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.
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.
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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.
Fruit juice != fruit.
Drinking a tall glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 6~8 oranges, but without the fibers.
Your liver treats the massive sugar dump much differently than eating the equivalent # of [fruit].
The FDA wants to toss fruit juices into the same category of "bad" drinks as sugar laden sodas.
Re:It's all about the fiber (Score:5, Funny)
Fruit juice != fruit.
Drinking a tall glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 6~8 oranges, but without the fibers.
Your liver treats the massive sugar dump much differently than eating the equivalent # of [fruit].
The FDA wants to toss fruit juices into the same category of "bad" drinks as sugar laden sodas.
That can't be right! I have it on good authority that drinking 1 oz. of Mona Vie acai berry juice is even healthier than 12 servings of fruits and vegetables. It comes from a super fruit, from the Amazon jungles! In fact, recent studies have shown that just purchasing a case of these stylish bottles may have an immediate positive effect on your interpersonal relationships (with any and all family and friends who have invested in the authorized reseller program). So, I say "Bah!" to your "science". Mona Vie has what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!!
Re:It's all about the fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Fruit juice != fruit. Drinking a tall glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 6~8 oranges, but without the fibers. Your liver treats the massive sugar dump much differently than eating the equivalent # of [fruit].
The FDA wants to toss fruit juices into the same category of "bad" drinks as sugar laden sodas.
Exactly true, and yet millions of (nutritionally) uneducated mothers and/or fathers insist that their children drink plenty of juice (most of which is probably only 10% real fruit juice to begin with), instead of soda... because it's "healthy".
/. before), the title of which appealed to desire to be more of a man than I saw in the mirror at the time. The price of the book was less than a night at the local watering hole, so I went for it. When it arrived, first I thumbed through it. There was a lot of *common sense* stuff in there that just hadn't occurred to me before. So, I went back and READ it. Many an a-ha moment. Then I went back again and applied it. Now, at the risk of sounding like a braggart, I'm one of the most fit guys in the office. People are constantly asking for, and then either disregarding or outright refuting my advice. The result is, they're still fat, and I'm still not.
I won't go off on my usual rant about the terrible food pyramid we've been brainwashed with since the 60s ("eat a shitload of bread, but NO FATS!"), but the bigger problem I'm seeing every day is just an utter ignorance about what people put into their body, or an unwillingness to try something different.
"It says LEAN Cuisine on the box! That means I'll lose weight by eating it."
My dad taught me something when I was younger, probably without even meaning to... if you can't pronounce all the ingredients, you shouldn't eat it. Of course, as a kid, I ignored that advice and just ate whatever tasted good. My mother did her best, but she grew up in an Italian household, which means a lot of pasta and other starches. When she went back to work, the fridge was filled with microwaveable "food", that I could nuke whenever I thought I was hungry. Guess who was a fat kid who sucked at sports, couldn't keep up with friends when there was running, biking, climbing, or jumping was involved? 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.
It took a combination of a rough period in my life, combined with pure dumb luck... I was really low and, rather than drown myself in booze, I decided that I'd had enough, and that it was time to work on me. I got an email from a major men's magazine, offering a 30-day free trial of a book (which I've shilled on
Bottom line is, there's no magic pill, there's no silver bullet, there's really no secret. Back in the caveman days, right up to a half century ago, you almost had to try to get fat. Now, the food manufacturers (think about that phrase for a moment) are pumping chemicals into their products to make them taste better, cheaper. When I was a kid, McDonald's was a once-in-a-while treat. Now it's considered by many to be a viable option for all three major meals. People get in their car and drive to the store a block away. Hell, I see parents put their kids in the van and drive TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY to wait for the bus. People would rather wait in their car for 20 minutes in the Dunkin' Donuts drive through than park, get out, and be in and out of the place in 2 minutes. Schools have dropped gym class to save money and make more time for standardized tests. My oldest son tells me they don't really
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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 le
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?
