Posted on 08/05/2010 7:02:02 AM PDT by toma29
Perhaps it is enough to hate high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) because the federal government has encouraged its production for decades by imposing high tariffs on sugar imports and by subsidizing corn farmers. (It’s certainly enough for me.) In addition, HFCS-haters blame the sugar for making Americans ever fatter and less healthy. So with so much to hate to go around, when UCLA researchers reported earlier this week that feeding HFCS to pancreatic cancer cells boosts their proliferation in lab dishes, the media jumped on the story. The study’s chief author even suggested that a federal effort should be launched to reduce refined fructose intake modeled on earlier anti-smoking campaigns. Can it be long before health nannies like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Center for Science in the Public Interest begin crusading against the offending sweetener? Of course, this is not the first cancer panic over sweeteners, all of which proved false.
So before jumping on the ban-wagon, let’s consider a couple of points. HFCS generally contains a mixture of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. The favored sweetener, sucrose (a.k.a. table sugar) is actually a molecule combined 50/50 of fructose and glucose. When sucrose is digested in the stomach it is dissociated into the two molecules which are then absorbed into the bloodstream.
The authors of the UCLA study ominously note that our consumption of HFCS has gone up 10-fold since 1970, and you know the conclusion you’re supposed to reach: cancer epidemic! But according to Cancer Facts & Figures 2010 issued by the American Cancer Society: "Incidence rates of pancreatic cancer have been stable in men since 1981, but have been increasing in women by 1.7% per year since 2000." In fact, the overall cancer incidence rate in the U.S. has been going down for nearly a decade, even as Americans pigged out on all those cakes and soft drinks sweetened by HFCS. But it would be silly to argue that HCFS consumption is preventing cancer.
Start reading your food labels, if you don’t already. You will be quite surprised to find there is more soy in your diet than you think.
Prayers for you, and your daughter my FRiend. May God give you all strength and comfort.
Tatt
Yes, I am an avid label reader. When my kids were small one of them had to avoid milk/wheat/eggs. I started reading labels then, and have never stopped. I want to know what I am consuming. I was the mean Mom who didn’t let my kids eat sugar on a regular basis, and made most everything from scratch. We rarely ate fast food, soft drinks, etc.
goodwithagun writes - “I really don’t want to eat something that has a shelf life of five years.”
Isn’t that the truth!? I remember when I was a kid, everything became a science experiment in the pantry, or the fridge in a matter of days. Now, bread NEVER molds, and milk no longer sours, it rots!
Like you, we try to get our food as close to out of the ground, off the tree, or from the animal as we can get, because reading the ingredients list is downright scary.
Tatt
I’m sorry to hear that.
Prayers for you and your family.
I’m curious as to whether the authors of the UCLA study compared the growth rates of the cancer when exposed to glucose vs. fructose. I rather expect there would be little difference. Pouring gasoline on a fire vs. kerosene isn’t going to make a hell of a difference. You get a bigger fire.
Fructose metabolism is very similar to ethanol metabolism, which has a multitude of toxic effects, including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). It’s alcohol without the buzz.
It is discussed in here: Sugar: The Bitter Truth
cooking from scratch..
More times than not cooking from scratch does not take any more time than using the “good grief what is in this So many store bought products have sooo much extra garbage.
My oldest son could not eat much of anything store bought due to severe food allergies. He did have limitations with home made, but not nearly so much because I did not have all the additives in what I prepared.
everything affcts everything
We do not begin to understand the complexities and interactions between our bodies and what/how what we eat, attitudes we have, genetics, and sometimes just plain old good fortune or lack thereof —
Being in health care all my life, I can not comprehend what life is like for people like your family and your daughter. I have been around those that do know, first hand, but I can not comprehend what you now know. I hope things go well for your daughter, knowing life will never be what it once was. I wish your family and she the best that is possible.
Prayers up. Keep the faith, Dan!
Not saying you are like this, but health care providers at all levels need to keep one primary truth in constant focus.
This is not about your job, your schedule or your license, it's about the sick person.
Have had plenty of battles with providers who lost sight of that.
Did Lustig say this? if so, he should know better because this is nonsense. Ethanol is already a 2-carbon unit that quickly enters the Krebs cycle. Fructose utilizes a separate pathway that requires many more steps. They are not "very similar."
which has a multitude of toxic effects
Like what?
including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease).
Fructose consumption has never been proven to cause NAFLD. Most people suffering from NAFLD already had serious health problems that were unrelated to fructose consumption.
It’s alcohol without the buzz.
I hope someone with Lustig's background didn't say such a thing. Do you and Lustig believe that a diet high in fruits and vegetables causes NAFLD and liver scarring?
You cannot look around without seeing we have an obesity problem and it is not because I, or anyone else, is eating Happy Meals.
I am 68 and 6' 1. I just eliminated 55 pounds of stored fat. I started a weight loss program at 235 and ended at 180. I have maintained that weight, for the most part, by not eating any processed foods that I know contain HFCS. My wife did the weight loss first and has maintained her target weight for 6 months.
We started using Stevia in the weight loss program and now use it in most things that calls for sugar in our cooking. We even have homemade ice-cream.
