High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats 542
krou writes "In an experiment conducted by a Princeton University team, 'Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.' Long-term consumption also 'led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.' Psychology professor Bart Hoebel commented that 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.'"
HFC (Score:5, Interesting)
That is because HFC is absorbed by the body in the same way that beer and alcohol is. In the liver. HFC also suppresses the satiety (hunger) signal so people tend to eat more.
Not as bad as something else (Score:5, Interesting)
HFCS is bad, but not NEARLY as bad as Crystalline Fructose, which makes an appearance in beverages like Vitamin Water. Do some google searching on it...it's much harder to break down in your liver than HFCS.
http://www.thefitshack.com/2007/03/28/what-is-crystalline-fructose/ [thefitshack.com] for some examples.
Patriotism and Elections (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, that isn't going to matter as long as Iowa and the corn farmers have the political power that they do.
If there is one good thing about the new "Obamacare" bill, it's that unhealthy things will cost the government money. The downside is they will now have one more reason to regulate.
Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
i mentioned this before (Score:2, Interesting)
How does this compare to regular corn syrup? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody know of research that compares this to regular corn syrup (i.e., that which has not been "treated" to convert some of the glucose into fructose to bring the sweetness to table-sugar levels)? I'm just curious if it's corn syrup in general or if there's something peculiar to HFCS.
In any case, I think people need to realize that neither table sugar nor HFCS is "good"--they're both concentrations of sweetness far greater than those found anywhere in nature, and they are purely empty Calories. Avoid them both and eat whole foods as much as you can--and, of course, get some exercise. (If only you could put that into the US healthcare bill!)
Re:Not as bad as something else (Score:2, Interesting)
It's all about the fiber (Score:5, Interesting)
All fructose is processed by the liver in the same way as alcohol. That includes fruit juice.
All this changes in the presence of fiber. If you eat a piece of fresh fruit, the fiber in the fruit changes the way the fructose from the fruit is absorbed so it's not such a huge shock to the liver.
The bottom line is that if you eat carbohydrates, you should make sure it's with plenty of fiber. In other words, eat pieces of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, just as nutritionists have been telling us for years. On food labels, I look for a % USRDA of fiber greater than or equal to the % USRDA of carbohydates, or grams of fiber at least 1/10 the grams of carbohydrate. It makes you feel more full with less food and prevents the sugar rush and crash from your liver absorbing the carbs too quickly.
Re:Not as bad as something else (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not arguing with your conclusions, and think satiety suppression is probably a major factor in why HCFS seems to result in problems, but it's not apparent to me that stress on the liver is an issue.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
If the rats had free access, how did they control for the amount consumed?
Your criticisms may be apt but I would like to point out that after listening the evil shroud surrounding HFCS I decided to do an experiment with myself to see if eliminating HFCS from my diet while eating the same as I always have would cause me to lose or gain weight.
And I had to make sure only to buy things at Trader Joes since my local grocery store carried but one loaf of bread with no HFCS in it and it was hilariously marked up as some organic bullshit.
The problems didn't stop there. HFCS is quite literally everywhere. It's a preservative, a sweetener, everything. It got to be really ridiculous. After about a month of the whole charade my weight was about the same but I had been having wild cravings of ketchup (no, I wasn't pregnant). After satisfying this with some baked potatoes and french fries here and there loaded with ketchup, it dawned on me to inspect the label of my Heinz ketchup bottle. Fucking HFCS. Seriously? Upon returning to the store the "organic" ketchup is ridiculously expensive.
Due to government subsidies and advanced food science, you cannot control your intake of HFCS. It's bloody impossible in today's America. I don't know how to fix this but you can be damned sure the Corn lobby likes it this way. I'm not saying it's as evil as trans fats or bad cholesterol but holy hell is it pervasive and uncapitalistically inexpensive!
To hell with CORN (Score:2, Interesting)
Can we please, for fucks sake, end corn subsidies and terminate sugarcane tarrifs? Soda tasted better when actual sugar was in it anyway.
