It seems to be human nature to want to find ONE SOLUTION to complex problems. Obesity is no different. Every few years something new is blamed as THE CAUSE OF OBESITY. At least one of those is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Like others before, it has been blamed as the cause of obesity, diabetes/The Metabolic Syndrome, health problems and the breakdown of the nuclear family.
A lot of this idea started with research by Bray who CORRELATED an increase in the intake of high fructose corn syrup with increasing rates of obesity. Much of this started with a 2004 paper by Bray where he correlated changes in HFCS intake with changes in obesity, suggesting that it was the increase in HFCS intake that was driving obesity. This was taken, as usual, far out of context into the popular realm of magazines, newspapers and tv soundbites.
Suddenly high fructose corn syrup was THE enemy.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the athletic/bodybuilding and fat loss arena where people are simply losing their ever-loving minds over anything with HFCS. Any food that dare list high fructose corn syrup on its label (even if the total quantity is obviously miniscule) is immediately deemed to be evil, a destroyer of not only one’s physique but a corrupter of children, a direct line to Satan himself. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating but not by much.
But is this actually the case? Is HFCS in and of itself the problem here?
To examine the issue, I want to look at the paper
High Fructose Corn Syrup: What It is and What it Ain’t
This paper, in the aggregate, addresses this idea, by looking at the hypothesis that somehow HFCS is uniquely obesity or health-problem causing beyond simply being a source of calories. The author states that several assumptions must be found to be true to accept this idea as fact. They are:
- HFCS and sucrose are significantly different
- HFCS must be uniquely obesity-promoting
- HFCS must be predictive of US obesity
- HFCS must be predictive of global obesity
- Eliminating HFCS from the food supply must significantly reduce obesity
I won’t detail in full every one of his arguments. But the punch line of course is that none of these actually turn out to be true. Yes, HFCS and foods containing them often contribute a large number of calories to the diet and clearly that alone causes problems. But there is nothing special about HFCS to warrant the fear about it that many seem to have developed.
By the way, this is the chemical structure of high-fructose corn syrup.
What is HFCS and is it Really Different than Sucrose?
Historically, HFCS was developed back in the 50’s as an alternative to cane sugar for food preparations. The reasons why HFCS is superior for foods than cane sugar isn’t really that relevant. Sufficed to say that HFCS is more stable and has replaced your basic cane sugar/sucrose in a lot of foods.
Now, a lot of the silliness, especially in the fitness world about HFCS probably comes out of two factors.
The first is a generally anti-fructose, anti-fruit idea that started about 30 years ago with John Parillo. For absolutely absurd reasons, fruit is often considered forbidden during a contest diet. Nevermind that it helps a LOT of people with hunger (liver glycogen status is one of many signals to the brain) and seems to do something good for thyroid status for many people. Parillo said it slowed down fat loss or even caused fat gain and the lore remains.
The second is a general confusion about what HFCS actually is, the problem is with the name, the “high fructose” part of it suggests to people that HFCS is much higher in fructose content that it actually is. However this is not the case as the chart below shows. The percentage of either fructose or glucose is shown for each of the types of sugars.
As the chart clearly shows, HFCS-42 is only 42% fructose which is a LOWER fructose content than straight sucrose, invert sugar or honey (often considered “healthier” at least in hippie/health food subcultures.
In contrast, HFCS-55 is 55% fructose meaning it contains 5% more fructose than the other sugars. To put this in perspective
- 50 grams of HFCS 42 would contain 21 grams of fructose
- 50 grams of sucrose, invert sugar or honey would contain 25 grams of fructose
- 50 grams of HFCS 55 would contain 27.5 grams of fructose
That’s a whopping 2.5 grams more fructose than straight table sugar.
It’s worth noting that there are products such as HFCS-80 and 90 which contain 80 and 90% fructose but they aren’t used widely commercially so I won’t consider them further.
The point being that despite its name, high fructose corn syrup is not functionally higher in fructose than other sugars. The “high fructose” moniker is simply a very poor choice of names that has led to widespread confusion.
Correlation is not Causation
The initial “data” suggesting that HFCS was responsible for obesity was correlational in nature. That is, increases in HFCS intake seemed to track. The thing is that correlation is not causation. Lots of silly things correlate with one another which have nothing to do with each other.
Which isn’t to say that the increasing intake of a high-calorie sugar compound isn’t likely to be a contributor to obesity. The question is whether HFCS is somehow unique in its contribution outside of the calorie content.
As well it’s not as if an increase in HFCS content was the ONLY change occurring in society during the time period it seemed to track with obesity. It was one change of many. Despite Bray’s assertion that increases in HFCS correlates with increases in obesity, the paper points out that he looked at the relationship in isolation.
During the time that HFCS intake was going up, daily food intake was also increasing, by about 500 calories per day from 1980 to the year 2000. That alone would predict increased rates of obesity regardless of HFCS per se.
Additionally, intake data shows that total sugar intake did not increase over that time frame. As HFCS intake was going up, sucrose intake was going down. Rather, what people were eating more of were grains and dietary fat. There is simply no basis to conclude that increasing HFCS intake has any correlation with rising rates of obesity per se.
Is High Fructose Corn Syrup Sweeter than Sucrose
It’s often claimed that HFCS is sweeter than sucrose, the logic being that the sweet flavor will increase intake. But this is also untrue. While pure crystalline fructose IS sweeter than sucrose, HFCS is identical in sweetness. Increasing use of HFCS in the US food supply did not increase the relative sweetness of those foods.
Note: pure fructose is rarely consumed outside of hippy subcultures who believe it’s healthier. As importantly, consuming LARGE amount of fructose causes stomach upset. Part of the entire HFCS debate went off the rails by focusing on the fructose itself. Zillions of studies giving pure fructose were done, often using absurd amounts which have no basis in real life. But people simply don’t eat pure fructose by and large.
Importantly, both high fructose corn syrup and sucrose contain 4 calories/gram. In that sucrose appears to have been swapped out for HFCS in a more or less 1:1 ratio, there is no reason to believe that HFCS intake is increasing caloric intake outside of simply being a source of calories.
Does the Metabolism/Absorption of HFCS Differ from Sucrose?
