5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You

The current media debate about the benefits (or lack of harm) of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in our diet misses the obvious. The average American increased their consumption of HFCS (mostly from sugar sweetened drinks and processed food) from zero to over 60 pounds per person per year. During that time period, obesity rates have more than tripled and diabetes incidence has increased more than seven fold. Not perhaps the only cause, but a fact that cannot be ignored.

Doubt and confusion are the currency of deception, and they sow the seeds of complacency. These are used skillfully through massive print and television advertising campaigns by the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to dispel the “myth” that HFCS is harmful and assert through the opinion of “medical and nutrition experts” that it is no different than cane sugar. It is a “natural” product that is a healthy part of our diet when used in moderation.

Except for one problem. When used in moderation it is a major cause of heart disease, obesity, cancer, dementia, liver failure, tooth decay and more.

Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?

The goal of the corn industry is to call into question any claim of harm from consuming high fructose corn syrup, and to confuse and deflect by calling their product natural “corn sugar”. That’s like calling tobacco in cigarettes natural herbal medicine. Watch the slick ad where a caring father walks hand in hand with his four-year-old daughter through a big question mark carved in an idyllic cornfield.

“Like any parent I have questions about the food my daughter eats – like high fructose corn syrup. So I started looking for answers from medical and nutrition experts, and what I discovered whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar. Knowing that makes me feel better about what she eats and that’s one less thing to worry about.”

Physicians are also targeted directly. I received a 12-page color glossy monograph from the Corn Refiners Association reviewing the “science” that HFCS was safe and no different than cane sugar. I assume the other 700,000 physicians in America received the same propaganda at who knows what cost.

In addition to this, I received a special “personal” letter from the Corn Refiner’s Association outlining every mention of the problems with HCFS in our diet – whether in print, blogs, books, radio or television. They warned me of the errors of my ways and put me on “notice”. For what I am not sure. To think they are tracking this (and me) that closely gives me an Orwellian chill.

New websites like www.sweetsurprise.com and www.cornsugar.com help “set us straight” about HFCS with quotes from professors of nutrition and medicine and thought leaders from Harvard and other stellar institutions.

But are these twisted sweet lies or a sweet surprise, as the Corn Refiners Association websites claim?

Let’s examine the science and insert some common sense into the conversation. These facts may indeed come as a sweet surprise. The ads suggest getting your nutrition advice from your doctor (who, unfortunately, probably knows less about nutrition than most grandmothers). Having studied this for over a decade, and having read, interviewed or personally talked with most of the “medical and nutrition experts” used to bolster the claim that “corn sugar” and cane sugar are essentially the same, quite a different picture emerges and the role of HCFS in promoting obesity, disease and death across the globe becomes clear.

Last week over lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames, one of the foremost nutritional scientists in the world and Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional biochemist, a student of Linus Pauling and I reviewed the existing science, and Dr. Ames shared shocking new evidence from his research center on how HFCS can trigger body-wide inflammation and obesity.

Here are 5 reasons you should stay way from any product containing high fructose corn syrup and why it may kill you.

1. Sugar in any form causes obesity and disease when consumed in pharmacologic doses.

Cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are indeed both harmful when consumed in pharmacologic doses of 140 pounds per person per year. When one 20 ounce HFCS sweetened soda, sports drink or tea has 17 teaspoons of sugar (and the average teenager often consumes two drinks a day) we are conducting a largely uncontrolled experiment on the human species. Our hunter gather ancestors consumed the equivalent of 20 teaspoons per year, not per day. In this sense, I would agree with the corn industry that sugar is sugar. Quantity matters. But there are some important differences.

2. HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by the body.

High fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist, Michael Pollan to observe it for his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.

Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together – glucose and fructose in equal amounts. The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body.

HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is sweeter than glucose. And HCFS is cheaper than sugar because of the government farm bill corn subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and cheaper than products made with cane sugar. This allowed for the average soda size to balloon from 8 ounces to 20 ounces with little financial costs to manufacturers but great human costs of increased obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.