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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 unwant
Re:HFC (Score:5, Informative)
HFCF is fructose and sucrose. Fructose [wikipedia.org] is absorbed by the small intestine. Sucrose (table sugar) is broken down in the stomach and small intestine into 1 glucose molecule and 1 fructose molecule, which are then both absorbed by the small intestine. So, either way you get fructose, big deal, right? That's the conventional wisdom.
But lets look further. If you eat 1 tablespoon of HCFC 55 (equal in sweetness to 1 tablespoon sucrose), you get .55 tablespoons of fructose and .45 tablespoons of sucrose. That sucrose is turned into half fructose and half glucose before entering the bloodstream. So in reality you ate .775 tablespoons of fructose and .225 tablespoons of glucose. This is significantly more fructose than if you had eaten 1 tablespoon of sucrose. And if you're consuming sugar water (as in the study) or lots and lots of soda, you're consuming far more than a tablespoon.
Of course your claim that it's "absorbed ... in the same way that beer and alcohol is. In the liver" isn't quite correct. They're all absorbed by the small intestine, but it's true they are metabolized by the liver, albeit in completely different ways. What's might be important about the liver, though, is that it's not regulated by insulin. While glucose can be metabolized by any of the bodies cells, insulin regulates blood glucose levels. Fructose is only processed by the liver and is indifferent to insulin levels. So (in a layman's, but more detailed explanation) when you eat that 1 tablespoon of table sugar, you get half a tablespoon of unregulated sugar and half regulated. Eat the HFCF55 and most of the sugar is unregulated.
As an aside, honey is almost identical in composition to HFCF55, so if you meet any holistics bemoaning HFCF and championing honey, you can tell them to screw off.
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].
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Has anyone actually tested this (surely there must be some way to make clean glucose and fructose and compare their impact to commercial HFCS.
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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
Re:HFC (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the federal standards for corn syrup: In General [grokfood.com] and Glucose syrup analytics [vlex.com].
You'll see that they only verify a few basic things. There are no standards for the amount of enzymes, pH, other contaminants, etc. Considering it's a 9-step process, there is a lot of room for contaminants to be introduced or not removed. I highly recommend not eating it if you're reading this ;)
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:HFC (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that high fructose corn syrup is actually a mixture of fructose and glucose, right? The ratio varies depending on the type of HFCS; many of them are around 50-50 (the two most common are 55% fructose and 42% fructose (HFCS-55 and HFCS-42, respectively). And you know what sucrose breaks down into in the stomach? A 50:50 glucose/fructose mixture.
Its this that makes it somewhat of a stretch to find what could cause a difference (a number of studies find no difference between the two). One theory is that the imbalance between fructose and sucrose, however small, makes the difference. Another is that HFCS doesn't require acid hydrolysis in the stomach, and this somehow affects the results. Another is that people will eat more sweet food when sweetened with HFCS instead of sucrose, although that's questionable and is notwhat this particular study is talking about. But really, the overall evidence is doubtful. The AMA says that it's "unlikely" that HFCS contributes more to obesity than sucrose does.
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And now, with this study, we can state with a fair degree of certainty that the AMA was wrong. So now, hopefully, this will put to rest the question of whether the rise in HFCS has caused the temporally coincident rise in obesity in the U.S. (which was previously only suspected due to correlation [ajcn.org]) so researchers can focus on the more important question of why the body treats it differently.
But it won't. This isn't [nih.gov] the [ajcn.org] first [mediaroom.com] study [nutritiona...bolism.com] that has suggested a strong causal link between HFCS and obesity. This one
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:HFC (Score:5, Insightful)
Trouble is...HFCS is in fucking everything..
Just try to find something as simple as a loaf of bread, or salad dressing without HFCS in it.
When I started reading labels, trying to cut carbs on the few processed foodstuff I do buy...I was amazed to find how pervasive that shit is in everything out there...
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Trouble is...HFCS is in fucking everything..
Move. Here in the UK, you hardly ever see it (and yes, I'm aware of the terminology difference: we call it inverted sugar syrup here).
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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: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.
