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.
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 didnt the rats fed HFCS for 24 hours also gain more weight? They were fed HFCS for a full 12 hours more, yet didnt 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.