Now back to biochemistry. Since there is there is no chemical bond between them, no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides and cholesterol) this is why it is the major cause of liver damage in this country and causes a condition called “fatty liver” which affects 70 million people. The rapidly absorbed glucose triggers big spikes in insulin – our body’s major fat storage hormone. Both these features of HFCS lead to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and more.

But there was one more thing I learned during lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames. Research done by his group at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body’s energy source). This depletes the energy fuel source or ATP in our gut required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little “tight junctions” cement each intestinal cell together preventing food and bacteria from “leaking” across the intestinal membrane and triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.

High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes in the intestinal lining allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and accelerated aging. Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients and fiber that doesn’t exhibit the same biological effects as the free high fructose doses found in “corn sugar”.

The takeaway: Cane sugar and the industrially produced, euphemistically named “corn sugar” are not biochemically or physiologically the same.

3. HFCS contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA

An FDA researcher asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing.(i) Poisoned sugar is certainly not “natural”.

When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph, strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects and toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but shouldn’t we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15-20 percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake?

4. Independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT support the use of HCFS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn industry.

The corn industry’s happy looking websites www.cornsugar.com and www.sweetsurprise.com bolster their position that cane sugar and corn sugar are the same by quoting experts, or should we say mis-quoting …

Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has published widely on the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks and their contribution to the obesity epidemic. In a review of HFCS in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,(ii) he explains the mechanism by which the free fructose may contribute to obesity. He states that:

“The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis [production of fat in the liver]. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight [to control appetite], this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may enhance caloric overconsumption.”

He states that HFCS is absorbed more rapidly than regular sugar, and that it doesn’t stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents you from triggering the body’s signals for being full and may lead to overconsumption of total calories.

“… the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.”

The corn industry takes his comments out of context to support their position. “All sugar you eat is the same.”

True pharmacologic doses of any kind of sugar are harmful, but the biochemistry of different kinds of sugar and their respective effects on absorption, appetite and metabolism are different, and Dr. Popkin knows that.

David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and a personal friend has published extensively on the dangers and the obesogenic properties of sugar-sweetened beverages. He was quoted as saying that “high fructose corn syrup is one of the most misunderstood products in the food industry.” When I asked him why he supported the corn industry, he told me he didn’t and that his comments were taken totally out of context.

Misrepresenting science is one thing, misrepresenting scientists who have been at the forefront of the fight against obesity and high fructose sugar sweetened beverages is quite another.

5. HCFS is almost always a marker of poor-quality, nutrient-poor disease creating industrial food products or “food-like substances”.

The last reason to avoid products that contain HFCS is that they are a marker for poor-quality, nutritionally depleted, processed industrial food full of empty calories and artificial ingredients. If you find “high fructose corn syrup” on the label you can be sure it is not a whole, real, fresh food full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Stay away if you want to stay healthy. We still must reduce our overall consumption of sugar, but with this one simple dietary change you can radically reduce your health risks and improve your health.

While debate may rage about the biochemistry and physiology of cane sugar vs. corn sugar, this is in fact beside the point (despite the finer points of my scientific analysis above). The conversation has been diverted to a simple assertion that cane sugar and corn sugar are not different.

We are consuming HFCS and sugar in pharmacologic quantities never before experienced in human history — 140 pounds a year vs. 20 teaspoons a year 10,000 years ago.

High fructose corn syrup is always found in very poor quality foods that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts of other disease promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals and even mercury.

These critical ideas should be the heart of the national conversation, not the meaningless confusing ads and statements by the corn industry in the media and online that attempt to assure the public that the biochemistry of real sugar and industrially produced sugar from corn are the same.

Do you think there is an association between the introduction of HFCS in our diet and the obesity epidemic?

What reason do you think the Corn Refiners Association has for running such ads and publishing websites like those listed in this article?

What do you think of the science presented here and the general effects of HFCS on the American diet?

(i) Dufault, R., LeBlanc, B., Schnoll, R. et al. 2009. Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: Measured concentrations in food product sugar. Environ Health. 26(8):2.

(ii) Bray, G.A., Nielsen, S.J., and B.M. Popkin. 2004. Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 79(4):537-43. Review.

To verify that if both break down into glucose and fructose in solution

You are starting with a false pretext. Disaccharides don't break down into monosaccharides (ie, glucose and fructose) in solution. They are split by chemical means (ie, enzymes).