Aussies are fat on cane sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:HFC (Score:4, Informative)
1 Sucrose is broken down to 1 glucose and 1 fructose in any slightly acidic environment. This includes the stomach and upper small intestine. Glucose and fructose freely pass the intestinal walls into the bloodstream where fructose is metabolized by the liver and glucose is metabolized by any body cell.
Re:HFC (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Biochemically [fructose] can enter the glycolytic cycle and is rapidly metabolized in much the same way as glucose.
Fructose is only metabolized when there is fructokinase available, and that exists only in the liver (well, and in sperm). Glucose, on the other hand, can be metabolized by just about every cell in the body. This has big implications for obesity and health. In addition, fructose seems to affect appetite differently from glucose. See the links below.
http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%201-2/car [medbio.info]
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Re:HFC (Score:5, Informative)
Fructose is the culprit. But there are differences. Pure fructose is hard to absorb. Fructose in fruit is released only slowly. Both are probably OK. Fructose in sucrose needs to be split off before being absorbed, which seems to limit its rate; at normal sucrose concentrations, the fructose is also absorbed more slowly than the glucose.
HFCS is the worst of the bunch: it doesn't need to be split, and the 1:1 fructose/glucose ratio is ideal for rapid absorption, and both sugars peak simultaneously, putting a large load on the liver.
So, you're fine with moderate sucrose consumption (disaccharides) and eating fruit till you burst (fructose+fiber). Pure fructose is iffy. And HFCS is a no-no.
Re:HFC (Score:5, Informative)
Parent is about 50% factually incorrect. See the earlier med student's response for the true metabolic process.
Bullshit. Go read up on the facts yourself before you start mouthing off:
http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%201-2/carbohydrate_metabolism.htm [medbio.info]
Queue . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Queue Corn Lobby response in 3 . . . 2. . . . 1 . . . .
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Glad to oblige! This story was posted on Science Daily yesterday. They included the following:
Editor's Note: In response to the above-mentioned study, The Corn Refiners Association issued a statement titled "Gross Errors in Princeton Animal Study on Obesity and High Fructose Corn Syrup: Research in Humans Discredits Princeton Study" (http://www.corn.org/princeton-hfcs-study-errors.html). This link is provided for information only -- no editorial endorsement is implied.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] covered this a few days ago, and their analysis (as opposed to the publicity blurb the university made up) said the study basically came out a wash. Some groups saw gains, some didn't, but there was no clear pattern.
I'm in the "HFCS should be avoided" camp at the moment, but this study doesn't really prove anything.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Another analysis of this from the LA Times:
A not-so-convincing case that high fructose corn syrup is worse for you than sugar [latimes.com]
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Sugar in general should be avoided. Fructose, which is the bad half of sugar and HFCS, is the culprit. It can only be processed by the liver, and during processing it wreaks havoc on the body's systems for controlling hunger, satiation, insulin, etc.
Take the time to watch this talk by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology [youtube.com]. It might save your life (by extending your life).
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: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!
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LOL, just realized this was satire. Very well done.
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
If you eat foods that only use it as a sweeter, your hunger will still be regulated and prevent you from over-eating. For example, you wouldn't eat a 24-oz steak, I hope, because you would be quite full long before you could finish). On the other hand, most people seem to have a bout as easy time drinking an 8 oz can of soda as a 24oz bottle, even though the 24-oz is 3 times larger.
The same goes for candy, if you replace if with bread, you have no hope of eating as many calories (and that's saying a lot because most people are capable of eating quite a lot of bread).
Use common sense, you don't need to cut high-fructose corn syrup out of you diet completely to dramatically reduce your consumption of it. Simply avoid eating foods where the majority of the calories come from high-fructose corn syrup and you body will take care of the rest.
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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...
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It's the same reason that marijuana is illegal. The cotton lobby made it illegal because they feared hemp.
What? Paper is a more credible enemy; Hearst [slashdot.org] used his newspaper to publish lies about Marijuana, at least in part because it threatened his timber paper business. But he was just one piece of the puzzle. Cotton won over Hemp because, at the time, cotton could be processed by machine and hemp could not. Mechanical processing for hemp wasn't available until a bit before World War II [wikipedia.org], at which time it was considered desirable as a warmaking supply.
