Topic: So maybe HFCS is bad after all

[Chew]

Only sugar from sugar cane is real sugar. Brown is best. Everything else is a cheap copy.

Sir, my states largest crop by economical output is sugar beet and I spend quite a bit of time researching it as well.  I am offended by your statement.

You should demand a duel to erase this slur upon your state's good name, sir. Sugar cane stalks at dawn.

[♫♪ FX ♪♫]

Beet sugar is exactly the same as cane sugar!

[Rider]

I checked.  Not a trace in anything I eat. 

And before you ask, yes, I eat a very healthy diet.  Downright spartan in fact. My one vice (coffee creamer) does contain partially hydrogenated soy oil, which I really want to give up. But it is sweetened with cane sugar.

Make sure you check everytime you buy something.  It changes constantly.

[pandamonium]

Well, I'm in the same boat as FX: my pantry is sans HFCS. But that's because I shop at Whore Foods, where they have a banned substance list. No, really, they do. *sigh* They have good intentions, but small brains.

[whitedevilbrewing]

Well, I'm in the same boat as FX: my pantry is sans HFCS. But that's because I shop at Whore Foods, where they have a banned substance list. No, really, they do. *sigh* They have good intentions, but small brains.

I found that it's a fine, if expensive, store as long as you stick to the outer edges.  The isles in the middle... there be quacking dragons.

[MountainManPan]

They often have a nice produce and seafood section. And cheese as well.

[Tatyana]

HFCS is also called glucose-fructose syrup (especially in Europe), as that is basically what it is.

Oddly enough, table sugar, or sucrose, is also a disaccharide of glucose and fructose, as is honey.

The hypothesis that HFCS contributes to the current obesity trend has been around for a few years now, and while it doesn't make any sense biochemically, there is obviously evidence in rats.

Fructose, for the most part, has to be processed in the liver, unlike glucose, which can undergo glycolysis in just about every cell in our body.

The hypothesis is that as the liver become saturated with glycogen stores, and the gluconeogensis pathway is saturated with fructose (and glucose), it converts it to fat. Our bodies are clever that way, it can turn EVERYTHING into fat.

As the liver is in our midsection, the fat is typically deposited around our middle, and I have heard it mentioned that it is due to the whole cortisol-insulin connection.

I am also fairly positive that muscle cell can use fructose directly, so I am not entirely convinced about this entire  scenario.

There is some political-economic things with the whole HFCS thing, I think there are quite high taxes on importing sugar into the US. Sugar is used in Coke in almost everywhere in the world, except the US, where HFCS is used.

[MountainManPan]

I still think the obesity has more to do with the amount of calories people eat more than it does with HFCS over 'regular' sugar.

[DeepGlue]

I read a few other versions of this press release as well as the abstract, and none of them answer the most important question: How much fructose is in the HFCS they used? IIRC there have already been studies which show that eating lots of fructose is bad, but none have shown that eating 50/50 HFCS (50% fructose, 50% glucose) is worse than sucrose (which is a fructose with a small bond to a glucose).

Does anyone have access the paper? Looks like it's still in press. We still have to see what the paper actually says.

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Edit: Nevermind, looks like it was 55/42 (although what's the other 3%?).

Also, the response from "Big Corn" says that the rats were fed much much more sucrose and HFCS, proportionately, than humans ever would - Basically you getting all your daily calories from 20 cans of soda with either sucrose or HFCS. Thoughts?

[DeepGlue]

Wow, this paper really does nothing to show that HFCS is worse than sucrose. "Big Corn" also pointed out that for most of their data there is no sucrose control. On top of that, the data that does have a sucrose control shows slightly worse results. Check the figures on the paper abstract link.

[MountainManPan]

Oh, we are supposed to read the study and not just the headline it inspires???

[jaypee]

Oh, we are supposed to read the study and not just the headline it inspires???

SSSHHH!!!

[cerveauxfrits]

Also, the response from "Big Corn" says that the rats were fed much much more sucrose and HFCS, proportionately, than humans ever would - Basically you getting all your daily calories from 20 cans of soda with either sucrose or HFCS. Thoughts?

I think that if you're talking about that large a portion of your diet, a 5% increase in fructose doesn't sound so small.

Also, judging by the abstract they crammed 3 different experiments into the same paper.  They do say it's only 2 experiments, but their experiment 1 appears to really be a conflation of two different studies - a study of what happens when your diet consists of nothing but sugar, and a study of what happens if you're given access to sugar in addition to a regular diet.   The way that they're mashing 2 protocols into one study and two studies and three protocols into one paper makes me suspicious.  But I'll probably just stick with being suspicious rather than trying to figure out what's really going on since I'm too cheap to spend $31.50 to see the fulltext.

[jaypee]

Also, the response from "Big Corn" says that the rats were fed much much more sucrose and HFCS, proportionately, than humans ever would - Basically you getting all your daily calories from 20 cans of soda with either sucrose or HFCS. Thoughts?

I think that if you're talking about that large a portion of your diet, a 5% increase in fructose doesn't sound so small.

Also, judging by the abstract they crammed 3 different experiments into the same paper.  They do say it's only 2 experiments, but their experiment 1 appears to really be a conflation of two different studies - a study of what happens when your diet consists of nothing but sugar, and a study of what happens if you're given access to sugar in addition to a regular diet.   The way that they're mashing 2 protocols into one study and two studies and three protocols into one paper makes me suspicious.  But I'll probably just stick with being suspicious rather than trying to figure out what's really going on since I'm too cheap to spend $31.50 to see the fulltext.

I'll check if it's available through my university library's E-Journal collection, and if it is I will illegally post it

[DeepGlue]

Even without the full paper, the figures tell the story fairly clearly.

Fig 1 - Fig 2:
[Males with 24-H access to HFCS + chow]
> [Males with 12-H access to HFCS +chow]
> [Males with access to just chow].
No big revelation there, and no comparison to sucrose.

Fig 3 - Fig 4:
[Females with 24-H access to HFCS + chow]
> [Females with 12-H access to sucrose + chow]
> [Females with 12-H access to HFCS + chow]
~= [Females with access to just chow].
So... you don't compare the 24-H HFCS to 24-H sucrose, and your 12-H results seem to show sucrose is worse?

So I wonder exactly where these idiots get the impression that their paper shows HFCS is worse than sucrose.