High-Fructose Corn Syrup - The New Bad Boy in Town

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Move over trans fat, here comes high fructose corn syrup? Lately there is talk about high fructose corn syrup being the new bad boy ingredient. The explosion of products containing it may be a big reason why America is in the middle of an obesity epidemic...

Well, not so fast everyone. If you want to point the finger at something, point it at excess calories in the form of sweetened liquid...plain and simple (Although there are several changes in our diet and lifestyle over the past 25 years that you can point the rest of your fingers at too).

A study (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition July 2007) found no difference between the soda sweetened with sugar and soda sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Researchers from the University of Washington tested out the subsequent hunger, thirst, and satiety in 37 men and women 20-minutes after drinking cola with sucrose, cola with high fructose corn syrup, diet cola, and low fat milk. The amount of calories eaten at lunch two hours later was also measured. It bears repeating: no difference between the calories eaten at the next meal and the satiety 20 minutes later between the two sweetened sodas.

But maybe there is some difference in the body's response to a high intake of high fructose corn syrup that goes beyond satiety and subsequent calories consumed. Enter the next recent study on high fructose corn syrup. This study was recently presented at the American Chemical Society annual meeting. Researchers from Rutgers University tested 11 soft drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and detected high levels of compounds that are normally raised in the blood of people with diabetes - reactive carbonyls. These compounds have been linked to diabetic complications such as tissue damage. Reactive carbonyls were not detected in soda sweetened with sucrose (table sugar). This is the first I've heard or read about reactive carbonyls so I'm looking forward to more research on these compounds.

In the meantime, can we agree that maybe America's obesity crisis is due (in part) to the fact that our average daily calories has increased steadily over the past fifty years at the same time that are exercise and energy output has steadily decreased? I hate to make it sound this simple (because it isn't) but...we are eating and drinking more calories than our bodies are burning. That is not to say that I'm loving high fructose corn syrup. I think many of us could benefit from trimming off some junk calories and calories coming from beverages that contribute no other nutrients (like soda) should probably be first on the chopping block.

Soft drink consumption has increased by more than 5 times in the past 50 years. It's no surprise then that soda is now the leading source of refined sugars in the American diet. On that fact alone, we should be taking a hard look at our soda gluttony.

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source : webmd

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