How Corn Syrup Might Be Making Us Hungry-and Fat
I thought this was interesting - it offers some evidence about the adverse effects of HFCS that we've suspected was a significant factor in obesity. The bottom line is that fructose doesn't send a message that we're full but glucose does. Both sugars are present in equal amounts in the sucrose molecule but there's more fructose in HFCS so its effect is enhanced.
How Corn Syrup Might Be Making Us Hungry-and Fat
Grocery store aisles are awash in foods and beverages that contain high-fructose corn syrup. It is common in sodas and crops up in everything from ketchup to snack bars. This cheap sweetener has been an increasingly popular additive in recent decades and has often been fingered as a driver of the obesity epidemic.
These fears may be well founded. Fructose, a new study finds, has a marked affect on the brain region that regulates appetite, suggesting that corn syrup and other forms of fructose might encourage over-eating to a greater degree than glucose. Table sugar has both fructose and glucose, but high-fructose corn syrup, as the name suggests, contains a higher proportion of fructose.
To test how fructose affects the brain, researchers studied 20 healthy adult volunteers. While the test subjects consumed sweetened beverages, the researchers used fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to measure the response of the hypothalamus, which helps regulate many hunger-related signals, as well as reward and motivation processing.
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Subjects showed substantial differences in their hypothalamic activity after consuming the fructose-sweetened beverage versus the one sweetened by glucose within 15 minutes. Glucose lowered the activity of the hypothalamus but fructose actually prompted a small spike to this area. As might be expected from these results, the glucose drink alone increased the feelings of fullness reported by volunteers, which indicates that they would be less likely to consume more calories after having something sweetened with glucose than something sweetened with more fructose.
More:
http://news.yahoo.com/corn-syrup-might-making-us-hungry-fat-210000069.html
JAMA article abstract:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1555133
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I think it started because HFCS is cheaper than sugar - sucrose. But the expected benefit for the fast food and food industry is that people eat more because they aren't feeling full. So, more profit for them and expanding waistlines for us. Obesity increases, health effects increase, etc. It's a vicious cycle.
The only thing we can do is refuse to buy products with HFCS or unnecessary sugar. I recently needed chicken broth and read the labels. The national brand was basically chicken broth and salt. The store brand had added sugar. Why? I try to buy products without additives as much as I can but it's tough.
That said, I have a horrible sweet tooth and love my chocolate. I can limit it though...most of the time. As you said, stress brings on bad habits.
Sorry to learn your mom died - I know that dealing with the paperwork and sorting everything out is tough. It's confusing and hard to do when we're grieving. Been there.
You know, the one with the trim guy and his cute, skinny daughter in the middle of the corn field.
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Most grocery-store brown sugar is really just white sugar with about 15% by weight of molasses added back to it. (Learned that in pastry classes.)
Better to get "raw or "turbinado" sugar, or any sugar that hasn't had the molasses content processed out of it.
Also, if you're a vegan, you want to avoid white sugar because it's filtered through a bleached bone substance (usually made from cow bones) to take out even more "impurities".
I need to remember to use molasses more often, as that's where all of the "impurities" and good nutrients went from making table sugar. And like honey, it's considered hygroscopic, very useful when used in bread as the sugar source 
you have several good options. First, is to find a good bakery in your area. There are at least two within ten minutes of where I live that are excellent bakeries, unaffiliated with grocery stores. The kind of bread you'll find at independent bakeries will mold or go stale within a few days, so it's best to eat it fast, or freeze some of it. For most people, it won't go uneaten for that long 
Second, get a bread machine. My old Breadman still makes good bread, and it only takes about ten minutes to load it up. You can probably do it in less time, but I usually heat the water with the sugar source (usually raw honey) before adding the rest of the ingredients to the pan. That way, the yeast has a quicker and more thorough access to the sugars when it begins proofing.
The third option is to get a book like Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. I've never tried this, but plenty in the Cooking & Baking group here have and can tell you more about it
though I have baked with spelt flour.
What about rice-flour steam buns? Those are pretty tasty
is the "dough mixing" function. You don't have to use the machine to bake it, so you can have the dough in about an hour and a half, then hand-form your loaves or rolls. Bake in your oven, either in a pan or on a pizza/baking stone, cool, cut, consume or freeze
I live alone, too, so I know I'll have to freeze most bread I make, or I'll give away some of it. You can also hand form round loaves and make bread bowls for your soup 
but I also have a nice stand mixer if I need something heftier in mixing strength. If the cheap bread machine doesn't work out, you can also look at used restaurant supply places. They don't always have the smaller stand mixers, like 5 and 6-qt sizes, just that they are another place to look
I've often thought about how I probably have more money invested over the years in kitchen equipment and supplies than I do in electronics. Yet if I ever have a break-in, I'll expect to see the electronics missing while the Cuisinart, KitchenAid, and VitaMix will remain untouched and unnoticed
I make my own stock but recently needed some vegetable stock for a recipe and I found I had no more in the freezer. I bought a can of veggies stock, started to use it, and, at the last minute decided to peruse the ingredients. Besides lots of things I've never heard of (veggie stock should have vegetables and water, that's it), I was REALLY surprised to see HFCS listed. In veggie stock. 
I've noticed this just in the last couple years - some of my favorite snacks from high school and college were on my no-no list because their primary sweetener was HFCS.
Fast forward to a couple years ago, I fell off a diet I was doing, but still trying to stick to healthy stuff. Sugar isn't healthy, I know, but it's better than HFCS, and I just thought I had to strike most of the snack foods since they all used HFCS.
Boy was I wrong! Many of the popular snack foods have started to use sugar, instead - in fact, if you look at the list of ingredients, you'll find that you probably know what most of them are, surprisingly. 