Finally, the paper looks at the issue of absorption and metabolism of sucrose vs. HFCS. While fructose is metabolized differently than glucose (in terms of the transporters used and how it is handled in the liver), keep in mind that HFCS is only about half-fructose, just like sucrose. Fructose malabsorption is a problem, mind you, but only when large amounts of fructose by-itself is consumed (as above this is rare), this does not apply to HFCS.
Quoting from the paper:
Sucrose, HFCS, invert sugar, honey an many fruits and juices deliver the same sugars in the same ratios to the same tissues within the same time frame to the same metabolic pathways. Thus…it makes essentially no metabolic difference which one is used.
So, again, while HFCS is certainly a source of calories (and many HFCS containing foods are easily overconsumed), there is nothing special about HFCS that makes it uniquely problematic. Fruit juice or a sucrose containing soda would function identically in the body to a HFCS containing drink.
Is HFCS Uniquely Obesity Promoting?
At the start of this article, I gave a list of requirements that would have to be met to show that HFCS is UNIQUELY obesity causing compared to other sugars. Simply, they have not been met.
So what’s going on? As I noted above, much of the focus with HFCS has been on the fructose component and a lot of very stupid studies have been done on the topic.
One that is making the rounds now showed that feeding rats a 60% fructose diet for 6 months caused leptin resistance. But let’s reality check this. First and foremost, a human on 3000 calories per day consuming 60% as pure fructose would be consuming 450 grams per day. Every day. For six straight months (which is about the equivalent to several years in human time). Yeah, I won’t disagree that 450 grams of sugar per day would be unhealthy. But fructose is not the problem here: the 450 grams of sugar per day is.
To the above I’d add: ignoring the fact that rat studies are irrelevant, the study I linked actually did 6 months of pure fructose feeding before switching the rats to a high-fat diet. When they were switched to the high-fat diet they gained fat. But they actually gained NO fat on the high fructose diet. The conclusion that HFCS causes fat gain and fat doesn’t was actually contradicted by the paper itself. Something the idiots talking about it missed. Again, you’re not a rat so who cares.
Let’s further reality check it, the issue here is not pure fructose but HFCS which is only about half fructose. To consume that same 60% pure fructose diet would mean a diet of 120% HFCS. Wait, huh? By that I mean someone would have to consume 3600 calories (20% over maintenance) to get that much fructose. I think you can see that this is idiotic.
As the paper states:
A pure fructose diet is surely a poor model for HFCS, because HFCS has equivalent amounts of glucose. Because no one would eat a pure fructose diet, such experimentation must be recognized as highly artificial and highly prejudicial and not at all appropriate to HFCS.
Rather, diets examining sucrose intake make a much more appropriate model for HFCS. Not much has been done comparing HFCS to sucrose but what has been shows no metabolic difference between the two. And in a physiological, biochemical and nutritional sense, this is to be expected. HFCS and sucrose are essentially identical. And the body treats them as such (though for some hilarity read some of the idiot level comments on this article).
Does HFCS Intake Predict Either US or Global Obesity?
In a word, no. While Bray’s original analysis suggested a correlation between increasing HFCS intake and US obesity, that relationship no longer holds. HFCS intake has been decreasing in the past year yet obesity continues to increase. Not only is there no biological reason to expect HFCS to uniquely cause obesity, it’s no longer even correlational with it.
Moving to the global arena, there is simply no relationship between HFCS intake and obesity rates with the two countries showing the highest rates of obesity showing the lowest intake of HFCS.
The correlation never mattered to begin with. Now it doesn’t even exist.
Will Eliminating HFCS from the Food Supply Affect Obesity?
You can probably guess the answer which is no. Given that HFCS and sucrose are nearly identical in composition, given that HFCS has replaced sucrose intake in the human diet over the past 30 years, given that they are handled metabolically identically, given that they have the identical caloric value, replacing HFCS with sucrose will simply have no effect on anything. Except perhaps to raise prices since sucrose is higher than HFCS.
What Do We Do with this Information?
Now, since I know some people will mis-interpret this piece, I want to be clear: the paper I examined is NOT saying that people can or should be consuming HFCS in massive amounts. Many HFCS containing foods contain massive numbers of calories. The problem isn’t the HFCS per se, it’s the calorie content.
Of some interest, a large amount of HFCS is consumed in sweetened soda. This is interesting because, unlike foods, beverages are not well compensated for by the body. By that I mean that increasing calorie content in fluids doesn’t cause the body to reduce food intake at other times. When you add calorie containing drinks (except for milk) to the diet, you increase calorie content.
So IF HFCS has any direct effect on obesity, this is it. But it has nothing to do with HFCS and everything to do with the liquid form. Sucrose containing soda or fruit juice has an identical effect.
I’d add more to this. Obesity is multi-factorial and many eating habits tend to cluster together. I want everyone reading this to do a little thought experiment: when you have known someone who consumes a LOT of sugary soda, what does the rest of their lifestyle look like?
If you said “Well they are usually inactive and eat a lot of high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar foods” you’re going to be correct more often than not.
Is HFCS the issue or is it the fact that people who consume lots of HFCS containing sodas have an overall poor diet and lifestyle the issue?
What I’m getting at with this research review is that the near insane over-reaction and concern to any food containing any amount of HFCS among certain groups. Folks on forums are throwing out the baby with the bathwater under the gross misunderstanding that HFCS per se is a unique evil which it clearly isn’t. Within the context of a calorically controlled diet, there is no reason to believe it will have any differential impact beyond every other sugar that has ever been used.
And if you want real comedy, read the comments section below.
Similar Posts:
- Fructose Intake During Low-Calorie Diets
- A Short History of Beverages and How the Body Treats Them
- A Guide to Dietary Carbohydrates
- The Energy Density of Foods
- The Problem with Dieting by Percentages
Greetings,
What do think about the evidence that demonstrates a more damaging effect on the liver with higher consumption of fructose compared to sucrose? The data would probably have a different outcome in relation to obesity as an actual variable.
Lyle,
thanks for the article.
While you do bring an important point against the HFCS hysteria (HFCS more or less equals sucrose in the diet), I’ve come to disagree with the notion that it’s an increase in calories thats behind the recent obesity epidemic. And this comes from a graduate of physics, having believed it for the better part of my life.
By recommendation from a smart friend of mine, I read the recent book by Gary Taubes this christmas, and this is truly an instance in which I shouldn’t have judged a book by it’s cover. If you ever come across it, have a look at the bibliography, the notes, the index – just generally browse through it.