I just had a Cholesterol blood test. It confirms everything contained in this letter/email I recently sent to friends. My bad Cholesterol is lower. My good Cholesterol is up and my Triglycerides are almost non existent.
This, http://www.hughchou.org/calc/chol.php , is a site which you fill in the blanks and it does the math for ratios of HDL/LDL, Total Cholesterol/HDL and LDL/Triglycerides which a lot of people now think is the best way to predict heart disease. Below are my results.
Your Total Cholesterol of 221 is BORDERLINE
Your HDL of 71 is OPTIMAL
Your Total Cholesterol/HDL ratio is: 3.11 - (preferably under 5.0, ideally under 3.5) IDEAL
Your LDL of 135 is BORDERLINE
Your HDL of 71 is OPTIMAL
Your HDL/LDL ratio is: 0.526 - (preferably over 0.3, ideally over 0.4) IDEAL
Your HDL of 71 is OPTIMAL
Your Triglyceride level of 76 is NORMAL
Your triglycerides/HDL ratio is: 1.070 - (preferably under 4, ideally under 2) IDEAL
As you can see, all the ratios consider me ideal or better. I don't believe my doctor has ever heard of these ratios even though some are included in the test results. All she sees is the Total Cholesterol of 221 and is pushing for me to be on a Statin and is upset when we refuse.
The following is from a news letter my wife and I subscribe from a medical doctor who originally practiced family medicine. He went back to school and now practices as a naturopath after getting fed up by all the side effects to pharmaceuticals.
This article is talking about all the problems caused by fructose in our diets. What he doesn't say here but is discussed in some of the links is how the majority of the processed foods we eat contain high fructose corn syrup or one of it's aliases.
All the supposed heart healthy fat free foods that we are told to eat have fructose. Natural fat helps your body burn fat. Trans fats are a problem. They are not natural and our body goes tilt trying to process them.
Dr Mercola, I have written about the dangers of sugar for quite some time, and of course, variables like exercise and calorie intake play a role in obesity. But more recently, I have gained access to evidence specific to fructose and its primary role in creating obesity -- evidence that is VERY hard to ignore.
I am fully convinced that if we can educate the public about how fructose is different from other sugars metabolically, we can actually reverse and eventually eliminate the obesity epidemic.
I would encourage those of you who remain doubtful that fructose is any worse than any other sugar to look at the work done by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the kidney disease and hypertension department at the University of Colorado, and author of The Sugar Fix, one of the best books on the market on the health dangers of fructose—specifically, how fructose causes high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and kidney disease.
One of the surprising facts discussed in my first interview with Dr. Johnson is how detrimental the impact of fructose is on your uric acid level.
For those of you who maintain that "a sugar is a sugar is a sugar," fructose -- and fructose ALONE -- drives up uric acid. The connection between fructose, uric acid, hypertension, insulin resistance/diabetes and kidney disease is so clear that your uric acid level can be used as a marker for toxicity from fructose.
According to Dr. Johnson:
"We've just finished a clinical trial where we gave a low fructose diet to overweight and obese adults from Mexico City.
"We tried two different low fructose diets, but first, before we go into that, we think that the effects of fructose are independent of its energy intake. So,table sugar (sucrose) -- which contains fructose and glucose -- although there is a caloric component, we think that the effects of fructose are not specifically related to the calories but rather to its mechanism, of which uric acid is a driving part."... [Uric acid levels] being too high seems to really increase the risk for diabetes and high blood pressure, kidney disease and obesity. And in fact, there are more and more papers coming out showing that connection."
If you doubt fructose is the leading contributor to obesity, then I urge you to watch an excellent video presentation by Dr. Robert H. Lustig, M.D. of the University of California San Francisco, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, which masterfully illustrates just exactly HOW the liver's breakdown of fructose leads to obesity and chronic disease.
Much of the fructose you eat is literally stored as fat. The carbohydrate fructose is converted into fatty acids (lipogenesis), which is then stored in your body's fat cells as fat.
This is from the first link;
This study takes its place in a growing lineup of scientific studies demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all it’s myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll.
And fructose in any form -- including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose -- is the worst of the worst!
Fructose is a major contributor to:
- Insulin resistance and obesity
- Elevated blood pressure
- Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL
- Depletion of vitamins and minerals
- Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout
A Calorie is Not a Calorie
Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium -- and in fact, every living thing on the Earth--uses glucose for energy.
If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you'd consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate any negative metabolic effects.
It isn’t that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.
There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:
- Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.
- People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.
Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.
Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s about 20% sweeter than table sugar.
HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose, and sucrose is 50% fructose, so it's really a wash in terms of sweetness. Still, this switch drastically altered the average American diet.
By USDA estimates, about one-quarter of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of added sugars, and most of that is HFCS. The average Westerner consumes a staggering 142 pounds a year of sugar! And the very products most people rely on to lose weight -- the low-fat diet foods -- are often the ones highest in fructose.
Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from these processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all.
Fructose Metabolism Basics
Without getting into the very complex biochemistry of carbohydrate metabolism, it is important to understand some differences about how your body handles glucose versus fructose. I will be publishing a major article about this in the next couple of months, which will get much more into the details, but for our purpose here, I will just summarize the main points.