But at least the rest of the world tastes our HFCS and doesn't use it...
In fact, our food exports have been deprecated across much of t
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's just the corn industry. The corn belt [wikipedia.org] states are stupidly influential, and have managed to maintain sugar tariffs and corn subsidies. If you can get real sugar, it would be much more expensive to use than corn syrup.
Nobody else seems to care. It directly benefits a lot of states, and the image of the Great American Small Family Farm has persisted in the popular imagination since we told the British where to stick their import taxes. If people are even aware of the subsidies, they're not seen as "handouts to big Agribusiness", but help to the mostly non-existent poor struggling farmers.
Most other businesses are still considered "evil." Not sure why agriculture gets a free pass.
Note, I don't mean to be insulting by this, I'm genuinely interested...
Thanks for minding our delicate nationalist sensibilities. Brittle people like me appreciate it.
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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?
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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?
Yes.
King Corn [imdb.com]
Food, Inc. [imdb.com]
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I rarely put a sauce of any sort on my steaks, and I primarily use either Best Foods mayo (preferably with olive oil, as I find it just a little bit tastier than the already tasty normal mayo) or various spicy mustard types on hot dogs, sandwiches, and burgers, and neither of those condiments have HFCS in them (Best Foods specifically lists "sugar" as an ingredient, not HFCS). I find that ketchup and BBQ sauces often mask the much better natural flavors of the meat. There are times when a good BBQ sauce i
Re:Queue . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Make your own ketchup - it's REALLY easy, actually - just google for recipes. It's pretty much just tomato, vinegar, onion powder, and sugar (salt and oil optional), plus perhaps a little starch to get the right texture. Buy canned tomatoes in bulk, throw a can or so of them into a blender with everything else, cook and stir until smooth and even, then put it into a container in the fridge. Cleanup is just running water over everything. 15 minutes work for as much as you want to make. Incidentally, a little more sugar/oil/vinegar makes it into french dressing.
There you go - good ketchup without HFCS.
Ryan Fenton
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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 proba
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.
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No, it's not. Move to a city where there's Whole Foods markets nearby (they're nationwide, so it shouldn't be too hard). They have a dizzying selection of good food, and I don't think there's a single product in the whole store with HFCS in it. They also have their own house brand, "365", which is fairly reasonably priced. The 365-brand ketchup is better-tasting than any Heinz/Hunts/etc, and uses sugar instead of HFCS, and only costs $3 per bottle I think.
I went on a HFCS-free diet a while ago because I
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Whole Foods does stock products with HFCS in them, just not as many as most stores. Their only hard and fast rules are no trans-fats, and no artificial colors.
BTW, I know a couple of people who shop fairly religiously at Whole Foods. They clued me in to the nickname of "Whole Paycheck" not long ago. They eat healthier, but they both admit that they pay substantially more for the ability to do so.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I've looked at my local Whole Foods for HFCS. It's in many of their salad dressings and barbecue sauces they carry. Although to be fair, there are more trace amounts of HFCS, they don't carry things like HFCS-sweetened bread. However, they do stock and sell agave nectar syrup (and market it fairly aggressively as end-cap displays) and agave nectar syrup is even worse than HFCS [westonaprice.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have sugar in bread? That's crazy, and I had to check I wasn't missing a joke [bakeryandsnacks.com]. That article says someone is selling bread with aspartame in the USA.
Copied from the factory-produced cheap British bread's label: "Ingredients: wheat flour, water, wheatgerm, yeast, wheat fibre, fermented wheat flour, salt, calcium carbonate, soya flour, wheat protein, vegetable fibre, emulsifier (E472e), vegetable fat, ascorbic acid". The more expensive one has similar ingredients. I'm actually surprised there's so many ing
Re: (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 yea
Re: (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: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone know where I can get a QueueQuat?
Re:Corn Lobby Response submitted... (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, I can see that commercial too.
