The contents shared below from the article:The Not-So-Sweet Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup were posted: 05/13/2011 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. 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-gatherer 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 reportedly not allow the investigative journalist Michael Pollan to observe it for his book, The Omnivores 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 HFCS 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 eight 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 bodys major fat storage hormone. Both of 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 Childrens 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 bodys 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 doesnt 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 shouldnt we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15 to 20 percent of the average Americans daily calorie intake? 4. Many independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT support the use of HFCS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn industry. The corn industrys happy looking websites cornsugar and sweetsurprise 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 doesnt stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents you from triggering the bodys signals for being full and may lead to overconsumption of total calories. He concludes by saying that: ... 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. 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 didnt 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. The real issues are only two. 1. 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. 2. High fructose corn syrup is almost 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. For more information on the effects of high fructose corn syrup see drhyman. Know Id like to hear from you ... 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? Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below. To your good health, Mark Hyman, MD Click onto the link provided directly below to gain access to the entire article The Not-So-Sweet Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup Posted: 05/13/2011 6:59 pm EDT Updated: 07/16/2011 5:12 am EDT huffingtonpost/dr-mark-hyman/high-fructose-corn-syrup-dangers_b_861913.html
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 15:38:19 +0000
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