It truly is the best researched book I’ve ever read on the subject, yours included. I believe you will find it an exceptional read. Just a tip 😉
Amino: please read it again, studies using massive intakes of pure fructose have no relevance to sucrose or HFCS.
Erik: If I could be bothered, I”d tear apart Taube’s book piece by piece. Simply: he starts from an incorrect piece of data (that the obese do NOT eat more than the lean, a data point we know is totally wrong) and draws completely incorrect conclusions.
The original work that he bases his entire argument on is a piece of data by Bray that appears to demonstrate that the obese in fact eat the same as the lean. From that ASSumption, Taubes concludes that it must be some other cause of obesity and then blames insulin. And he’s simply wrong.
That data was based on self-reported data and we’ve known for 30 years that it was incorrect, studies have shown that the obese systematically underestimate their true food intake by 30-50% which is why they say they are eating the same as lean people. Yet they are not.
Bray has acknowledged that his data was wrong but Taubes apparently couldn’t be bothered to find data beyond what agreed with him. Taubes, in his ‘4 years of research’ apparently couldn’t be bothered to read anything that didn’t agree with the conclusion he’d already reached. Or the 1980’s for that matter.
Then again, anyone relying on 1930’s physiology books to make his point has already blown it. We moved past a simple ‘insulin stores fat’ model 15 years ago but Taubes references an ancient physiology book on the topic.
Bottom line: Taubes is completely wrong and every controlled dietary study shows it. He accuses other of cherry picking their data (early in the book) and does the exact same thing, watching him weasel his way around criticisms of his book is also illuminating. He can’t address any of them except to try and talk around them.
And I have read his book. All Taubes proves is that when you start from an incorrect assumption, you reach an incorrect conclusion.
Reiterating, he started from the idea that ‘The obese don’t eat more than the lean’ (which is wrong) and then went looking for the reason why and concluded it was insulin and the quality of the calories. Which is also wrong.
That’s not even how science works as you, as a physicist like yourself, should realize. You don’t reach your conclusion and then go find the data to prove it; that’s backwards. You gather the data and then develop the model. Taubes did it the other way around which is why his conclusions are fundamentally incorrect.
Thank you for a great piece– I am really tired of all the hysteria around a single food — or food group (as in “don’t eat anything that’s white”). It’s great to read a balanced piece on the subject. Also, nice smackdown of Taubes!
Isn’t the issue here that because HFCS is so cheap to produce (compared to sucrose) it enables food manufacturers to add it to everything. By doing so they increase the calories and are making people fat. Most foods that are sold as Low-Fat usually have the sugar content jacked up.
Hi,
My google alert for HFCS picked up your article. The CRA has a powerful lobby that
has twisted the elbows of the FDA, the AMA, and recently the editorial board of the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, but one thing they can’t do is change the math.
HFCS 55, used to sweeten all national brand soda and many sports quenchers, is
composed of 55% fructose:45% glucose. Although this appears to be only marginally
different than the ratio of sugars in sucrose (50%fructose:50%glucose), it is not.
You need to do the math correctly. 55/45=1.22. That means that every time you chug
a Pepsi or Coke (bottled in the US) or take a swig of Gatorade, you are reaping the health
“benefits” of 22% extra fructose. It has been well documented that it is the fructose moiety that leads to long term health hazard. Do the math. Stay away from HFCS.
Paul,
Read it again, food companies simply switched out sucrose for HFCS 1:1 as stated in the review. The caloric value of foods that contain HFCS instead of sucrose DID NOT CHANGE.
The low-fat thing is something totally different.
Lyle
With all due respect, Gary Taubes’ book has much more too it than you are describing.
His central thesis, in my mind, is that refined carbohydrates are the main cause of the diseases of civilization, of which obesity is but one. He spends a lot of time trying to describe the history of how we got to the point where saturated fat and cholesterol were deemed the great evils. He questions both the lipid hypothesis of heart disease as well as the hypothesis that fiber has a heart-healthy protective effect. He goes into detail about cancer, diabetes, Alzheimers, and heart disease and the theories explaining how refined carbohydrates might contribute to these diseases.
It’s only towards the last half of the book before he settles in to take a look at obesity. Even if he’s wrong that the obese don’t necessarily eat more calories than the lean or that insulin is the main hormone driving the body to store fat, he still makes a lot of arguments indepedent of those points that support the idea that a diet high in carbohydrates, when applied to the general population, is more likely to cause obesity than a diet high in protein and fat.
His most compelling argument to my mind is that refined carbohydrates disrupt our hunger and feeding mechanisms, driving us to eat more calories than necessary. He describes numerous feeding studies that seem to prove this point – he compares studies where people on high carb diets eating thousands of calories are ravenously hungry to studies of people eating low-carb diets of 600 calories where there is little or mild hunger. My personal experience, having low carbed for a year (since reading Taubes’ book as it were) is that this is true. If I eat a carby snack or meal, the gnawing, sickly hunger that strikes me mere hours later all but guarantees I’ll be eating more calories, whereas my normal hunger when I haven’t had carbs is mild and frankly quite easy to ignore.
If you could disprove or shed doubt on this point, and explain how I am misinterpreting my experience that seems to back up his argument, then I would be interested to hear it. Also, do you have a counter argument that explains the obersvation that populations switching from a traditional diet to one high in refined grains and sugar invariably begin to see unprecedented levels of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity within a mere 20 years?
Fantastic, not what I said in my post which was based around his (wrong) premise that carbs make people fat in the absence of excess caloric intake (which IS a huge part of his book).
However, for some people, carbohydrates DO cause problems with hunger. And in some people, they do NOT. To state that they do so uncategorically is equally wrong.
I’d note that a lot of this is also related to other factors such as dietary protein intake (the most satiating nutrient). Many ‘low-carb’ diets succeed because they are really ‘high-protein’ diets.
That said, it’s illustrative to look at the data on lowcarb diets that have come out in the past several years. If Taube’s thesis is true, simply moving to a lowcarb diet should SOLVE the obesity problem, no?
Yet, it clearly does not, the weight loss on ad lib low-carbohydrate diets are poor, perhaps 3-4 kg over a year. Given that people are 25-50kg or more overweight, clearly just ‘not eating carbs’ isn’t getting it done. It still comes down to calories and there’s far more to this story than just refined carbohydrates.
