Posted on 09/24/2021 7:58:21 AM PDT by Brookhaven
I’ve been saying for ages that the sugar composition of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no different from that of table sugar (sucrose).
Oops. A new study in the journal, Obesity, actually measured the amounts and kinds of sugars in 23 kinds of HFCS-sweetened drinks.
The findings are summarized in a fact sheet:
• The sugar content varied widely from amounts stated on labels.
• Some drinks had 15% less sugar than labeled, but others had as much as 30% more.
• On average, the drinks had 18% more fructose than expected.
• Several brands of sodas seemed to be made with HFCS that is 65% fructose, not 55%.
• The average amount of fructose in the drinks was 59%.
To review the biochemistry: sucrose is a double sugar of glucose and fructose bonded together. HFCS is glucose and fructose, separated. The sucrose bond is quickly split in the intestine and its glucose and fructose are the same as those in HFCS.
The metabolic problems that result from sugar intake are mostly due to the fructose content. Less is better for health. More is better for the soft drink industry, however. Fructose is sweeter than either glucose or sucrose, and sweet is what sells sodas.
At most, HFCS is supposed to be 55% fructose, as compared to the 50% in table sugar. Most foods and drinks are supposed to be using HFCS that is 42% fructose. A percentage of 55 is not much different biologically than 50, which is why the assumption has been that there is no biologically meaningful difference between HFCS and table sugar. This study, if confirmed, means that this supposition may need some rethinking.
The study names the beverages that contain 65% fructose: Coke, Pepsi, Sprite. It identifies Dr. Pepper, Gatorade, and Arizona Ice Tea as containing close to 60% fructose.
If, in fact, the percentage of fructose is higher than advertised, it’s another good reason to avoid sugar-sweetened beverages.
There are two causes of fatty liver disease: excess alcohol consumption and excess fructose consumption.
60 years ago, if you have fatty liver disease, doctors assumed it was because you were an alcoholic, and they were almost always right.
With the rise of sugar consumption (table sugar is 50% fructose, HFCS is 55% fructose) we've seen epidemic of people who don't drink alcohol developing fatty liver disease. Something that was so uncommon in the past that they had to give it a new name: non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
Today, 80 million Americans have fatty liver disease, and it's not because they are all alcoholics. Worse, fatty liver disease is now commonly being diagnosed in children.
I used to be on the "HFCS is no worse than table sugar" side. 50% vs 55% doesn't seem that much. But, when we're talking 65%, that's a problem.
Fructose is processed in the liver similarly to the way alcohol is processed. Like alcohol, we can tolerate small amounts over time, but large amounts over time causes serious damage to our body.
This article is 10 years old. Nothing came from the discovery that fructose levels in processed foods were higher than stated.
But, over that same period of time, we've seen the rise of childhood fatty liver disease.
n 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children with obesity should be screened for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. A disease that didn't even exist in children a few decades ago, is now considered common enough that physicians should routinely screen for it.
What's the cause, and what's the solution?
HFCS is poison.
Avoid at all costs.
A true killer that makes covid look like a kindergarten math lesson.
Duh.
They actually think this is some kind of mystery to be solved. Obviously because they create fat people, seriously, ridiculously fat people and then try to tell you they are getting to the bottom of it. Funding.
If you drink water and not anything else, you probably won’t be morbidly obese. If you don’t eat crap you probably won’t be morbidly obese.
Cheesburgers, Steaks, wings, bacon, and good shit like tomatoes, avacodos, and other great stuff, didn’t make Americans super fatsos.
It’s soda and other shit with high fructose corn syrup. Drink coffee, tea, coconut water, or just water.
That high fructose corn syrup is in other garbage like doritos. That shit sucks.
Pepsi Real or nothing...
Never liked soda or pop. I do like seltzer. Which is soda water to the non north easters.
Which is funny because I have a sweet tooth, but get grossed out by sweet drinks. Hate them.
only in Scotch... 8^)
It's soda and other shit with high fructose corn syrup. Drink coffee, tea, coconut water, or just water.
