I cannot escape the high fructose corn syrup

I hadn't realized how pervasive it had become in the US. It's in the juice, yogurt, ketchup, you name it.

Reading the paper today, it also looks like corn syrup causes high obesity in rats (compared to regular sugar).

Thank God that the EU has a pretty small quota on its use. I heard the quota was more about supporting sugar cane from old colonies than health benefits, but hey, at least they are right for the wrong reason.

I'm starting to feel like a foreigner in the US again:

I had breakfast in a fancy restaurant for breakfast today (surrounded by about 40 catholic priests... some kind of tradition here apparently. I was amazed at how young the priests were compared to the geriatric ones I'm used to seeing in Spain) and they gave me some kind of weird sweet gluey liquid (no doubt consisting mostly of high fructose corn syrup) for my waffles. Strangely enough they told me they had real maple syrup. So I asked them for some real maple syrup, but they brought another container of the same stuff. Finally I told the waiter that I had lived in Canada and knew that this most definitely was not maple syrup.

He said "Oh, okay, I can bring you some real maple syrup. But most customers complain that it isn't sweet enough."