I can get back crystalline sucrose from sucrose that has been dissolved in water to break down into glucose and fructose.

No you can't. You can seperate mixtures like sugar water though physical means, but you can't seperate compounds by physical means. If you mix sucrose and water, you've created a mixture. They can be seperated by physical means (evaporation). If you combine HFCS with water, you've created another mixture. It can be seperated by physical means. Mixtures can be separated by physical methods. Compounds cannot.

Now, if HFCS behaves the same way as sugar does in solution, it too breaks down to glucose and fructose in solution.

Your assumption that sucrose breaks down in an aqueous solution is incorrect. Enzymes are required to break the glycosidic bonds of sucrose. Disaccharides are digested by enzymes in the small intestines. This is why you can mix sugar with water, and use physical means to seperate the two. You're simply creating a homogeneous solution, not a compound. Mixing sugar with water doesn't break the glycosidic bonds connecting the two monosacchrides glucose and fructose.

then doesn't it imply that sugar and HFCS really don't behave the same way inside our bodies?

The body converts fructose to glucose and uses it for fuel or stores it as fat. It does it with both fructose from sucrose and fructose from HFCS.

assume you're using 50:50 HFCS.

There is no such thing. 50:50 is sucrose, not HFCS.

Exactly what I wanted.

Thanks, so, if sugar needs chemical processing to release the glucose and fructose (enzymatic action) in solution while HFCS doesn’t, and if the body has the ability to produce the enzyme (sucrase) to break down sucrose to glucose and fructose, doesn’t using HFCS bypass a regulatory mechanism in the body (regulated by sucrase production)?

Why is it interesting? What would you do with HFCS in the home that you can't do with table sugar or corn syrup?

And what would one do with sugar in the home that you can't do with HFCS? If, of course, it was available to consumers. Which it isn't.

So why isn't it available to the retail market if it's so wonderful, and cheap, too? I posit the stuff is so horrendous--possibly horrendous smelling and tasting in its undiluted form--that consumers would gag and sales of soft drinks and anything made with it would die.

As to the other stuff you posted, I can believe "studies," (which were funded overtly or covertly by the Corn Refiners Association) or I can believe my lying eyes.

You’re welcome. On other threads, a recurring theme was that both sucrose and HFCS break down into fructose and glucose in solution.

I’m aware of sucrose intolerance, brought about by the body’s incapacity to produce sucrase. That being the case, will there not be differences in metabolic processes handling sugar vs. those handling HFCS? Both are really not the same, if that’s the case.

"There's nothing wrong with fructose. Excessive calories, regardless of the source, are stored as fat."

Simply not true. The metabolism of fructose leads to biological damage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

The excessive calories = fat thing is also not that simple. What you eat matters. Different food have different metabolic effects.

Simply not true.

Yes it is.

The metabolism of fructose leads to biological damage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

I'm not going to sit through a 1.5 hour video trying to figure out what you are unwilling to state outright. State in you own words: How does the metabolism of fructose lead to biological damage?

1. Not finding it. There was one done at Princeton with results similar to what you describe. What bothers me is that these rats were fed full doses of sucrose and half doses of HFCS. That makes me think there may be some mechanism here other than "HFCS bad."

2. No matter what the results were when comparing sucrose to HFCS, the study does little to back up the claims of anti-HFCS crusaders. Their claim is that the presence of HFCS causes obesity in and of itself, yet this study has rats eating as much normal food as they wish and then as much sucrose or HFCS as they wish. So, the foremost thing this study proves is that if your caloric intake is either a normal intake with soda piled on top or a normal intake made up by a high percentage of soda, you get fat. In other words, junk food still sucks and always has. That's hardly surprising.

3. Not that I expect you to answer for him, but none of this tells us why Hyman has to lie to make his case.

As to the other stuff you posted, I can believe "studies," (which were funded overtly or covertly by the Corn Refiners Association) or I can believe my lying eyes.

As I've mentioned upthread, I have no dog in the HFCS fight, but I do have a few questions:

1. What evidence do you have that the studies death2tyrants has mentioned have been "funded overtly or covertly by the Corn Refiners Association?" Have you read the studies and examined their methods? Have you even read an abstract or summary?