I'm sick of corn. Everything we eat has corn in it. Corn corn corn corn corn. Iowa and Nebraska farmers could learn to grow something else.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the same reason that marijuana is illegal. The cotton lobby made it illegal because they feared hemp. Then it became a moral issue (that oddly, no one had about tobacco and we had just swung the other way on with alcohol) and we exported our morals to the rest of the world. But at least the rest of the world tastes our HFCS and doesn't use it...
Re:HFC (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, but sucrose is broken down into fructose and glucose over a period of time. By contrast, free fructose is ready to absorb immediately. It's would not be at all surprising for the body to absorb bound and unbound fructose at different rates as a result of the extra processing required before bound fructose can be absorbed.
an ex-fat geek: how i finally lost weight (Score:4, Interesting)
ketosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis [wikipedia.org]
yes, its sort of the atkins diet, or the caveman diet: its how our caveman ancestors spent pretty much their entire lives, its what our biochemistry is idealized for, pre-agricultural revolution
all it means is you eat fat and protein, and no carbohydrates. the pounds melt right off
it forces your body to manufacture ketones from fat, and use that to power the krebs cycle (where you get your energy from), and to go into gluconogenesis (sugar from proteins)
eat ALL YOU WANT: eggs and bacon, butter on everything, fish, chicken, cheese, nuts. eat fistfuls of macadamia nuts all day. even hard liquor (no sugar). but absolutely NO sugar or carbs, no rice, no bread, no milk, nothing sweet or starchy at all, period
you won't be hungry, but the monotony of the diet will leave you hating fat and protein, and just the thought of popcorn will turn you into a craven vampire
so what you do is carb cycle: you give yourself a break, say on weekends, where you get to pig out on sweets. trust me: ketosis during the week will more than make up for your indulging on weekends. it will also take you out of danger from the vague stresses you are putting on your body (see negatives below)
funny thing: i felt more lethargic, but slept with less quality, when eating carbs again. this diet, for whatever its worth, really makes you realize that high carb diets are not what homo sapiens is optimized for. our biochemistry has not yet caught up with our recent (evolutionarily speaking) agricultural revolution
i also have tinnitus, and i noticed that without sugar, the ringing in my ears was lessened, then, when i ate sugar, it came roaring back. they also use the ketosis diet to control people prone to seizures, so high ketones and no sugar seems to have a neurological impact. i would be interested in a study showing if the kind of inflammation which is alzheimer's is due to high carb diets: that's wild ass speculation on my part. i did read of a woman who put her alzheimer's husband on a ketosis diet of palm oil, and his symptoms got better (google it). again: THIS IS WILD ASS CONJECTURE, but a potentially interesting line of thought, the connection between carbs and inflammation in various disease systems
drink tons of coffee, it seems to help with hunger. but it has to be BLACK: no sugar, no milk. also drink a lot of pepsi max/ coke zero: the sweetener in those is actually a tiny protein. drink gallons of the stuff, it will fill your stomach
important: get your vitamins. since you're not getting many veggies (low carb veggies like broccoli and lettuce is pretty much ok, but you're missing out on wonderful foods like blueberries with this diet), you need supplements
negatives:
ketosis makes your blood slightly acidic (its not ketoacidosis, that's far worse, like with anorexics, who don't eat at all), which means you will be leaching calcium and magnesium, and stressing your kidneys and weakening your bones (this is all happening on a minor basis, relax). take calcium citrate supplements. paradoxically, eating more calcium will help you avoid kidney stones (the most common kind of kidney stone is caused by oxalate, and calcium inhibits oxalate absorption from the intestines), and the citrate helps in ketosis for... some reason i forgot. potassium and magnesium citrate supplements are good to, i forgot exactly why
your breath will stink: you're exhaling acetone through your lungs while in ketosis. but remember, chicks don't like fat guys, and your diet is not permanent, so just avoid breathing on chicks for awhile while on your diet
if these negatives scare you, think about the diabetes and heart disease you are giving yourself with your carb addiction: far more dangerous than a temporary diet which will make you a healthy weight
Re:Queue . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
I beg to differ about not being able to control HFCS intake. Basically, I eat far lower down the food processing chain than ever. Diabetes runs in my family. I don't have diabetes and I don't want it, and over doing any sweetener is bad and HFCS is much worse than any of the others. I read labels carefully. I get most of my sweets from fruits and more complex sugars. No soda, unsweetened ice tea. More cooking from scratch and salads. Making your own salad dressing is *easy*. Just get a bottle and put in oil, vinegar and spice. And far cheaper.