Soft focus. Sunrise. Dew on the stalks. A ladybug rouses from slumber. Woman in her natural beauty walks barefoot through soft rows. A newborn baby is cradled in the arms of a woman who has, I promise you, never given birth.
The cutline/voiceover -- "Corn syrup. Made from nature. As natural as Hollywood breasts."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Brown sugar is just the second (or third) extraction in sugar processing. It's still sugar, with molasses in it. Granulated sugar is not bleached, it's the first pass, pure extracted sugar from the processing of sugarcane or sugar beets.
Honey is concentrated bee barf. Tasty, but gross.
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.
Re:Not as bad as something else (Score:5, Informative)
Usual table sugar - sucrose - is a disaccharide made from one molecule of fructose and one of glucose. The glucose part triggers the insulin production, which signals that you have taken in calories. So, if you use normal sugar instead of HFCS, your body knows that you got energy way faster. That seems to be the main obesity mechanism associated with HFCS.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not as bad as something else (Score:5, Informative)
Hope that suffices for starters. For more details, I'd have to break out the literature... and I am stressing my own liver with a decent red wine way too much for that at the moment
Re:Not as bad as something else (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, would your libertarian streak be OK with just not subsidizing so damn much corn, then?
(The government already is interfering with the system. It's just making us sick thanks to the economic incentives.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Avoid eating HFCS fed rats (Score:5, Funny)
RE: Eating HFCS Rats (Obligatory Quote) (Score:5, Funny)
Catherine: Not recently, Clark. He read that squirrels were high in cholesterol.
Eating the rats would be healthier (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, I know you're snarking, but seriously, healthy rat meat would have a lot more nutritional value than the caloric equivalent of soda pop.
As for rats raised on high fructose corn syrup, they actually have nice marbled flesh. Fries up real good, and smells like cola on the grill.
Its the subsidies that are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This would also solve the hemorrhagic ecoli problem in cattle farms by making grass cheaper then corn husks for feed.
Re:Its the subsidies that are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, government subsidies that make corn cheaper are only half the problem; they're just making the corn syrup cheap.
Government price supports for sugar are the other half -- trade barriers that stop us from importing cheap sugar from places like brazil that would love to sell it to us make sugar expensive.
Skepticical: Study Results are inconclusive (Score:5, Informative)
Arstechnica.com covered this same study the other day. Their writeup is better than mine would be so why don't you read their article? http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/does-high-fructose-corn-syrup-make-you-fatter.ars [arstechnica.com]
The abridged version of the abridged version is that this study does not conclusively prove much of anything.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's great, and avoiding HFCS helps toward that goal (apparently) - HFCS blocks you from feeling full, so you eat more. If that's true and is really a big effect, then all that would be required to get caloric intakes to a reasonable level would be removing HFCS.
That's no longer micromanagement, but a single large change that could (partially) solve the overlying issue, which is consuming too many calories as you say.
Obesity is a bigger problem in the US than in most other places, and the US is also the p
Don't forget correlation is not causation! (Score:4, Insightful)
What, no "correlation is not causation" tag? I thought this was Slashdot's response to question the validity of any and all scientific research reported here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks, I came in here looking for some idiot to post that overused phrase. Now I'm happy to find out that the only post to mention it so far was satire.
Re:Don't forget correlation is not causation! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, the other way around would mean that the rats that were doomed to become fat, caused themselves to get HFCS.
And that would be religious logic instead of scientific.
(Scientific logic is saying that it must be true because Princeton said so.)
Gatorade switching... (Score:4, Informative)
Gatorade in the past has had high fructose corn syrup, but over the past several months have begun phasing in a sucrose/dextrose blend. I've actually begun switching from Powerade to Gatorade because of this, even though it's 15% or so more expensive.
Re:Gatorade switching... (Score:4, Informative)
Gatorade used to not use HFCS a few years ago. I noticed when they switched to using HCFS and contacted their customer relations department. Here's the response I got from Gatorade:
water switching... (Score:4, Insightful)
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!)
FOOLS! Drink the refreshing beverage . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . that nature INTENDED you to drink.
