I assume that high fructose corn syrup is simply high in fructose, a 6 carbon sugar, rather than something else called high-fructose. Is that right? Then why is it considered especially harmful? As a diabetic, I am advised to eat lots of friut, whose sugars are, I believe, largely fructose, so I assume that fructose is healthier than sucrose, a 12 carbon sugar. What is the true story?
High-fructose corn syrup is corn syrup that’s been processed so that there’s more fructose in it than there is in normal corn syrup. There are different types of HFCS, with different ratios of fructose to glucose. Note that corn syrup is made up of a mixture of separate fructose and glucose molecules, while sucrose (table sugar) is a molecule that’s made of fructose and glucose put together. Your body has to first break sucrose down before it can then use the components.
I have not closely followed all of the back-and-forth on HFCS, but I think the most common complaints about it are that it’s everywhere, sneaking sugar and extra calories into foods you wouldn’t expect to be sugary, and that HFCS doesn’t make people feel full when they eat it, so you keep consuming way more sugary junk than you ought to.
IANAD, nor am I a diabetes expert, but I’d guess that fruit is better than other sweets on several accounts. Obviously, it contains more in the way of vitamins/minerals/antioxidants/etc. than candy, so if you’re going to eat a sweet thing, a fruit is better than a candy bar. It’s also high in water, meaning that you’re going to get far fewer calories per gram of food from fruit than from junk food, which is mostly calorically dense. Also, fruit is full of fiber, which slows your digestive system from absorbing all of the sugar in a quick spike that floods your system and is quickly broken down, leaving you hungry again. Big sugar spikes are supposed to be especially bad for diabetics, as they already don’t regulate sugar as well as others, so you’re better off with something that percolates into your system more gradually.
When you eat fruit, you eat fiber, too. You don’t get fiber with HFCS. Please ask your nutritionist/doctor about eating HFCS…I get the distinct impression that it’s bad for diabetics (I’m diabetic too).
Also, you aren’t advised to eat a lot of fruit. You’re advised to eat a lot of nonstarchy veggies. Eating too much fruit in a short period of time will make your blood sugar go up, just like eating a candy bar. Eating fruit in moderation is good for you, but the key is moderation.
[ul]
[li]Wikipedia article.[/li][li][*]Partisan negative opinion from 2003.[/li][li]WebMD article from this week.[/li][li]The Mayo Clinic’s opinion.[/li][li]The Corn Refiners Association [del]propaganda[/del] web site on HFCS.[/li][/ul]
I had also wondered about this for a long time. According to this Wikipedia article, the problem is not really that HFCS is any worse than other sugars, but because HFCS is so much cheaper than other sugars (in the USA), it causes sugary foods to be so cheap that we end up eating more of it than we would if it were more expensive.
Straight Dope article: Is the increased use of high-fructose corn syrup responsible for the rise in obesity?
Two points of interest are that fructose doesn’t have as much effect on insulin levels as other sugars, and partly because of that it doesn’t signal satiety like other sugars do. The latter causes a problem in that you can eat or drink loads of the stuff without feeling as full as you would if other forms of sugar were present. It’s added to food because it’s cheap and it tastes sweet, which is after all one of the tastes we’re hardwired to like.
As a filler/taste agent, it’s present in loads of food where you wouldn’t necessarily think it would be. Lightly sweetening something enhances saltiness, and vice versa, so a lot of processed foods have way more salt and sugar (in this case, HFCS) than a similar home-cooked version would have. You find HFCS in the breading for pre-made fried foods, loaded into all kinds of baked goods, in sauces for meats or even used as a soaked-in marinade or “flavoring agent” for them.
That’s the thing that causes the trouble. You think that you’re eating stuff that’s low in sugars and starches and it turns out that you’re eating tons of fructose, adding lots of calories because it’s calorically dense. Even worse, you don’t feel full, so you eat more. The only good way to avoid it lately is to make most of your own food from raw ingredients. Just about any prepared food has added HFCS these days. Frankly, the recommendations from health and nutrition agencies to “read the label” are pretty useless.
Who is advising you to eat “lots of fruit”? Sure, fruit is better for you than, say, candy bars, but it will still raise your glucose level. Whoever is giving you that advice, can you clarify what they mean by “lots”?
And which fruit? There’s a world of difference between blueberries (good) and dates (not so good).
Chiming in here with a note that recent studies have shown that there is more wrong with eating lots of fructose than just extra calories.
One recent study demonstrated that eating a diet high in fructose lead to leptin resistance (without other symptoms), which could lead to obesity.
Fructose Sets Table For Weight Gain Without Warning
Another recent study found that metabolizing fructose is specifically different than other sugars, which leads us to other issues.
Fructose Metabolism More Complicated Than Was Thought
A report came out Monday stating much of the HFCS in America is contaminated with mercury.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html
Press release here (PDF warning).
IATP Report here (PDF warning). Very easy to read and understand.
The FDA has known about the mercury contamination since 2005 but sat on the report.
One comment made says if this level of mercury contamination of food products had occurred in China, the CEO and officers of the company would probably be tried and executed.