But people want simple answers and Taubes gave it to them (carbs are the devil). Unfortunately, simple is simply wrong.
People can cut their carbs to zero, without caloric restriction and/or changes in activity or lifestyle, they still stay fat. The studies have demonstrated this endlessly. Ad lib low carb diets work no better for weight loss than ad-lib low-fat diets. They both generate poor weight loss.
Of course, Taubes would never let facts stand in the way of his carefully crafted thesis. Between ignoring data that didn’t fit his model and misrepresenting much of the rest (or making absurd comparisons), he gave people exactly what they wanted to hear: they got to blame all of their problems on a single food. If only the universe were that simple.
Lyle
For some reason, my system didn’t approve this comment so I’m pasting it here myself.
Lyle
***
Cynthia Papierniak wrote:
Hi,
My google alert for HFCS picked up your article. The CRA has a powerful lobby that
has twisted the elbows of the FDA, the AMA, and recently the editorial board of the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, but one thing they can’t do is change the math.
HFCS 55, used to sweeten all national brand soda and many sports quenchers, is
composed of 55% fructose:45% glucose. Although this appears to be only marginally
different than the ratio of sugars in sucrose (50%fructose:50%glucose), it is not.
You need to do the math correctly. 55/45=1.22. That means that every time you chug
a Pepsi or Coke (bottled in the US) or take a swig of Gatorade, you are reaping the
health
“benefits” of 22% extra fructose. It has been well documented that it is the
fructose moiety that leads to long term health hazard. Do the math. Stay away from
HFCS.
Cynthia
As noted in the article, fructose is ONLY a problem consumed in massive amounts in isolation. This has no relevance to either sucrose or HFCS. Please read these two sentences a few more times until it sinks in. It is ONLY fructose in massive doses in ISOLATION that are a problem.
And let’s check the math again:
Say someone consumes 50 grams of Gatorade containing HFCS-55 (e.g. 55% fructose) and compare that to 50 grams of Gatorade containing sucrose.
The first person will get 50 grams * 0.55 = 27.5 grams fructose.
The second will get 50 grams * 0.50 = 25 grams of fructose.
The HFCS drink provided 2.5 grams more fructose than the sucrose drink. Irrelevant on every count.
Lyle
Great post. I have been avoiding HFCS for a couple years now and I guess I don’t have to wrorry about it any more than I do sugars in general.
I also especially enjoyed your comments on Taubes book, because I am currently reading it. I think it is a great book, but it is alo great to get a different perspective.
Lyle, what you think about Cordain’s book on eating Paleo?
QUOTE: “Then again, anyone relying on 1930’s physiology books to make his point has already blown it. We moved past a simple ‘insulin stores fat’ model 15 years ago but Taubes references an ancient physiology book on the topic.”
At about the 31 minute mark in this recent interview (https://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/atkins-presents-interview-encore-week-gary-taubes-interview-episode-213/), Taubes admits that he doesn’t pay much attention to recent research because “all of this should have been obvious decades ago”.
Kind of reminds me of an old woman who insists on sporting the same hair style she had in high school. Some one needs to tell him that being stuck in the past isn’t doing him any favors.
Taubes asserts that “…every hormone in our body works to release fat from our fat tissue, with the singular exception of insulin, which works to put it there”. Recent research (!) has proven this statement to be untrue. Acylation stimulating protein (ASP), discovered in the late 1980s, also works to put fat in fat tissue. But then again, ASP is technically not a hormone but an autocrine factor, so maybe Taubes is still correct… 😉
Taubes also states that “…we must eat carbohydrates to accumulate excess fat in our fat tissue. It’s only by eating carbohydrates that we can obtain alpha glycerol phosphate, an enzyme that is an absolute requirement for storing fat”. This statement has been known to be untrue for over 40 years. Yes, alpha glycerol phosphate is a requirement for storing fat, but we don’t have to eat carbohydrates to obtain it. Glyceroneogenesis is the biochemical pathway that produces alpha glycerol phosphate from amino acids. The last five years has seen a resurgence of interest in this pathway. Do a PubMed search.
*The Taubes quotes came from this Mother Earth News article: https://www.motherearthnews.com/Natural-Health/2008-10-01/Dietary-Fat-Health-Weight.aspx
Lyle,
Thanks for responding. Your figures are correct. You are comparing the amount
of fructose/HFCS to fructose/sugar which yields a 2.5 gram difference. That’s still a 10%
increase, but of course debatable as to the physiological effect. I stand by my calculations since I am comparing fructose to glucose in HFCS-55. Since the whole
can only be 100%, when you increase the %fructose, the %glucose must decrease.
So if fructose is just 5 percentage points above 50%, the resultant ratio between the component sugars is far greater. Why didn’t the wizards at Cargill choose HFCS-50? At least that would have mimicked sucrose. Maybe one of two reasons a). using a little “sweeter” ratio would allow them to use less, thereby enhancing the bottom line, or b) perhaps they chose the ratio that was just slightly addictive, which would cause us to drink more, thereby enhancing their bottom line. To your health.
And your math is in fact completely off – let me ask you this – Let’s say one year, 50% of people vote republican, and 50% vote democrat. 4 years later, 55% of the population votes republican, and 45% votes democrat. Did 22% more people vote republican the second time?
Lyle, really interesting article – thanks as always for posting such terrific information. Clearly, if you are looking to control your weight, you need to control the amount of sugar in your diet be it sucrose, fructose, honey, HFCS, et al. I get that.
I am interested in your opinion in regards to HFCS and potential health issues above and beyond obesity. My understanding is that the main difference between sucrose and HFCS occurs during the manufacturing process. In HFCS the fructose and glucose molecules are unbound while they remain joined together in sucrose.
The study that I’ve seen referenced is a 2007 study by Chi-Tang Ho out of Rutgers University. The study indicates that un-bound fructose causes extremely elevated levels of reactive carbonyls which are believed to cause tissue damage.
Reactive carbonyls have been found to be elevated in the blood of individuals with diabetes and have been linked to the complications of that disease. By contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar.
Any insight in regards to this?