Also, I first became aware of this when a friend of mine turned out to have horrible reactions to HFCS. That's when I realized most of the supermarket was off-limits to her. I then started reading labels and began to understand how bad the situation is.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to endorse the sentiment expressed by Ars and expand upon it. Since I have access to most scientific journals, a couple days ago when this study was first published, but before any secondary analysis appeared on the web, I printed it out and took it home to read. I read scientific papers all the time (usually physics and chemistry), probably hundreds of papers per year, so I like to think that I'm pretty familiar with how good science is done and what constitutes a well designed, rigorously conducted investigation.
The impression I got while reading this paper, is that it is a total piece of crap. It is confusingly written to begin with, but there are serious problems with methodology, controls, conclusions, assumptions about caloric intake and claimed statistical significance. It's a joke. Which, I guess is why it's published in an obscure journal with a pathetic 2.7 impact factor. Two sites explaining the problems in more detail are the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe forums at: http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,26925.15.html [sguforums.com] and this blog post by Marion Nestle (a New York University professor in the department of nutrition, food studies, and public health with a Ph.D. in molecular biology): http://www.foodpolitics.com/2010/03/hfcs-makes-rats-fat/ [foodpolitics.com]
None of this told me how Princeton, of all places, could publish such a shit study though.....until I noticed this at the top of the paper that all the authors are from the Uni's PSYCHOLOGY department. Oh, I guess that's how.
Re:HFC (Score:4, Interesting)
galactose
So what are you saying? That lactose is like the Silver Surfer of food sources, bringing with it great peril and warning? ;)
Personally, what I found most interesting about the study is that they tested with normal soda-levels of table sugar, but the HFCS-water they fed the rats had only HALF the saturation of your average soda pop... and yet they STILL found that the rats were making little pigs of themselves.
Biochemically ... is rapidly metabolized in much the same way as glucose.
I don't think it is the biochemical absorption that matters in the equation. I believe the point was being made that there is an effect, unstudied, in how either the imbalance or the fact that the HFCS sugar comes "pre-separated" and thus causes a failure in the normal saitety reflex.
When I think about reading the labels on various foods and seeing how HFCS is practically fucking everywhere except for freshly picked fruits/veg and freshly chopped meats straight from the butcher (seriously, have you noticed there is even HFCS in prepackaged DELI MEATS and canned vegetables???), it scares the crap out of me.
Re:HFC (Score:5, Interesting)
HFCS is created with an enzymatic process. The HFCS food companies buy is dirty. It's mostly fructose and glucose but it also contains the enzymes used to convert the corn starch. You can't remove it all, apparently. And the standards are based on very small serving sizes. When people are drinking 50-100g a day of it, this enzyme builds up in the human system and attaches to other starch and performs the same conversion process to sugar. Normally this process takes more energy but with the unnatural enzyme it doesn't, and therefore it causes more efficient breakdown of starch. These people also tend to have a bag of chips or fries with their 50-100g of corn syrup. This means all of that becomes sugar. Since the body can't use the sugar, insulin is released and reactions occur and "bada-bing" FAT.
See Alpha-amylase [wikipedia.org], Glucoamylase [wikipedia.org], and Xyloase [wikipedia.org].
Re:HFC (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, having 22% more fructose than glucose still does everything attributed to HFCS. It'd be interesting to see if HFCS 42 behaves similarly to HFCS 55, since it's got 28% less fructose than glucose, and gets labeled as the same thing.
Re:It's all about the fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
If we didn't involve eating carbohydrates, then how come lactose (a carbohydrate) occurs at greater frequencies in regions where there is a tradition of drinking dairy products (1% of Dutch being intolerant versus 95% of Chinese being intolerant)? The theory I've heard is that populations in these regions evolved to have this trait at a greater frequency because of the reproductive benefit of being able to consume dairy products later in life. So then at least some of us have evolved eating them?
