Using the alcoholic analogy people are saying "alcoholism is caused by grain! Grain does X and that's really bad!" when really, while grain might be bad, it's the alcohol that's the real problem.
Fructose might be bad, but the real problem is the huge amount of over eating that people do. And people still get obese even in countries that do not use HFCS.
It's a combination of factors. There's overeating, it's true. But there are also a lot of cheap, readily available foods out there that are packed with sugar. Need to make a cheap tomato sauce tastier? Add a little HFCS. Doesn't cost much, and makes it preferable to the next one.
I'm also constantly surprised at the number of people who drink soda on a daily basis. It's carbonated sugar water, it's terrible for you, but some people just can't seem to stop drinking it. You wouldn't think to claim that someone who drank two Cokes in a day was "overeating", but that's equivalent to eating an extra hamburger per day; if someone ordered another hamburger on top of their lunch, you'd think it a bit excessive.
Diet Soda doesn't help as much as people think. It turns out that it still leaves you with a hell of a sweet tooth, and craving more sugar.
Then there are all of the food products out there that tout themselves as healthy options. Which one do you think is lower calorie, a burrito or a Caesar Salad? Well, it turns out due to all the glop they put in the dressing, a fairly loaded burrito with rice, beans, and sour cream can be lower calorie, lower saturated fat, and higher in fiber than a Caesar Salad.
So, there are a lot of things about modern diets that make it particularly prone to overeating. Between salty snacks that you compulsively eat, sugar levels in everything creeping up, food touted as healthy that's anything but, and the like, coupled with (as you mention) overeating and a sedentary lifestyle, it's no wonder people get fat.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be concerned about the HFCS. No, HFCS is not "poison" or "toxic". But it is excessively cheap and overused. If you avoid HFCS (and aren't stupid about it by simply substituting foods that have an equivalent amount of other sugars), you can avoid a lot of the foods that are bad for you that sort of sneak up on you.
I also blame a lot of this on the whole "low fat" fad. In efforts to reduce fat as much as possible, lots of food manufacturers looked to other things to enhance the flavor of their foods. Sugar is an easy way to do so.
Eh, people should take responsibility for the shit they put in their bodies. No excuses, in my opinion.
I swear half the problem is that people don't cook anymore. I cook every meal from as close to scratch as possible (I really enjoy it). Same with the rest of my family, and we are all super healthy weights. Plural of anecdote is not data, but I always wondered whether that had something to do with it.
There is both a personal and collective responsibility. Yes, people should take responsibility for what they put in their body. But to do that, they need to have good things available that are affordable and not too inconvenient.
People eat what is cheap and convenient. We would do well to try and reduce the trend to make the most cheap convenient food by making processed food that's full of stuff that's bad for you.
That I will certainly agree with, and I fully understand that as a privileged middle-class white male with parents who have always stressed the importance of eating well and educated myself (and my siblings) as to how to look after ourselves, I'm one of the lucky ones.
But, what I've found as someone who once lived on the streets and have been so poor that I had to steal tinned tomatoes to be able to eat, even when poor you can do okay (well, not on the streets, but if you've got a roof over your head it's okay) -- and in my personal experience, it was _cheaper_ to cook your own food that eschews large amounts of sugar and processed crap. That's basically what I can't seem to reconcile.
Good points though, and society does have a part to play; I just think that we can do better on a personal level as well.
While I appreciate the response, you're not providing any reasoning as to why.
By your logic it's equivalent of saying "he's an alcoholic because he drinks too much."