can do without cake candy and pies, I usual make mine from home. There are a few store bought varieties that give me that "Oh God" feeling that Mt. Dew does. If I am eating those I can leave the Mt. Dew alone. If I'm drinking Mt. Dew I can leave the store bought cakes and things alone but never both at the same time. I beginning to believe the true addictions in this world when it comes to food isn't so much to cabs or fat or even caffeine but to High Fructose Corn syrup.

On top of all of that, I saw an article on the Mother Earth News website today suggesting that this stuff is contaminated with Mercury. If that is true then how in the world can the people producing those ads supporting the use of this crap do it with a straight face? Addictive, Yeah I think I have that covered. Capable of poisoning you? Yup got that covered too.

You know we set up legislation to protect ourselves from lead poisoning. We try to control how much mercury ends up in our water supply but then we turn around and put something that contains Mercury into almost every quick food/convenience food/snack food known to man and think that everyone is going to be okay. Mercury doesn't go away. It stays in your system and slowly builds up over time. And here we are killing ourselves slowly.

Now I for one am all for natural selection and letting mother nature take care of our population problems the way she always has instead of trying to drug ourselves into oblivion. For me heath isn't about living longer its just about not being miserable while I'm alive. But, what I have a huge problem with is the idea that its okay for us to be contaminated by things that can kill us created by people who just want to make a quick buck and a government that says well some chemicals are okay. Well there not. Especially not this one.

I don't know what I'm going to do. But, one thing is for sure there has to be something out there that I can keep in easy supply that won't cost an arm and a leg and won't poison anyone. Maybe check into making and bottling my own sodas but then again, to do that, Ill have to find a way to flavor them without using the syrups that usually come with the soda making kits. Its kind of like snow cone machines. They are great to have at home, but when it comes time to flavor the ice our only real options are the syrup ladened with HFCS. I don't know about anyone else but knowing what I know now, I won't be using that stuff anymore anytime soon.

Wish me luck on kicking my 60 Oz's a day mt dew habit.

Edit: having looked over the list of things tested, Mt. Dew was not on the list. Pepsi and Coke Classic both were however and Pepsi tested clean where Coke did not. So it is completely possible that Pepsi's source comes from a better quality plant than Cokes but I'm not sure I'm willing to take that chance. But, even then it still boils down to the HFCS as being what I'm addicted to mercury or not. With the history of heart disease and Diabetes that runs in my family, I'm just asking for trouble. I think if we are going to treat the tobacco companies the way we do because of lung cancer we should treat the HFCS products the same way. But, very few will agree with me because were all addicted to HFCS and blaming it on something else.