Five Reasons to Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

Four words--high fructose corn syrup--describe an alarmingly ubiquitous sweetener that has the potential to make you into one chubby, sick puppy. You can find it in supermarket convenience food, canned goods, soda, juice and fast food. HFCS does nothing good for your body. But it's sweet and it grabs you in its sticky clutches. The intake of HFCS and table sugar, which also contains fructose, has risen to an average of 145 pounds a year per person. And not surprisingly, in part because of the obesity epidemic in the United States, HFCS has recently been the subject of much scientific research.

A number of studies with human subjects have pointed to the fact that consuming HFCS (which contains about 55% fructose to 45% glucose) can actually make you fatter faster than consuming table sugar (i.e., sucrose, which contains half fructose and half glucose).

• First, a study at UT Southwestern Medical Center showed that triglyceride synthesis is much more rapid with fructose than with glucose. FYI, triglycerides are a fat compound mostly made in the liver. But what happens with fructose metabolism is that it bypasses the liver and creates triglycerides that lead to lipogenesis, or the creation of body fat from sugars. What does this mean? That people on weight-loss diets should stay far away from HFCS.

• Another study at Monell Center found that HFCS increased non-fasting triglycerides in obese insulin-resistant adults after eating a meal, which is related to the development of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

• At UC-Davis, researchers comparing individuals who consumed glucose-sweetened versus fructose-sweetened drinks found that although both groups were about equal in their amount of body fat, the fructose group had more intra-abdominal fat, a risk factor for heart disease and stroke and also negatively impact insulin metabolism and can lead to the development of Type 2 diabetes. It was emphasized in this study that long-term effects are still to be studied.

• A Loyola University study concluded that for some as-yet unknown reason, drinking regular soda, which contains HFCS, can lead to chronic kidney disease in women. In this study, women who had drunk only two sodas in the past 24 hours had higher levels of albumin in their blood, known as albuminuria. Albumin is a protein that can be filtered out by healthy kidneys.

• A recent paper from researchers at Johns Hopkins discusses an enzyme called malonyl-CoA found in the hypothalamus of the brain that is involved in signaling feeding behaviors They found that glucose decreases food intake and fructose increases it. The paper further states that young people in particular with their high intake of soda are at great risk for Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

But all the alarming research on HFCS and fructose-containing sucrose doesn't mean that fruit itself, which has fructose in less concentrated form, is necessarily bad for you unless you eat enormous amounts of it. In fact, one of the researchers, Dr. Elizabeth Parks of UT Southwestern, commented that "there are lots of people out there who want to demonize fructose as the cause of the obesity epidemic. . . . but it's not the only problem. Americans are eating too many calories . . . We're overeating fat, we're overeating protein, and we're overeating all sugars."

The safest kind of fructose is found in whole fruits and some vegetables, which are complete foods that conveniently include fiber and nutrients. Stick to those foods if you want to consume fructose in a healthful form that doesn't trigger dangerous metabolic processes that may lead to chronic disease and even death. Also, seriously consider cutting down on or eliminating animal products of every kind, which contain too much fat, sodium and protein and more calories than necessary for maintaining the semi-sedentary lifestyle of most Americans.

Check out http://www.sciencedaily.com for more research on the effect of fructose-containing sweeteners on American health.