Re:Queue . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone done one of those "Fahrenheit 9/11" or "sicko" style documentaries exposing American agribusiness and all the stuff they dont want you to know?
Re:It's all about the fiber (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, we have made small evolutionary changes to adapt to increased carbohydrate consupmtion, such as preserving the enzyme for digesting lactose beyond the age of 3. But biologically, these are small changes. Changes such as how the liver operates or how energy is used at the cellular level, are most likely the same as they were 10,000 years ago before the agricultural revolution. Carbohydrates tend to be a more difficult form of energy to process biologically than protein or fat - sugars can bind to unwanted areas of an organism (advanced glycation end products). A study done last year for example showed that c. elegans worms had a 20% reduced lifespan on a glucose high diet.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:HFC (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, and there's all those crap corn advertisements trying to make people believe corn sugar is just the same and just as safe as regular sugar.
What a load of crapaganda
Reminds me of all the FUD around Stevia -- not the commercial stuff, but the natural refined crystals from plant. 1 oz = ~ 12.5 lbs of sugar equivalent. Average usage ... .05gram.
Do youknow how long 1oz of that white powder lasts for sweetening unsweetened breakfast serial eat 2-3 times/day? OR occasionally sweetening of unsweetened koolaid type drinks in place of sugared ones?
Nearly a year for 1 person -- easily!
Do you know how much this would save in money and calories for the average person?!?!
(And it has minor blood pressure lower effects).
Supposed effects on sperm are unnoticed in any human populations or tests.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
You think you're being funny, but in the past month or two, the corn-syrup folks have already started running commercials that claim their product is just as good as regular old sugar when used in processed foods.
High-Fructose Corn Syrup Ad 1 [youtube.com]
High-Fructose Corn Syrup Ad 2 [youtube.com]
High-Fructose Corn Syrup Ad 3 [youtube.com]
Re:HFC (Score:4, Interesting)
And now, with this study, we can state with a fair degree of certainty that the AMA was wrong.
Um, huh? One study overturns all research on a subject?
No. T his is just the latest volley in an issue that's being hit on both sides. Wikipedia has a nice writeup [wikipedia.org] of most of the well known studies on the subject. There are plenty of studies on both sides of the subject.
The proper way to handle such situations is to wait for an appropriate scientific organization to review the current state of the literature and release findings, not to run right in and selectively pick which ones say what you want to hear.
Re:HFC (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I can find. I did find some studies involving HFCS as a food for bees. Apparently there are some other byproducts that are toxic to bees. Unfortunately, HFCS is commonly used as a food for bees to prime them. This article [usda.gov] has a lot of information and analysis of commercial HFCS. Could this be part of the bee death problem in America? This is something we're going to be hearing about more and more over the next few years unless they can get to the bottom of it. It's not surprising, to me, to find another outlet for corn syrup causing problems. I hope that the increasing consumer education and pressure will hopefully lead to it fading away, or at least higher purity being enforced. Also, possibly alarmingly, a lot of commercial HFCS is made in China, and more than likely it finds it's way into food here in the US.
Aussies are fat on cane sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:HFC (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I'm not even sure if Mexican Coca-Cola uses sugar anymore...
Yup, we still enjoy sugar-cola in Mexico. If I recall correctly the problem stated by GP comes from the fact that the USA gives a LOT of subsidies to corn. So much that even Mexico is suffering of it (cannot compete vs those low prices!).
This makes corn syrup considerably cheaper than cane sugar, and as a consequence a lot of food manufacturers use it as sweetener.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeast requires sugar in order to produce the carbon dioxide that creates the tiny bubbles in the final product. Not all of the sugar gets eaten, so there will be some left over for the human... but some bread companies are probably adding even more sugar in order to make their bread sell better.
I did an experiment at home and discovered that commercial yeast can eat splenda (sucralose) just as well as sugar (sucrose), but cannot eat aspartame (nutrasweet). No doubt the splenda molecule is so close to sucrose that the yeast don't notice... IIRC splenda is sugar with one carbon swapped out for a chlorine.