Hi Lyle,
Hi Susan,
Dana Flavin article
I found this at LifeExtension.com and thought you might find it of interest.
https://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2008/dec2008_Metabolic-Dangers-of-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup_02.htm
Ok, I’ll be honest that my understanding of this level of physical chemistry is poor so I’m going to make some comments based on what little I can glean from the web about the ‘unbound fructose issue’
Coming from the original news report, I find this
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/79969.php
“Ho’s group is also probing the mechanisms by which carbonation increases the amount of reactive carbonyls formed in sodas containing HFCS. They note that non-carbonated fruit juices containing HFCS have one-third the amount of reactive carbonyl species found in carbonated sodas with HFCS”
Basically, it looks to me like it’s carbonation plus HFCS more than HFCS that is the issue. I’ll come back to this in a moment.
Now, in the comments section of a blog post on this issue, I found the following. For those who can’t follow the technical comments, he’s saying the following
1. Ho ONLY compared HFCS to diet controls. No comparison to sucrose containing drinks was made.
2. Because of the acid conditions, sodas made with sucrose or invert sugar will have the same unbound fructose.
Which means this: there is still NO functional difference in a soda sweetened with HFCS vs. sucrose vs. invert sugar vs. anything else. Put them in acid and they become unbound, carbonate them and you generate carbonyls.
Which was exactly the point of this research review: there is simply NO functional difference in HFCS vs. sucrose vs. invert sugar vs. any other glucose/fructose sweetener. HCFS is no worse for people than sucrose or invert sugar outside of being a source of empty calories.
Please wait for my final comment before going any further
****
From the comments section of the following:
https://blog.nutritiondata.com/ndblog/2007/08/new-info-on-h-1.html
“Having recently read the abstract for this research, I am surprised at how pervasively it is being misrepresented.
First, Chi-Tang Ho et al did not compare the HFCS sodas to sucrose sodas. They compared 11 HFCS sodas to a diet soda control. There was no sucrose soda control, so this research does not allow us to make comparisons.
Second, though the article states that sucrose does not have reactive carbonyls by virtue of the fact that fructose and glucose are bound together in sucrose, this overlooks the fact that sucrose is in fact hydrolyzed in soft drinks into -you guessed it- fructose and glucose.
For instance, The Soft Drinks Companion: A Technical Handbook for the Beverage Industry, Maurice Shachman, pp. 81-82, states:
“The sugar inversion process takes place under acidic conditions and speeds up with a decrease in pH. Soft drinks are flavored with acids to achieve the sourness notes essential for their taste profiles. They are therefore acidic drinks, usually in the pH+3 range. This is especially true of the sour fruit flavors, such as lemon and other citrus fruit species. Cola beverages that often use phosphoric acid as the acidulant are at even lower pH values. In carbonated soft drinks, the dissolved carbon dioxide is converted to carbonic acid, which further adds to the acidification of these drinks. Regardless of the exact acid content of such beverages, they can all be considered, to a lesser or greater degree, as acidic solutions. As such, some inversion of the sucrose in these beverages will take place.”
So, even if the drinks starts like with sucrose, much if not most of it will be broken down into unbound fructose and glucose by the acid in the soda. In fact, according to Marov and Dowling (1990), at typical storage times and temperatures, more than 90% of the sucrose in soft drinks can be hydrolyzed. Therefore, even if a soft drink is sweetened with sucrose, unbound sucrose and fructose will start to appear immediately and be available to participate in carbonyl forming reactions.
Marov, G.J., Dowling, J.F., 1990. Sugar in beverages. In: Pennington,
N.L., Baker, C.W. (Eds.), Sugar: A User’s Guide to Sucrose, vol. 13.
Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, pp. 189–211.
Third, sugar-sweetened soft drinks not sweetened with HFCS are not always sweetened with sucrose. For instance, some manufacturers use a combination of invert sugar and sucrose. Some use invert sugar alone. Inverted sugar is effectively the exact same thing as HFCS — equal or nearly equal mixtures of “unbound” fructose and glucose. Though they happen to be created from different precursors, there should be little or no difference in terms of their effect on reactive carbonyl formation, or their physiological effects in people.”
And, having said that, let me clarify my position since, as usual, people took what I wrote in this research review (an honest look at HFCS vs. other sugars), interpreted it through their own filters and assumed I was saying something I wasn’t.
First and foremost, let’s talk about non-diet sodas. From the post above, clearly whether they are sweetened with HFCS or sucrose doesn’t matter, there will be unbound fructose and the carbonation will generate carbonyls.
Here’s my question for the anti-HFCS crusaders: can you people show me where I recommended that anybody drink either type of soda? Right, I didn’t. Nor would I.
Frankly, I don’t think people should be drinking sugary soda in the first place; whether it’s sweetened with HFCS, sucrose, honey or anything else is 100% irrelevant. They provide nothing but empty calories, aren’t compensated for (meaning that they do nothing to reduce food intake later in the day) and are just a poor food choice. What they are sweetened with doesn’t change that in the slightest.
Let me ask the anti HFCS crusaders another question: if someone is drinking several of those 64 oz super big gulps filled with HFCS sweetened soda, is the problem *really* the HFCS?
A single 8 oz can of soda contains 100 nutritionally empty calories. The 64 oz mega-big gulps are therefore 800 calories. We all know that people drink many cans of regular soda and many probably drink multiples of the big-gulps?
Is the problem really the HFCS or that someone is drinking 300-800+ calories of sugar water?
Would it be somehow better if they were consuming the same absurd number of liquid calories from sucrose? Of course not.
It’s all the same crap no matter how you cut it and overconsumption of all of it is the real problem. Not whether it’s HFCS or sucrose. Which was also the point of the research review.
Health obsessed freaks and the general public are getting the mistaken message from the anti-HFCS crusaders that avoiding HFCS is all that matters, that if they replace it with sucrose they will be doing better off. And nothing is further from the truth.
They are also going nutso because the 12th ingredient on a food says HFCS, which means it probably has a gram of the stuff. They have ‘heard’ that HFCS is the devil and that any food with it is also the devil, no matter what amount. Which is totally asinine.
Which was also the point of this research review: HFCS has no special ‘obesity causing’ properties beyond being a source of calories. And the fact is that many foods that contain a lot of HFCS are unbelievably easy to overconsume. And that’s the confound here: it’s a quantity issue, not a quality issue.
The problem is clearly not HFCS in absolute terms, it has far more to do with overconsumption and that has more to do with the types of foods (carbonated beverages) that contain a lot of HCFS. Which are massively easy to overconsume and which people shouldn’t be drinking in the first place.
