The latest heroin

I'm about to go out on a limb, but I think there's something out there more dangerous and more addictive than heroin, meth, nicotine, or fingernails. It's put in little kids’ cereals, and if you are a label reader - and lately I find myself being more and more of one, hard as it is with these weak eyes of mine - you'll find it in the most surprising places.
I'm talking about......(furtive look around)

corn syrup. Or as some people refer to it, high fructose corn syrup.

The stuff.

It's in practically everything. Coke. Pancake mix. Twinkies. Candy bars.

Potato salad, for God's sake!

How it is, that anyone, anywhere, would conceive of putting high fructose corn syrup in potato salad is beyond me. Not for the taste. My Mom, Grandma, next door neighbors, hell even the old ladies who bring potato salads to the church picnic - and let me tell you these are ladies whose larders are well stocked with Wonderbread, Miracle Whip, and mushroom soup - hell they can probably pull out at least three dozen recipes right off the top of their heads using these three ingredients - ain't none of them use high fructose in potato salad, still ......
Sorry. I think I may have erred. It is quite possible that both Miracle Whip and Wonderbread and mushroom soup all contain HFCS.
Still, I'm thinking that even including these three magic ingredients, there's only one explanation: HFCS is the new meth, the new heroin, the new nicotine, the new fingernails.
It is the stuff, and it is the devil.
I think that it is HFCS, and not overeating or couchpotatoism, that is the cause of the sad, and rather stout state of affairs we find our selves in nowadays in the United States of America.
Now, America has always been stout. I remember in 1971, driving cross country, and somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, seeing a sherrif who personified this. When he sat down on the cafe stool, his butt cheeks fell down on either side of the stool. He wasn't tall, but we are talking stout.
But today things have gotten worse. Don't believe me?
Mosey on down to your local trough (that's pronounced troff, ya'll, and it's that half roundy cylindrical thing that one uses to feed cattle in, but here I'm referring to your local all you can eat place. You know the one. Salad bar, desert bar, dish after dish after dish joint.) and check it out. We have a few more stout individuals than we used to. Some of them, I swear to high heavens, look like they come for breakfast and don't leave till they kick them out every evening. And I hate to say it, but a whole lot of the dishes at the trough have one secret ingredient: HFCS. It's cheap, and highly addictive.
So beware. The stuff's out there.
Gotta go. I'm in need of a snack, and there's bound to be something in the pantry with my favorite, sneaky, highly addictive ingredient just calling my name.
Here piggy, piggy!