CHALLENGE UPDATE: Day 23

I've managed to go 23 days without High Fructose Corn Syrup. To be honest, it has been a very manageable experience. I've learned there is a language I need to use in order to navigate most restaurants, bistros, cafes, fruit stands, food carts, lunchrooms, sandwich shops, bakeries, coffee shops, diners, drive-ins, picnics, bake sales, and lean-tos. In this society of ours, the only thing worse than a dining customer who is annoyingly picky is one who can't eat a very specific yet commonly used food ingredient.

Example: When I go to an eatery, I find that I usually get a negative response when I ask, "Do you buy this shit in bulk?" or "What's in this crap?"

So I use a delicate maneuvering of the English language and usually end up with something more like, "Hey, this looks good... Do you make this in-house?" If the waiter is at all interested in his job he usually volunteers way too much information along the lines of, "Sure, we make all our sauces/cookies/salsa here in the kitchen."

That's all I need to know. If they make the salsa in-house, they probably don't have a vat of enzymes just ready to churn out fructose from a sucrose base AKA no HFCS. If they don't say what I need to hear, I can at least avoid the issue and get a club sandwich or something.