The simple point is that neither should be a major part of the day’s diet. The specific sugar isn’t the issue; rather people shouldn’t be overconsuming any of them; the source is fundamentally irrelevant.
I’m sure some people still won’t get what I’m saying and will take this article as saying “Lyle recommended HFCS.” I can’t help that or make myself any more clear so I’m done.
Lyle, exactly the feedback I was looking for … thanks for helping to clarify this for me; I was having difficulty deciphering the research.
I always find it interesting how people try to neatly compartmentalize foods and/or nutrients into a “good” or “bad” column.
While I believe there are some exceptions (re: trans fat), for the most part we need to look at the big picture to determine what is best for ourselves, at a given point in time. Clearly, if you are pregnant or prone to hypertension, drinking coffee may be harmful to your health. Similarly, if you have high cholesterol it would be advisable to limit whole egg consumption, and if you suffer from vertigo my recommendation would be not to climb to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Thanks again and looking forward to your future columns!!
Hi Morbo,
That’s an interesting representation! 100 voters who split 50 Republican, 50 Democrat one year; then later split 55 Republican, 45 Democrat. 5 voters, representing 10% of the Democrats, change their vote. 55:45 is only 5% different than 50:50. Correct?
So, let’s continue with the room of voters.
What if 50% of the Democrats changed their minds. The resultant pool of 100 voters would be 75 Republicans, 25 Democrats. If you, a registered independent, walked into a room with 75 Republicans and 25 Democrats, and someone asked you about the attendees, you could say, the Republicans outnumbered the Democrats 3:1. And you would be right. You expressed the difference in terms of the RATIO of Republicans to Democrats.
Now let’s compare the %change and the resultant ratio. 50% of the Democrats changed their minds, and the resultant ratio is 75R/25D=3.
Now we can set up a chart.
Change 0% of the Democrats and the resultant ratio 50:50 = 1
1 voter changes (2% change) –> ratio 51R:49D = 1.04
5 voters change, (10% change) –> ratio 55R:45D = 1.22
10 voters change,(20% change) –> ratio 60R:40D = 1.5
25 voters change (50% change) –> ratio 75R:25D = 3
45 voters change (90% change –> ratio 95R:5D = 19
49 voters change (98% change) –> ratio 99R:1D = 99
The reason that the RATIO is growing faster than the %change is because the relationship is not linear. (If D+R = constant (100), then the graph R/D vs. R generates a curve, not a straight line. Try it.)
Now, to get back to the issue of HFCS-55. 55%fructose:45%glucose appears to be very close to sucrose. Only 5% difference from 50:50, right? But the RATIO of fructose:glucose in HFCS-55 is greater. Agreed?
Of course, this is just math. The important question is whether the human body reacts to the percentage difference between the saccharides in sucrose compared to HFCS-55(5%)– or the ratio of the component saccharides found in HFCS-55 (1.22). I’d bet on the latter.
While the 55/45 ration might not make a large difference in an 8 ounce serving, as Lyle alluded to with his sports drink comparison, most people don’t consume HFCS 8 ounces at a time (which would be actual main reason for the obesity problem in the US). The difference of 2.5 grams of fructose might not be significantly different, but take a 32 oz which contains 35-40 grams HFCS per 8oz, and we might have a completely different issue in regards to things like the production of leptin.
Is HFCS the cause of obesity? Of course not. The cause is a combination of excessive consumption of KCal while leading largely sedentary lifestyles. However, the excessive amounts consumed, combined with the role of fructose in suppressing leptin production, certainly could make it a contributing factor.
Hi.
I came upon this web site due to someone else referencing this web page in their own, in my own searches in HFCS, and for the most part, I agree with the article. I tend to think the obesity vs HFCS is a red herring thing, meant to hide any (if any) health detriments beyond the fact of HFCS being a refined sugar.
That being said, I was raised (in the 70s & 80s) to believe HFCS was bad for me, and that sodas were the beyond bad. Fattening or obesity wasn’t the object, but just general health itself. In this day & age, I’ve occasionally looked for supporting references, but I don’t usually find any that seems grounded in anything, or the information is too technical.
looking at the above information, including some of the comments, I’d like to piece a couple of things together.
It’s my understanding that …
Corn Syrup is created by adding enzymes to corn starch (how pure is the cornstarch?)
HFCS-42 is created by adding enzymes to corn syrup.
HFCS-90 is created from a different enzyme process with corn syrup.
HFCS-55 is created by combing corn syrup with HFCS-90.
HFCS-55 is used (needed) for carbonated soft drinks.
HFCS-42 is used for non-carbonated fruit drinks and most everything else containing HFCS.
Assuming all that is true, which it’s hard for me to honestly verify, the reference someone used above between carbonated beverage and non-carbonated beverage would have used 2 different HFCS, 55% and 42% respectively, which I understand are made from 2 different processes.
Is one safer than the other? I don’t expect there’s any evidence one way or the other, as it’s important to the industry that they are both considered as “safe as table sugar.”
For all we know, the corn starch is modified ahead of time to give characteristics (like free MSG) which could influence consumers to choose a given product over a competing product.
For the industry to compare HFCS with table sugar and claim that HFCS is just as healthy as table sugar just comes across to me as having a hidden agenda. Not one unlike “cigarettes are not addictive.”
Ummm. I’m looking back thru the posts and I’m not seeing the information I’m referring to, regarding the 2 HFCS drinks, so perhaps I took it from the study text itself.
Okay. perhaps I took it slightly out of context:
### quote ###
In the current study, Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D., conducted chemical tests among 11 different carbonated soft drinks containing HFCS. He found ‘astonishingly high’ levels of reactive carbonyls in those beverages. These undesirable and highly-reactive compounds associated with “unbound” fructose and glucose molecules are believed to cause tissue damage, says Ho, a professor of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. By contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar, whose fructose and glucose components are “bound” and chemically stable, the researcher notes.
… snip – text removed …
But eliminating or reducing consumption of HFCS is preferable, the researchers note. They are currently exploring the chemical mechanisms by which tea appears to neutralize the reactivity of the syrup.
Ho’s group is also probing the mechanisms by which carbonation increases the amount of reactive carbonyls formed in sodas containing HFCS. They note that non-carbonated fruit juices containing HFCS have one-third the amount of reactive carbonyl species found in carbonated sodas with HFCS, while non-carbonated tea beverages containing high-fructose corn syrup, which already contain EGCG, have only about one-sixth the levels of carbonyls found in regular soda.