2. Take a look at the MSDS for a brand of HFCS produced in Canada. Note especially on page 2 under "Physical and Chemical Properties" that the odor listed is "none or faint cereal-like." Which do you think is more likely, that the company is falsifying its MSDS or that there are other reasons that HFCS hasn't been marketed as a competitor to Splenda and other sweeteners?

3. If this stuff is so horrible, why does Hyman hae to lie repeatedly to make a case against it?

And what would one do with sugar in the home that you can't do with HFCS?

Well, considering that HFCS is a liquid, it would be pretty hard to sprinkle it on your cereal or over fruit. Retail consumers are used to using table sugar. Introducing a new product like HFCS for retail application, when it isn't as applicable as table sugar, is not how most companies want to go to market with new products.

I posit the stuff is so horrendous--possibly horrendous smelling and tasting in its undiluted form--that consumers would gag and sales of soft drinks and anything made with it would die.

Clearly, you know nothing about the product you're working so hard here to condemn. People fear things they don't understand and it's flagrantly obvious you have no understanding of HFCS.

HFCS has a mild, pleasant aroma that could hardly be described as objectionable. The beverage industry uses it because it is cheaper than sugar and because it blends easily with the drinks they manufacture. Sucrose is much harder to blend. HFCS is also used in baked goods, cereals etc. Even so, if the government stopped subsidizing our domestic sugar industry to the tune of $2.5 billion annually, HFCS would be replaced with sucrose.

As to the other stuff you posted, I can believe "studies," (which were funded overtly or covertly by the Corn Refiners Association) or I can believe my lying eyes.

Ah, I see you have no grasp of research either. The biochemistry of satiation is highly complex and requires a lot of smarts and a lot of training to understand. Please don't let that stop you though. You are free to sponsor your own studies to find the truth. Be sure and ping me when you uncover the truth that's being suppressed by those evil SOB's at the Corn Refiners Association.

There was one done at Princeton with results similar to what you describe.

The Princeton study was fraught with problems. This is what happens when psychologists head studies that should be run by biochemists.

First of all, ad libitum feeding is notoriously unreliable for ensuring same calories consumed. The authors also don't seem to be concerned with the inherent unreliability of rat studies translating to humans.

The researchers found that rats fed HFCS for 12 hours a day gained more weight. That being the case, why didn’t the rats fed HFCS for 24 hours also gain more weight? They were fed HFCS for a full 12 hours more, yet didn’t gain any more weight than the rats fed HFCS for 12 hours. This is a serious inconsistency in the results that the researchers never tried to explain.

When converting the rat intakes of HFCS to human proportions, the calories gained from high fructose corn syrup would be equivalent to about 3000 kcal/day from that one single source. To compare, adult humans consume about 2,000 calories per day from all dietary sources. The rat intakes in this study would be equivalent of a human drinking a total of 20 cans of 12 ounce sodas per day. If you overwhelm the body with anything, bad things can happen.

The Princeton findings were good for people who care nothing about the truth and only want to create alarm. It also plays into the preconceived notion of those who want to demonize a food ingredient without any knowledge of food science or nutrition. But, best of all, research like this creates enough concern that the fedgov makes money flow to the authors so that this "problem" can be studied further. This is the main reason why we have to deal with junk science. Telling the public everything is ok, is NOT how you attract grant money.

Simply not true. The metabolism of fructose leads to biological damage.

"Natural sources of fructose include fruits, vegetables (including sugar cane), and honey.[17] Fructose is often further concentrated from these sources. The highest dietary sources of fructose, besides pure crystalline fructose, are foods containing table sugar (sucrose), high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, and fruit juices, as these have the highest percentages of fructose (including fructose in sucrose) per serving compared to other common foods and ingredients."

Two groups of rats were given unlimited access to sweetened water with identical caloric content per millilitre, one group receiving water sweetened with cane sugar, the other with high fructose corn syrup. The corn syrup group became morbidly obsese, while the sugar group maintained normal weight. What is more, upon autopsy, it was found that some, at least, of the corn syrup fed rats had scarring in their livers.

You should post facts NOT false propaganda ...

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