High-Fructose Corn Syrup: Feast or Famine?
Have you seen the commercials? My favorite depicts a couple sitting in the park, blanket spread beneath them; the woman offers her man a bite of a popsicle, two in fact, that’s how much she loves him. He balks and says, “…it’s got high-fructose corn syrup in it…[and] you know what they say about [that]?” “What?” she says. He doesn’t remember and can’t answer, and she laughs at how silly he is. Then she lays out the facts: “…it’s made from corn, has the same calories as sugar…and it’s fine in moderation”.8 (Two Bites Commercial)
You can probably guess that I’m going to disagree. That’s my gut reaction anyway. If I’m fair, though, high-fructose corn syrup is an outstanding example of the confusion at the heart of much of the nutrition world. Depending on whom you ask, high-fructose corn syrup can be shown to be the root of all evil or just another delightful way to sweeten our foods. So which is it?
It’s Made From Corn
It’s true what our lady told her man- high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is made from corn, but that’s a definite oversimplification. Making HFCS isn’t in the realm of making, say, maple syrup, which involves little more than drilling a hole into a tree and waiting. In fact, it’s exponentially more complicated, to the point of being industrial.
The short version of this process is still fairly long, so bear with me. In order to minimize your boredom, I’m going to skip the processing of corn into cornstarch and use cornstarch as the starting material. First, cornstarch is treated with an enzyme called alpha-amylase. This enzyme breaks cornstarch down into shorter chemical chains, which happens to a further degree when the cornstarch is treated with yet another enzyme, glucoamylase. These enzymes come from bacteria and fungus, respectively, making them making them relatively inexpensive. The third enzyme, glucose-isomerase, is very expensive, and is used to convert the glucose in the cornstarch into a mixture of glucose and fructose (mixture A).
Next, the mixture is refined with carbon filters and ion exchange, and liquid chromatography is used to increase the percentage of fructose in the mixture. Finally, this high-fructose mixture is blended with the aforementioned glucose/fructose mixture (mixture A) and viola, high-fructose corn syrup is born!
Simplifying HFCS to the point where “it’s made from corn” is akin to calling it “natural”, a word not used in the commercial, but frequently thrown around the rest of the pro-HFCS website (which is coincidentally sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association). Technically, you could call this process and resulting mixture “natural”, especially considering that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no formal definition for the word “natural”, but do you even know what liquid chromatography is? Do you know what a tree and bucket are? Which of those scenarios seems more “natural” to you?
As for the moderation part, I’ll give them some credit. Part of me immediately thinks this is an excuse, as the same argument could be made for any number of dietary and lifestyle practices. But yes, sure, high-fructose corn syrup is fine in moderation. The issue is that we don’t consume it at that level.
American Consumption Doesn’t Qualify as Moderation
As of 2005, soda, made with high-fructose corn syrup, was the number one source of calories in America.1 According to the USDA, the availability per capita (how much was available to be consumed per person) of high-fructose corn syrup increased 10,673 percent from 1970-2005.9 Today, a majority of the sweeteners used by food and beverage manufacturers (55 percent) are made from corn.1 That reliance means that HFCS is found in a vast number of products, including salad dressings, cookies, breads, juices, cereals, granola bars, candies, condiments, crackers, pastries and cakes, chocolate, yogurt, ice cream, jams and jellies, sauces, and chips. Of the money Americans spend on food, 90 percent is spent on processed foods.1 If we eat this many processed foods made by manufacturers that rely so heavily on high-fructose corn syrup, can we really call that moderation?
The Calories are the Same
Okay, so maybe the idea that high-fructose corn syrup and sugar have the same number of calories means something, but it’s only a fraction of the story. If calories were all nutrition was about, you certainly wouldn’t need my help. Let’s look beyond this distracting oversimplification and talk about how this compound differs from sugar and how those differences affect your body.
Here’s where I have to get technical again for a moment. The differences between HFCS and regular table sugar are twofold. There is a small percentage difference in fructose concentration, with table sugar being fifty percent each glucose and fructose, and high-fructose corn syrup at either forty-two percent fructose or fifty-five percent fructose (the remainder in either case being glucose). There is also a difference in whether the glucose and fructose are bound together. In table sugar, they are bound to one another, and in high-fructose corn syrup, they aren’t. Again, depending on whom you ask, either of these differences can be made into a major issue or dismissed as a minor detail. It appears that the answer lies somewhere in between.