Dr. Robert Lustig[i] Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has highlighted some major differences in how different sugars are broken down and used:
- After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.
- Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is “burned up” immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.
- The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.
- Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.
- When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!
- The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.
- Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.
If anyone tries to tell you “sugar is sugar,” they are way behind the times. As you can see, there are major differences in how your body processes each one.
The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome -- not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that directly result.
Panic in the Corn Fields
As the truth comes out about HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association is scrambling to convince you that their product is equal to table sugar, that it is “natural” and safe.
Of course, many things are “natural” -- cocaine is natural, but you wouldn’t want to use 142 pounds of it each year.
The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet -- not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry.
The FDA classifies fructose as GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. Which pretty much means nothing and is based on nothing.
There is plenty of data showing that fructose is not safe -- but the effects on the nation’s health have not been immediate. That is why we are just now realizing the effects of the last three decades of nutritional misinformation.
As if the negative metabolic effects are not enough, there are other issues with fructose that disprove its safety:
- More than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCS[ii].
- Crystalline fructose (a super-potent form of fructose the food and beverage industry is now using) may contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals.
- Nearly all corn syrup is made from genetically modified corn, which comes with its own set of risks.
The FDA isn’t going to touch sugar, so it’s up to you to be proactive about your own dietary choices.
What’s a Sugarholic to Do?
Ideally, I recommend that you avoid as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.
I also realize we don’t live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible.
If you want to use a sweetener occasionally, this is what I recommend:
- Use the herb stevia.
- Use organic cane sugar in moderation.
- Use organic raw honey in moderation.
- Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than fructose.
- Avoid agave syrup since it is a highly processed sap that is almost all fructose. Your blood sugar will spike just as it would if you were consuming regular sugar or HFCS. Agave’s meteoric rise in popularity is due to a great marketing campaign, but any health benefits present in the original agave plant are processed out.
- Avoid so-called energy drinks and sports drinks because they are loaded with sugar, sodium and chemical additives. Rehydrating with pure, fresh water is a better choice.
If you or your child is involved in athletics, I recommend you read my article Energy Rules for some great tips on how to optimize your child’s energy levels and physical performance through good nutrition.
No, I do not. Lustig did not comment on NAFLD, but did talk about ALT. Lustig comments on the amount of fruit juice consumed. Lustig's point is the dramatic increase in fructose - primarily HFCS - in the diet is the cause of many problems. He suggests getting rid of all sugared drinks - only water and milk for children.
Lustig did say Fructose and Ethanol are metabolized the same way - only the liver can metabolize fructose.
which has a multitude of toxic effects
See chart at 1.09 of the video.
Lustig goes through a very detailed analysis of how the body metabolizes fructose. This starts at the 43 min mark of the video.
Did Lustig say this? if so, he should know better because this is nonsense. Ethanol is already a 2-carbon unit that quickly enters the Krebs cycle. Fructose utilizes a separate pathway that requires many more steps. They are not "very similar."
which has a multitude of toxic effects
Like what?
including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease).
Fructose consumption has never been proven to cause NAFLD. Most people suffering from NAFLD already had serious health problems that were unrelated to fructose consumption.
It’s alcohol without the buzz.
I hope someone with Lustig's background didn't say such a thing. Do you and Lustig believe that a diet high in fruits and vegetables causes NAFLD and liver scarring?
Much of what you ask are answered by him in my post @ 73. The video is him giving a lecture to college medical students. If you would take the time to watch it, I would like to think you would agree that all the problems he speaks too have all been since the advent of HFCS and our country's unbridled use of it.
Fruits and vegetables usually have enough fiber to limit the bad side effects of fructose. Both should be eaten with the knowledge that when you imbibe more fructose than your body can absorb with your daily activities, the excess will turn to fat. HFCS has no fiber to buffer it. BVB
Because when the fiber flows thru the liver, it prevents damage?
Is HFCS 42 worse than sucrose?
My breakfast is steel cut oats, blueberries and yogurt. About 2 months ago, I switched my traditional yogurt, not realizing the amount of HFCS. I dropped 4 pounds in about a month. That was the only change in my lifestyle.
Stay off the statins, IMHO. Address the cause, not the symptoms.
Mercola is a great resource.
It is amazing how sugar seems to be the root cause of so many health problems.
Is HFCS 42 worse than sucrose?
Short answer; Yes in the quantities we are ingesting it. It is in almost all processed foods this country consumes.
Long answer; Watch the video. He explains how our body reacts to sucrose, alcohol, fructose and HFCS.
Unless you are an apologist for the corn industry, I would like to think it will open your eyes as to why he thinks HFCS is a poison. That is the theme of the lecture.
BVM
Short answer; Yes in the quantities we are ingesting it.
So if you eat the same quantity of each, which is worse?
What causes more damage, 1 kg of HFCS 42 or 1 kg of sucrose (cane sugar)?
Unless you are an apologist for the corn industry,
The corn industry (and their ethanol subsidies) needs to be taken out back and shot. Right after the sugar industry (and their tariffs and import restrictions) are taken out back and shot.
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