The original article is here:
The journal states that it has an “unofficial Impact Factor of 2.01.” So we’re not talking about a recognized, mainstream journal. The three years from experiment to publication could well have been from low-priority on the author’s part to multiple rejections from other journals. The format of the article and the 30 references provided are well below the standard I see in journal I read and research.
The methodology says they took 20 samples from three of 8 US HFCS plants, and that the majority of the positive samples (< 50% of the total samples taken) came from two plants. So, a very small sample of the total HFCS produced in the US had mercury in it, three years ago. Their suggestion that there is significantly high mercury levels in all HFCS is not supported by their own data or experimental design. Not much of a story, beyond being a pilot study (their term in the abstract) that indicates that mercury monitoring might be appropriate for some foods. While they may have been careful to limit the amount of mercury in their experimental model, they did not address the amount of mercury found in corn, the feedstock for HFCS.
Meanwhile, dozens of people have died from E. coli in meat and salmonellosis (more recently peanut butter) over the last two years. We have a very short memory when it comes to the latest food danger, thus we have no perspective when it comes to dealing with media headlines. Sure mercury is a danger, but bacterial food poisoning has a much more visible impact. Half-baked articles don’t help, either.
Vlad/Igor
These were measured in terms of parts per trillion at http://www.wsmv.com/health/18588738/detail.html#- :
Compare that to sushi: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/dining/23sushi.html
Taking the lower end of tuna sushi, 0.10 parts per million, you’d come up with 100,000 parts per trillion. Compare that with the high end of HFCS at 350 parts per trillion, and my back-of-envelope calculations shows that you’d have to down 285 Cokes to match the mercury contents of one little piece of tuna.
There are a lot of inaccuracies here. First of all, HFCS is generally 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Other carbs, especially glucose, have different insulin response profiles – glucose is blood sugar. Secondly, sucrose, aka regular table sugar, is a glucose molecule attached to a fructose molecule by a weak bond. The bond dissociates easily in acidic environments (pop, lots of food). So a lot of things you eat sweetened with sucrose are actually going to be sweetened by a 50/50 glucose/fructose mix.
The study quoted by everyone found that fructose has a different insulin response profile, not HFCS. Other carbohydrates have different insulin profiles as well. Secondly, you often get the same effect from sucrose, depending on the food. Furthermore, the satiety idea is theory and was not actually studied. There really isn’t good research to support more than a “maybe” on the effect that HFCS is slightly different healthwise than sucrose. Even the researchers themselves admit that.
here’s an article outlining the AMA’s stance on HFCS, the research, etc :Time article
The last point you made is the best one. Yes, there is HFCS in nearly everything. If we had cheap sugar, it would be in nearly everything instead of HFCS. If neither product were cheap, food would be more expensive, because food tastes better with a sweetener in it. But reading the label does help, because it’s required to list calories per serving, the inclusion of sugar or HFCS, and other nutritional facts. It’s pretty obvious that pre-made food is going to have shelf-life enhancers, flavor components, and maybe more calories. And even if you buy into the theory that HFCS doesn’t satisfy as much, it doesn’t matter when it’s a half teaspoon in a big fat-laden burrito or a dash of HFCS contained in the tomato sauce of a slice of pizza.
I don’t think there actually is any credible evidence that HFCS is metabolically different than sucrose. It’s certainly been demonized to an extent that is frankly silly. As a diabetic, your best bet is to treat it the same way you would treat sugar until your doctor says differently.
At which point, the weight gain and associated cardiovascular problems would be much more significant than the amount of mercury ingested, and would present a more immediate danger.
That article is scaremongering BS. I’m pretty sure most municipal tap water has more mercury in it than corn syrup.
Parts per trillion? Yeesh.
I have the same complaint about HFCS, and about sugar in general, that I’m seeing voiced here. I figure the jury is still out on whether one is worse than the other and whether it contributed to the rise in American obesity. As a bit of a conspiracy theorist on this front I believe that at best, the switch to HFCS was a SMALL part of the increase in weight problems.
But my major beef with high calorie sweeteners is that they’re in everything and very difficult to avoid. We eat very well, cooking almost all our meals at home and eating a minimum of processed foods. But I’m realizing I need to minimize this even further. I am not diabetic, but I have to be very careful of how much sugar I consume because it can make me quite sick…nausea, diarrhea, trembling, sweating, etc. for several hours at a time if I get “too much.” How much is “too much” seems to vary from day to day.
So the last time I had a can of tomato soup, I spent the next five hours curled up in bed. I’m normally a pretty good label reader, but there have been a few times that HFCS snuck up on me in something low cal that I didn’t think I had to bother examining that closely, like a 100 calorie can of soup. I recently switched my yogurt brand because I was eating Yoplait Lite which lists HFCS as the second or third ingredient. I might be able to tolerate the yogurt, but then if I add a sandwich with HFCS laden bread or a piece of fruit in the next two hours, I’ll start hurling.
I find this annoying and frustrating. I understand that I’d have the same problem if we used cane sugar…and I’d whine about that too.