It is a combination of everything one puts in their mouth and then swallows that has more calories than what they burn in their sedentary life style that makes people fat. If you eat a bunch of “Cheesburgers, Steaks, wings, bacon, and good shit like tomatoes, avacodos, and other great stuff”, drink nothing but water and sit around all day in front of the TV or computer you are still going to get fat.
When I was a top bicycle racer and riding over 10,000 miles a year I could eat and drink anything in front of me and still stay skinny as a rail. Now that I am old and much more sedentary, too much salad dressing can put on weight.
Gatorade is nothing but salty Koolaid
Not true. You can eat whatever you want in a window of 6 hours a day and lose weight.
I’ve done it. I’ve also hiked, many times, over 50Km. Once over 100km in one day. That sucked.
Anyway, I lost about 35lbs with little to no effort, but just decided to eat anything I want inside of a 6 hour window a day. Just don’t drink soda. How hard is that?
I’m an old wrestler, so not eating for a most of the day really doesn’t bother me. I used to get fat just so I could bet people that I could lose a ridiculous amount of weight in a month. Usually 20lbs. I would lose 15 in the first two weeks and go about drinking and shit and then a few days before I would fast and lose the rest.
I bet some dude who is a billionaire. He wanted to bet 100k. I couldn’t lose 10% of my body weight in a month. I said, as much as I’d like to take his 100 grand, I couldn’t cover it, so I bet ten grand.
He was clever. He said you had to lose the weight and re weigh two weeks later. I was lighter the second weigh in. He’s not a wrestler. He’s not even American. No idea of cutting weight.
There are two causes of fatty liver disease: excess alcohol consumption and excess fructose consumption.
If you have these problems then avoid alcohol and fructose. If it tastes sweet then don’t ingest it.
I grew up in a seafood restaurant my father managed. I made tons of cole slaw and cocktail sauce. Never considered putting sugar in either. Now go to the store and try to buy them prepared with no sugar or HFCS in them. It’s not possible.
I definitely can eat enough food in 6 hours to turn myself into a human lard bucket after a relatively short period of time if I don't do anything to burn off the excess calories. But this is a very fun conversation and I do appreciate it greatly.
It is amusing how you use kilometers instead of miles to make it sound like your hikes were further. Then in almost the next sentence you tell us how you lost 35 pounds instead of 16 kilograms. 31 miles and 62 miles in a day is still a really long ways to walk. So why bother to mix in the metric system?
You burn about a hundred calories per mile walking. So your long walks burned 3100 calories to 6200 calories. When I have ridden between 100 miles to over 300 miles in a day on a bicycle at a moderate pace of 16 to 19 mph I was burning over 50 calories per mile which comes to 5000 to 15,000 calories. Oh and the majority of the pleasure that I received from riding super long distances was the joy that only comes from humiliating your half dead friends by bouncing out of the saddle and catching the slip stream of a slow semi going up a hill and leaving them behind after 250 miles.
There are about 3500 calories in a pound of human fat. Unfortunately, it is not possible for anyone I know to metabolize fat alone at a high enough rate to keep up a good pace on a bicycle so you have to eat a lot of food along the way and drink a lot of water. However if your butt hasn't been turned to leather from the tens of thousands of miles of previous rides you probably would not be able to make it much past a hundred miles without being in a lot of pain anyway. So most people will never be able to experience this form of ecstasy.
But trudging along all day on a horrendously long walk without eating is very possible and I salute you for it if that is what you did.
HFCS is like poison to me now and I had to throw out my Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce.
My H1C is happy 😎
What’s the cause, and what’s the solution?
The main change in the American diet is higher consumption of omega 6 fats.
Seed oils are the ingredients highest in omega 6 fats. People started using them in the 20th century. The percentage of fats in people’s bodies that is omega 6 fats keeps increasing.
People use less coconut oil and tallow to cook and more canada oil, soybean oil, and corn oil. That’s why people are fat.
Read research reports about the effects of omega 6 fats on liver disease.
People consume a lot of foods with added vitamin a. Foods have more vitamin a than we need.
Vitamin A is stored in the ilver and excess causes liver disease.
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