HFCS
High-fructose corn syrup rose from obscurity to ubiquity starting in the late 1970s, borne up by an informal public-private partnership between grain-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland and the federal government. For me, HFCS is at best a highly processed, lavishly subsidized, calorie-heavy, nutritional vacuum.
I recently visited a public high school in Boone, N.C. The main hall literally hummed with machines peddling variations on Coca-Cola’s formula for success: fizzy water with artificial flavor, artificial color, added caffeine, and a jolt of HFCS. Other machines displayed snack “foods” tarted up with HFCS. Why are we feeding our kids this crap, again?
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Researchers have established the conditions that foster formation of potentially dangerous levels of a toxic substance in the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) often fed to honey bees. Their study, which appears in ACS’ bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, could also help keep the substance out of soft drinks and dozens of other human foods that contain HFCS. The substance, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), forms mainly from heating fructose.
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For the record, I have avoided where possible HFCS for the last six weeks, and my weight dropped — even with my habit of eating like a starved coyote from 6 through 9 every night…. I eat a lot — from 175 to the low 160s. This was not a weight management program, since I could care less ( my pants fit better when I was ftter), but it suggests something about HFCS, because I still eat sugar and honey and fruit without a second thought to calories, etc.
James:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/04/fructose-vs-glucose-showdown.html
Fructose vs. Glucose Showdown
As you’ve probably noticed, I believe sugar is one of the primary players in the diseases of civilization. It’s one of the “big three” that I focus on: sugar, industrial vegetable oil and white flour. It’s becoming increasingly clear that fructose, which constitutes half of table sugar and typically 55% of high-fructose corn syrup, is the problem. A reader pointed me to a brand new study (free full text!), published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, comparing the effect of ingesting glucose vs. fructose.
The investigators divided 32 overweight men and women into two groups, and instructed each group to drink a sweetened beverage three times per day. They were told not to eat any other sugar. The drinks were designed to provide 25% of the participants’ caloric intake. That might sound like a lot, but the average American actually gets about 25% of her calories from sugar! That’s the average, so there are people who get a third or more of their calories from sugar. In one group, the drinks were sweetened with glucose, while in the other group they were sweetened with fructose.
After ten weeks, both groups had gained about three pounds. But they didn’t gain it in the same place. The fructose group gained a disproportionate amount of visceral fat, which increased by 14%! Visceral fat is the most dangerous type; it’s associated with and contributes to chronic disease, particularly metabolic syndrome, the quintessential modern metabolic disorder (see the end of the post for more information and references). You can bet their livers were fattening up too.
The good news doesn’t end there. The fructose group saw a worsening of blood glucose control and insulin sensitivity. They also saw an increase in small, dense LDL particles and oxidized LDL, both factors that associate strongly with the risk of heart attack and may in fact contribute to it. Liver synthesis of fat after meals increased by 75%. If you look at table 4, it’s clear that the fructose group experienced a major metabolic shift, and the glucose group didn’t. Practically every parameter they measured in the fructose group changed significantly over the course of the 9 weeks. It’s incredible.
25% of calories from fructose is a lot. The average American gets about 13%. But plenty of people exceed that, perhaps going up to 20% or more. Furthermore, the intervention was only 10 weeks. What would a lower intake of fructose, say 10% of calories, do to a person over a lifetime? Nothing good, in my opinion. Avoiding refined sugar is one of the best things you can do for your health.
25 October 2009, 1:54 amtochigi:
interesting comments, James.
6 November 2009, 9:46 ami think it is actually worse though, because a lot of epidemiological evidence seems to suggest that HFCS is worse than normal fructose, probably due to the way it is processed with various enzymes and reactants. it seems to totally confuse the human metabolic function in a way even normal fructose doesn’t. i read all the food labels, and i avoid HFCS as much as possible. abandoning it completely would be much better though.
Michael Anderson:
Stan—any other links to this video??? It has been replaced by a “search page” that DOES NOT HAVE THE VIDEO ON IT ANYWHERE.
11 December 2009, 2:16 pmTodd Millions:
Stan-best advice is too avoid ALL corn product or possibility of corn product.The BT contamination amounts are seriously understated via official tests.
19 December 2009, 4:59 pmWhen medical researchers wish too know what is actualy going on-a situation that would never be allowed too arise at health canada I assure you-the first animal model they reach for due too similar pysiological responces is -PIGS.NOT rats or monkeys.
In 2002 the officially approved bt corn(starlink)was being withdrawn for its approved use as hog feed,due to toxic effects(amoung others-chronic joint and organ swelling and inflamation that adventis had reported as ‘enhanced weight gain’).At the same time,testing finally revealed that due too pollen drift,this toxic crap was all thru the corn stocks-both the approved starlink and at least 2 unstable unmarkered variants that don’t show up on the official testing at all.The same has happened with rice,flax,barley.These pollen escapes are round up and other herbiside mods-toxicity unclear.
But the pig feed -’experiment’ is enough too justify total avoidance and I can confirm this via personel experince.
Curt:
When I go to buy some food at the grocery store I think that it is almost impossible to make a fully informed decision to buy what ever it is that I end up buying. I will know the price of an item. I will not know how the money that I paid for that item will be shared by the producer the distributor and the retailer. I will not know how the proceeds at each firm which has brought the item to me are shared among the employees. If it is a food item I can read how much fat or carbs or protein that it has. I can read how much Iron or Vitamin C that it has.
7 March 2010, 4:42 amI can see if it has a BIO label. That is all good news. But if I read the ingredients and see some things that are normally called chemicals unless I have educated myself on what all of these chemicals are I really can not say I should or should not buy this product. Are all chemicals bad? I doubt it. What I do not doubt it that some are much worse than others. How many people are really informed on this subject? Am I go to inform myself on this subject. Not a chance. I would much rather know what the working conditions are of the people who grew the food. I expect that the government will hire a nutritionist who will travel around to places that produce food and will work for MY benefit, not Sara Lee’s, making producers take out those things which really are a danger to my health I am really not so concerned about the animals until their treatment becomes extreme, the equivalent of torture. After all I am going to eat that pig or cow or fish it is here to serve me not the other way around.
Food is simple compared with many of the other things that we buy. A pair of shoes for example. Two pair cost 30 euro. Which saved money by paying its employees merely a subsistence wage and which saved money by using shoddy materials, or manufacturing techniques for its shoes. Which did all of these things? This applies to everything that we buy.
Do not forget that there is another level of fog in the system and that is advertising. Do consumers really understand the consequences of their actions when they buy an article. Is advertising informing or deceiving?
I do not think that I have been well served by “free markets”. Perhaps some people would blame me that I have not become a well informed consumer. The world’s short experiment with one type of socialism did not have any better results.
Well I have not gone anywhere with this but it took me much longer to get this far than I thought it would so I am going to hang up now and maybe finish it another time.