Coffee.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
give me more of that (Score:5, Insightful)
Cane sugar is far more efficient to produce than corn sweetener but is primarily produced in tropical and subtropical regions outside of the United States . The agribusiness lobby in in the United States pays off politicians to restrict imports, driving up the price of sugar within the the U.S. to above that of corn syrup. Without import restrictions on sugar, all those products you buy which are sweetened with corn syrup would be sweetened with sugar instead. And cost less.
You can blame the agribusiness lobby and the protectionist whores in the U.S. congress for this situation. It is a clear-cut case of government power expended to benefit he corrupt few at the expense of the many.
Can We All Agree..... (Score:3, Insightful)
That, from now on, posting that crap about 'Calories in vs. Calories out' is an offense punishable by death.
I've got a list of medical studies that show *what* you eat has a dramatic affect on your body composition; even when the calories are the same.
And yet - I still hear it....all the time....'Calories in vs. Calories out'.
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
Actual paper does not support that conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From the institute of Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty much common knowledge that cheaper substitute ingredients are almost always unhealthy.
I distrust "common knowledge, especially this bit. Bear in mind that if you find a case where the cheaper alternative is more healthy, people would pretty much go with it and you'd never think about it as it's a no-brainer. The trouble with that is that it tends to bias your perception, as you've shown and can easily keep you from examining a new option because it is cheaper. (In fact, this has been found to be the case: people won't buy products they think are too low in price even when the quality is as good or better. I wish I had my source handy for that.)
Re:In humans too... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In humans too... (Score:5, Informative)
Heh...
There's been a few other long-term studies that were done that were claimed "inconclusive" prior to this one. Most of them showed there was a serious problem with HFCS, but this one goes further to show that it's worse than many thought of the stuff.
If you're counting calories- it's identical. That's what the producers of HFCS would have you believe is all that matters.
The problem is that it isn't identical. Not even close.
The fructose is in an immediately available fashion to your body, which means it's absorbed on the spot, unlike sucrose which has to be cracked apart first. From there it lies in your blood stream until your liver can utilize it. Your liver absorbs and converts some of this fructose into it's roughly one day's store of glycogen. Once it has a day's worth of reserve, it starts converting the rest as it gets to it into triglycerides and fatty tissue within the liver (Look up "fatty liver disease" via Google...). While it's waiting to be converted the pancreas sees the sugar levels rise and tries to pull the sugar OUT of the blood stream by increasing insulin levels. Unfortunately, only glucose responds directly to the insulin part of your hormone system- fructose is largely processed by your liver and only your liver. This has the predictable effect of yanking the glucose out of your blood stream. At some threshold, the body detects problems caused by the sugars being ripped out of your system by that and starts producing glucagon which orders the liver to start converting the glycogen in it's store back into glucose. Over time, this swinging, the triglycerides, and the other stuff going on combine to provide leptin resistance and insulin resistance- which are the hallmark signs of Type 2 Diabetes, something we're supposedly having an "epidemic" of in the "Western" world.
And this doesn't even get into the traces of mercury and other chemicals you're exposed to when you eat HFCS as part of your diet.
In the end, while you do need Fructose, you don't need the quantities that the Western populace seem to consume, nor do you need or want it in the form that we're exposed to it.
Re:In humans too... (Score:5, Funny)
One thing seems for certain, Laboratory Rats are a miserable lot. They seem to be susceptible to cancer and just about everything else you can imagine. Why not test something really hardy instead? Why not politicians?
Rats are much better human analogs then politicians.
Re: (Score:3)
It breaks-down in the body the same way (fructose and glucose). There's no real difference.
If you had the article, you'd know that this isn't true.
Re:In humans too... (Score:4, Informative)
It has the same number of calories as Sugar. It breaks-down in the body the same way (fructose and glucose). There's no real difference.
With carbohydrates, it's all in the timing--the slower they are delivered, the better. HFCS is a mixture of monosaccharides, which can be absorbed directly, so anything you consume goes directly into the bloodstream. Sucrose needs to be broken down first, and that can only happen at a limited rate.