To illustrate what I mean let’s look at soda, since Americans drink a ridiculous amount of it. Most sodas have HFCS in them, and studies show that it is the free (unbound) fructose within HFCS that causes the metabolic differences between HFCS and sugar.5, 6, 7 Sugar stimulates a hormone called insulin to be released, which goes into your blood, picks up the sugar from the things you eat and drink, and stores it tidily away in your cells (after fulfilling the body’s energy needs). Free, unbound fructose in HFCS doesn’t stimulate insulin to be released. Thus, rather than being digested into blood sugar, HFCS seems to end up being converted to trigylcerides (a form of fat in your blood) and fat tissue.
Aside from direct conversion to fat, this bypassing of insulin stimulation causes other problems. Because insulin isn’t released, it can’t enhance the production of another hormone, leptin. Leptin regulates appetite control and metabolism. Because fructose fails to stimulate leptin, your brain doesn’t receive the signal that you’re full. If you are not receiving the signal that you are full, you are more likely to overeat. Therefore, despite the fact that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup match calorically, they certainly are not the same thing.
In the United States, soda is predominantly sweetened with HFCS, whereas many other countries are still using sugar. Does that mean you should start importing your soda? It’s not that easy, as unfortunately there also are downfalls to consuming excess table sugar. Regardless of the intricacies in their chemical structures, too much of any sweetener means too many calories consumed. But remember that it’s not just about calories. Too much sugar leads to weight gain (especially around your middle, as the belly is the first place excess sugars are stored), increases in total cholesterol and LDL or “bad” cholesterol, and a condition called insulin resistance. Long-term insulin resistance may lead to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, insomnia, carbohydrate craving, depression and mood swings, migraine headaches, heartburn, and irritable bowel syndrome.
What’s a Person to Do?
The easy answer is to limit your intake of all sweeteners, including high-fructose corn syrup. Many of those against HFCS point to the mirrored increased consumption of HFCS alongside increased rates of obesity and diabetes as proof that HFCS is detrimental to your health. It would be nice if it were that simple, but it seems that HFCS is only a part of the overall picture of the changes that have taken place in the Standard American Diet (SAD), including increased portion sizes and increased intake of processed foods.
Ideally, your diet would consist of whole foods and your sweet tooth would be satisfied by small amounts of fruit and natural, unrefined sweeteners like honey, stevia, maple syrup, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, date sugar, Sucanat, vegetable glycerin, and xylitol.
The big question: Was our lady correct to brush aside the unarticulated concerns of her man? I ultimately return to the principle that guides me whenever science doesn’t offer a simple and easy answer; the less a food is processed, the better. Given that you can’t drill into a kernel of corn and wait for high-fructose corn syrup to come spilling out, I’d say she say she shouldn’t be so quick to bite into that popsicle.
1 Mercola, Dr. J. (2009) Don’t Believe the Hype — Fructose Truly is Much Worse Than Glucose, from Natural Health Information Articles and Health Newsletter by Dr. Joseph Mercola Web Site: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/16/Dont-Believe-the-Hype-Fructose-Truly-is-Much-Worse-Than-Glucose.aspx
2 Forristal, LJ. (2003) The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup from The Weston A. Price Foundation Web Site: http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html
3 High-Fructose Corn Syrup from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup
4 U.S. Consumption of Caloric Sweeteners. (2008), from USDA Economic Research Service Web Site: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Sugar/data.htm
5 Bray, GA, et al. (2004). Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. American Society for Clinical Nutrition, 79(4), 537-543.
6 Elliott, SS, et al. (2002). Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome. American Society for Clinical Nutrition, 76(5), 911-922.
7 Schwarz, J-M, et al. (1989). Thermogenesis in men and women induced by fructose vs glucose added to a meal. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 49(4), 667-674.
8 Two Bites TV Spot. (2008), from SweetSurprise.com Web Site: http://sweetsurprise.com/videos/two-bites
9 Wells, HF & Buzby, JC. Dietary Assessment of Major Trends in U.S. Food Consumption, 1970-2005 (2008), from USDA Economic Research Web Site: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB33/
September 12th, 2009 at 7:00 am (#)
[...] are over-processed in America, and under-nutritious. Of the money Americans spend on food, 90 percent is spent on processed foods. Food processing is basically done to extend life (i.e. making them cheaper), not to make them [...]