You can try it yourself, just mix 120-degree-F water with a packet of yeast and a teaspoon of something you want the yeast to eat.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
In general, cooking your own food has become the only way to reliably avoid HFCS. Brands I have known and loved for years have sold out recently, probably due to the sagging economy, and products I've been consuming since I was a kid have suddenly sprouted HFCS, MSG, or both. Even bulk ingredients aren't guaranteed to be free of nastiness, but luckily it's easy enough to find hormone-free dairy, and organic flour is still cheap. Hey, it's flour, right? I think there's plenty of food additives that are probably harmless or even helpful to the human body, but in general most of that crap is just that, and you're best off producing a product which doesn't have any of that nonsense in it.
About the only thing I refuse to make on a regular basis is bread, because it's actual work to do it as well as some of the stuff you can buy in the store. When I have access to quality fresh bread, I buy that, but most fresh bread available in typical grocery stores is made from blobs of frozen dough anyway, slacked the night before according to schedule.
Re:It's all about the fiber (Score:3, Interesting)
Guess who grew up to be a fat adult who tried all the same shit (pills, "diet" meals, "magic" exercise apparatus, etc.) as many other fat people, with the same results... still fat.
I decided to comment rather than moderate. Dieting is a dumb idea thrust upon us by marketing and companies trying to sell us something. Never, ever, never, ever diet. Dieting is for losers. Diet is for marketing sock puppets. There is a huge difference between dieting and a healthy diet. The former is a plan for failure. The later is a plan for a healthy life.
Here's a reasonable basis to begin a healthy life. This may not be for everyone, but for most, it makes for a good basis to move forward.
Every (at least two out of three) meal must have two sources of green, leafy vegetables. Salads are great and can even include fruit. If cooked, each serving should be no smaller than the size of your fist. If uncooked, each serving should be no smaller than twice the size of your fist. Eat red meat no more than once per week. Prefer poultry, fish, oily fish, and pork; but pork no more than twice per week. A red meat serving should never be larger than your fist. Fish and poultry should typically be as large as your fist, but never larger than two. Fish sticks are a processed product and are never made from oily fish. They don't count.
Salad dressing can be used, so long as its not a sweet dressing. As usual moderation is the rule of the day. If you can only see your dressing, you're eating too much. If you're not used to eating salads and salad dressing, look at what is recommended for a single serving. Use that as a starting basis. Remember, a salad should be no smaller than two to four fists in size.
Notice broccoli, despite being green, is not leafy; thusly does not count as a vegetable in your diet. You can still consume it. Its good fiber. With it, hopefully you'll consume other, non-leafy green vegetables too, on a regular basis. Just because the minimum is two, leafy, greens, doesn't mean that's the absolute limit to what you should be consuming.
Corn should be completely out of your diet. Corn is basically fiber plus a simple sugar. Because of the way most people cook it, the sugar is easily processed by your body. The good news is, you can add nuts, seeds, and berries to your diet to replace the sweet fixed provided by corn.
Contrary to popular myth, potatoes are not bad. Eat one up to a couple times per week. This should not be confused with mashed potatoes and especially never with instant, mashed potatoes. The later of which has largely been broken down and is more readily converted into sugars. The former of which is a complex carb and is much more slowly broken down into sugars. The later is a excellent source of fiber and long lasting energy. That's why its literally fed to Olympians during competition. When you cook it, cook it until its tender and eatable, but no more. The more you cook it, the more you convert it to a simple carb, which is more easily broken down into sugar.
Speaking of potatoes, cheeses can and should be consumed. Several studies indicate the calcium plus other "stuff" in cheese seems to encourage your body to naturally trim down. Even people who are lactose intolerant can consume cheese. As with anything, moderation should be used. Regardless, it can be consumed on a daily basis. To be absolutely clear, I'm talking about real cheese - not just cheese with a label. Highly processed cheeses such as Krafts Singles and Velveeta are completely out. This, of course, means all cheeses used in fast food is also out. So if your cheese did not come from a wheel or block, don't eat it. Again, I want to stress moderation.
Next, eliminate all soda from your diet. This especially includes all diet sodas. If you want a treat from time to time, only drink clear, non-diet sodas. Sodas on the number one cause of people going off on sugar binges; and especially those who drink diet sodas.
Eliminate all artificial sweeteners. If you can, cons