### end quote ###
okay. so, sodas are just plain bad for you, HFCS is still unknown and so far only admittedly as bad for you as white table sugar. =-)
I took that quote from:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/79969.php
here’s a fun nasty one I just ran across….
Mercury Found In High Fructose Corn Syrup Used As Food Sweetener
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/136879.php
### quote ###
Researchers in the US found that much of the high fructose corn syrup that is increasingly replacing sugar in processed foods is tainted with mercury, a metal that is toxic to humans. They also tested many branded food products and found they too contained mercury.
… snip…
How does the mercury get into the corn syrup?
For decades, HFCS has been made using mercury-grade caustic soda produced in so-called “chlor-alkali” or industrial chlorine plants that use mercury cells. The caustic soda, which can thus contain traces of mercury, is used to separate the corn starch (that goes to make the syrup) from the kernel.
Wallinga said:
“The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury.”
“The good news is that mercury-free HFCS ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients,” he added.
More modern chlorine plants already use cleaner technologies that don’t use mercury cells, but there are many older ones still around that do, said the researchers.
### end quote ###
From another article on the topic, full article at:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/587466
“Wallinga and colleagues caution that their list was “just a snapshot in time; we only tested one sample of each product. That clearly is not sufficient grounds to give definitive advice to consumers.”
Me: Wow, one whole sample of each food. That’s not science, that’s just scare mongering.
“I would imagine that a good majority of the mercury that is detected would have been in the form of elemental mercury,” not methylmercury, toxicologist Carl Winter, PhD, tells WebMD. Winter, who directs the FoodSafe Program at the University of California, Davis, says that methylmercury is “by far the most toxic form of mercury” because methylmercury is better absorbed by the body than other forms of mercury.”
“ConAgra Foods, which makes Manwich Bold Sloppy Joe and Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup, is “absolutely confident in the safety of our products,” ConAgra Foods spokeswoman Stephanie Childs tells WebMD.”
Me: I think the internet has bigger things to worry about.
For example…fish. Many of which are known to contain mercury in fairly significant quantities (I’ll be doing an article about this shortly).
So why aren’t the anti-HFCS zealots bitching about fish intake?
sorry, yes. I do agree. Too much mercury in the fish, and how could have it possibly gotten there? sigh. The HFCS products had mercury counted in the parts per trillions, I think I noticed afterward I posted it, which is quite low, and seems trivial considering…
humans with 2 parts per million in their hair is considered low amount, with 10ppm high.
In areas where there is industrial mercury pollution, the levels in the fish can be quite elevated. In general, however, methyl mercury levels for most fish range from less than 0.01 ppm to 0.5 ppm. It’s only in a few species of fish that methyl mercury levels reach FDA limit for human consumption of 1 ppm.
https://cerhr.niehs.nih.gov/common/mercury.html
I think in my mind when I posted the mercury in the HFCS was the idea of anything being in it, and we’d not know, but that’s just as easily true of any processed foods available…. and even in fresh organic foods, to be honest. (like the rocket fuel exhaust in spinach at one point)
I’ve not considered myself a HFCS zealot, but I’m certainly not advocating it. I’m usually more worried about processed foods in general. I do have one friend who is a diehard non-HFCS, organic-only zealot, and yes, it does get tiresome after a little while, and I see your point. =-)
Yes, I do occasionally eat fish (salmon & sushi), and I do on rare occasion eat a few yummy deserts which do have HFCS. Unless I learn some day that HFCS is being specifically manipulated to be more addictive, or to create some sensation to cause us to crave it, I’m pretty much done searching for it’s negatives, and treat it like normal sugar, though I do purposefully avoid HFCS-55 (not as if I drink soda anyway). For me, the balance is research vs trust, and I tend to not trust many of the manufacturers.
Thank-you again for having an excellent and thoughtful web site available!
Endocrine and metabolic effects of consuming fructose- and glucose-sweetened beverages with meals in obese men and women: influence of insulin resistance on plasma triglyceride responses
https://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/jc.2008-2192v1
In obese subjects, consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages with meals was associated with less insulin secretion, blunted diurnal leptin profiles and increased postprandial TG concentrations compared with glucose consumption. Increases of TG were augmented in obese subjects with insulin resistance, suggesting that fructose consumption may exacerbate an already adverse metabolic profile present in many obese subjects.
People shouldn’t be drinking glucose or HFCS sweetened beverages in the first place. As I mentioned above in one of my comments. Both are empty sources of calories and have no real place in a good diet.
Lyle
You will be fighting a useless battle with these Gary Taubes supporters. They don’t realize calories are extremely important.
Gary Taubes is wrong. You are fighting a useless battle with these Taubes supporters, Lyle.
Lisa/Ashley,
Yes, I know.
Lyle
Lyle, check this out, this is surely a knock down to your article: https://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_nutrition/thank_you_for_guzzling_corn_syrup
I’m interested what your thoughts are on this.
Either way I avoid stuff that is loaded with simple sugars, be it HFCS, sucrose or anyhting else similar…
To address Cynthia Papierniak on January 16th, 2009 11:38 am
Why didn’t the wizards at Cargill choose HFCS-50? At least that would have mimicked sucrose.
The real reason is that Coke picks 55 to best match the original taste. It is soft drink companies who made final decision for their formula not suppliers. In fact, making high percentage HFCS will be more expensive.
Cynthia, if you truly believe your calculation, you consume products with HFCS 42 which should be even healthier than sugar with less fructose. Only classic coke use HFCS 55 and other brand soft drink they use HFCS 42. Will you do that?
Why is honey 102% fructose+glucose?
B/c I mistyped 43% as 53% for glucose by mistake. And it doesn’t add to 100% b/c here are other sugars present. Good catch.
I dont want to sound like I am in denial, but what about raw honey, thought it had some enzymes and bee stuff in it that was good for us? not by the cupful though clearly. Mercola has a book out, ‘Sweet Deception’ I am sure you know about it re bees being force fed hfcs (which I cant imagine how you could force feed them, but I havent read the book). so general commercial or bakers processed homogenised honey I can see being just the same and as bad as hfcs, just another sugar syrup, but what about the unfiltered, unprocessed unadulterated stuff? Because its been processed by an insect does that mean its processed, full stop? Sorry I might sound a little insane, I am massively sleep deprived and hopped up on coffee, no sugar ;).
Eating simple sugars should be avoided anyway, they can help in insulin resistance and this should be avoided anyway.
Defending sugar is like defending herpes.
https://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html
Snip
Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose. When sugar is given to rats in high amounts, the rats develop multiple health problems, especially when the rats were deficient in certain nutrients, such as copper. The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy–that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. (Copper deficiency, by the way, is widespread in America.) In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young.
https://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html
Snip
In the past, fructose was considered beneficial to diabetics because it is absorbed only 40 percent as quickly as glucose and causes only a modest rise in blood sugar.5 However, research on other hormonal factors suggests that fructose actually promotes disease more readily than glucose. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver.6 The livers of test animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics.
Pure fructose contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals and robs the body of its micronutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use.7 While naturally occurring sugars, as well as sucrose, contain fructose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains a good deal of “free” or unbound fructose. Research indicates that this free fructose interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals like magnesium, copper and chromium. Among other consequences, HFCS has been implicated in elevated blood cholesterol levels and the creation of blood clots. It has been found to inhibit the action of white blood cells so that they are unable to defend the body against harmful foreign invaders.8
All of your comments have already been addressed above and the Westonprice people are a bunch of crackpots.
Look at the rat studies, look at the MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF sugar given. this is non physiologically relevant. Because a diet of 50-60% sugar is irrelevant to normal human consumption. PERIOD.
But, again, this is all addressed in the comments section already.
I would suggest fructose by itself is fine within fruits perse.
But adding in HFCS in a healthy diet isnt wise.
Just like sunlight is a good thing, too much it can become dangerous.
All in all nature has natural buffers and ballance, once the ballance is skewed, one opens one’s self to compromise.
Simple sugars including HFCS should be avoided all together.
I really enjoyed reading this article and the comments associated with it. I t was all very funny to me.
In the end, you’re all right and you’re all wrong.
You want the answer? Stay away from highly processed foods, and eat a BALANCED diet INCLUDING animal fat and whole grains.
Just so I feel I have things cleared up, fructose IS bad, but high fructose corn syrup isn’t any worse than many other things (such as sucrose) because many other things have just as much fructose or more?
No, fructose is not bad. EXCESS fructose can be bad and since HFCS is found in a type of food (liquids) that tend to be very easy to overconsume, HFCS CAN provide EXCESS fructose. Which can be bad. There is a key word that makes the difference.
Alan Aragon takes apart some of the high-fructose corn syrup hysteria on his blog
https://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/
enjoy.
Aragon, doesn’t take apart the argument and in his rebuttal seems to miss the whole point of the lecture he is rebutting. The metabolic effects of excess sugar and fructose in particular are fairly clear. If they were only consumed moderately and intermittently, (like alcohol) the effects would minimal perhaps even beneficial, But the problem is that sugar, especially HFCS has replaced fat in many processed foods and we are seeing the results of long term chronic exposure to these.
The pont of Lustig’s rant: I am a simpleton who needs to find a singular blame for all the problems of humanity. For lack of anything better and because I am too dumb to see that all of this is massively multi-factorial, I’m going to blame high-fructose corn syrup. And do it by horridly misrepresenting research and cherry picking my data in an attempt to live up to the sterling example set by Gary Taubes.
Did I miss the point or did you?
Hey Lyle. I was wondering if you could give your input on this report of a recent Princton study? https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
Their whole “point” is feeding rats (how relevant) water sweetened with HFCS, and the other group water sweetened with sucrose, with apparent “findings” being that the rats on the HFCS gained fat (becoming obese) while the sucrose rats didn’t (supposively levels of HFCS were “well below those found in sodas”). They also reported apparent signs of “metabolic syndrome” and other possible metabolic problems as a result of the HFCS in the rats.
The kicker line is “Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic”
I’d appreciate it if you could give some insight into this. Just to make things clear, I’m not an anti-HFCS person (mostly after educating myself by reading your articles, which are always great, by the way). This actually came about when I was quoting your article’s study.
You’re not a rat.
Always strait to the point. That’s definitely one of your charms.
Mercola seemingly reliable unbiased articles has a big one on fructose. Side note maybe in that article or a related one he had expericmented with a high fruit diet and ran his triglycerides over 3,000 yes 3,000 was stated not 300.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/03/high-fructose-corn-syrup-even-worse-than-weve-been-told.aspx
I’m a bit late to the party – but a great article Lyle. Keep up the amazing work.
As for the above poster – Mercola speaks a lot of crap, that is better left unread. Keep reading Lyle’s, Alan’s, Martin Berkham’s texts for instance and you’ll get a much less Sugar coated and biased opinions…
The straight talk is: Most Americans are slaves of the fast food industry–an industry drowning in empty calories–including high fructose corn syrup. One way to start releasing addictions to fast/processed foods is to give up high fructose corn syrup–and everything it is in. Therefore, almost all fast food restaurants will be out of the personal food sphere. Unfortunately, most school children are addicted to fast food with school meals. Children should bring healthy, nutritious real foods to school, and be taught about health and the foods that encourage health.
I’ve worked as a researcher–and can tell you from personal experience–that much of research can be tainted by the underlying financial support involved. Results can also be manipulated by how statistics are presented.
Anyone remember the times when research on tobacco was being tossed around–research that said it was harmless–research that said if was harmful? Personal facts were: It had addictive qualities–and the people who avoided tobacco were healthier, although living with a smoker did bring health down. A similar experience is happening now with high fructose corn syrup and fast/processed foods.
The simplest of facts: high fructose corn syrup is not a “natural” part of corn–not even in the unnatural genetically altered corn from which HFCS is synthesized.
Many people who have pushed this synthetic ingredient (high fructose corn syrup) out of their diets have awakened a new awareness of healthy living–more respect for self and the environment.. They begin to feel better, have more energy, and don’t get sick as often–if ever.
Why wait for rat research? Try giving up high fructose corn syrup–regardless of how many others tell you it’s “just fine in moderation,” and test it personally for yourself. Give up the highly processed/fast foods it is in and experiment the miracle of feeling better–and especially the freedom from corporate fast food slavery.
And we need to love our children enough to feed them real foods.
What about this 2010 study at Princeton : https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
which offers pretty good evidence that in fact HFCS may well promote obesity in a way that sucrose does not?
You’re still not a rat.