High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats

krou writes "In an experiment conducted by a Princeton University team, 'Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.' Long-term consumption also 'led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.' Psychology professor Bart Hoebel commented that 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.'"

Comments

HFC

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because HFC is absorbed by the body in the same way that beer and alcohol is. In the liver. HFC also suppresses the satiety (hunger) signal so people tend to eat more.

Re:HFC

[tpjunkie]

I am a (stressed out) med student studying for a GI physiology exam. Sugars must be broken down in the small intestine to monosaccharides to be absorbed, so sucrose becomes glucose and fructose, lactose (if you're not lactose intolerant) breaks down to glucose and galactose. Glucose and galactose are absorbed via co-transport with sodium via transport proteins. This requires a standing Na+ gradient in the cell, maintained by the Na-K pump, which requires the expenditure of energy. Fructose on the other hand enters the cell by simple facilitated diffusion through the GLUT-5 protein, meaning its transport out of the intestinal lumen requires no energy expenditure. Biochemically it it can enter the glycolytic cycle and is rapidly metabolized in much the same way as glucose.

Re:HFC

[BobPaul]

HFCF is fructose and sucrose. Fructose is absorbed by the small intestine. Sucrose (table sugar) is broken down in the stomach and small intestine into 1 glucose molecule and 1 fructose molecule, which are then both absorbed by the small intestine. So, either way you get fructose, big deal, right? That's the conventional wisdom.

But lets look further. If you eat 1 tablespoon of HCFC 55 (equal in sweetness to 1 tablespoon sucrose), you get .55 tablespoons of fructose and .45 tablespoons of sucrose. That sucrose is turned into half fructose and half glucose before entering the bloodstream. So in reality you ate .775 tablespoons of fructose and .225 tablespoons of glucose. This is significantly more fructose than if you had eaten 1 tablespoon of sucrose. And if you're consuming sugar water (as in the study) or lots and lots of soda, you're consuming far more than a tablespoon.

Of course your claim that it's "absorbed ... in the same way that beer and alcohol is. In the liver" isn't quite correct. They're all absorbed by the small intestine, but it's true they are metabolized by the liver, albeit in completely different ways. What's might be important about the liver, though, is that it's not regulated by insulin. While glucose can be metabolized by any of the bodies cells, insulin regulates blood glucose levels. Fructose is only processed by the liver and is indifferent to insulin levels. So (in a layman's, but more detailed explanation) when you eat that 1 tablespoon of table sugar, you get half a tablespoon of unregulated sugar and half regulated. Eat the HFCF55 and most of the sugar is unregulated.

As an aside, honey is almost identical in composition to HFCF55, so if you meet any holistics bemoaning HFCF and championing honey, you can tell them to screw off.

Re:HFC

[inKubus]

HFCS is created with an enzymatic process. The HFCS food companies buy is dirty. It's mostly fructose and glucose but it also contains the enzymes used to convert the corn starch. You can't remove it all, apparently. And the standards are based on very small serving sizes. When people are drinking 50-100g a day of it, this enzyme builds up in the human system and attaches to other starch and performs the same conversion process to sugar. Normally this process takes more energy but with the unnatural enzyme it doesn't, and therefore it causes more efficient breakdown of starch. These people also tend to have a bag of chips or fries with their 50-100g of corn syrup. This means all of that becomes sugar. Since the body can't use the sugar, insulin is released and reactions occur and "bada-bing" FAT.

See Alpha-amylase, Glucoamylase, and Xyloase.

Re:HFC

[pydev]

Fructose is the culprit. But there are differences. Pure fructose is hard to absorb. Fructose in fruit is released only slowly. Both are probably OK. Fructose in sucrose needs to be split off before being absorbed, which seems to limit its rate; at normal sucrose concentrations, the fructose is also absorbed more slowly than the glucose.

HFCS is the worst of the bunch: it doesn't need to be split, and the 1:1 fructose/glucose ratio is ideal for rapid absorption, and both sugars peak simultaneously, putting a large load on the liver.

So, you're fine with moderate sucrose consumption (disaccharides) and eating fruit till you burst (fructose+fiber). Pure fructose is iffy. And HFCS is a no-no.

Re:HFC

[cayenne8]

"I'm now a believer that HFCS should be avoided whenever possible. "

Trouble is...HFCS is in fucking everything..

Just try to find something as simple as a loaf of bread, or salad dressing without HFCS in it.

When I started reading labels, trying to cut carbs on the few processed foodstuff I do buy...I was amazed to find how pervasive that shit is in everything out there...

Re:Queue . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to oblige! This story was posted on Science Daily yesterday. They included the following:

Editor's Note: In response to the above-mentioned study, The Corn Refiners Association issued a statement titled "Gross Errors in Princeton Animal Study on Obesity and High Fructose Corn Syrup: Research in Humans Discredits Princeton Study" (http://www.corn.org/princeton-hfcs-study-errors.html). This link is provided for information only -- no editorial endorsement is implied.

Re:Not as bad as something else

[Mindcontrolled]

Sorry, but that blog seems to be a wee bit on the crackpot side of things. The body does not really care how the fructose is administered - when it arrives in the intestine, it is in solution anyway, so no difference whether it comes crystalline or as HFCS. The effect should be the same. The problems that are pointed at in that post are probably true, however. Fructose triggers a lower insulin response than glucose, so the hunger persists despite caloric intake. Also, fructose is metabolized mostly, if not only, in the liver, which causes stress on the organ.

Usual table sugar - sucrose - is a disaccharide made from one molecule of fructose and one of glucose. The glucose part triggers the insulin production, which signals that you have taken in calories. So, if you use normal sugar instead of HFCS, your body knows that you got energy way faster. That seems to be the main obesity mechanism associated with HFCS.

Skepticical: Study Results are inconclusive

[axjms]

Arstechnica.com covered this same study the other day. Their writeup is better than mine would be so why don't you read their article? http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/does-high-fructose-corn-syrup-make-you-fatter.ars

The abridged version of the abridged version is that this study does not conclusively prove much of anything.

Re:Its the subsidies that are the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, government subsidies that make corn cheaper are only half the problem; they're just making the corn syrup cheap.

Government price supports for sugar are the other half -- trade barriers that stop us from importing cheap sugar from places like brazil that would love to sell it to us make sugar expensive.

Re:Interesting

[larry bagina]

The sugar industry had something to do with the problem. Specifically, pushing for import quotas in the early 80s that increased the price. As a result, manufacturers switched to corn syrup and the candy industry moved to Canada and Mexico. The jobs lost from the candy industry most likely outnumber the jobs saved by the import quotas.

It's all about the fiber

[bunratty]

All fructose is processed by the liver in the same way as alcohol. That includes fruit juice.

All this changes in the presence of fiber. If you eat a piece of fresh fruit, the fiber in the fruit changes the way the fructose from the fruit is absorbed so it's not such a huge shock to the liver.

The bottom line is that if you eat carbohydrates, you should make sure it's with plenty of fiber. In other words, eat pieces of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, just as nutritionists have been telling us for years. On food labels, I look for a % USRDA of fiber greater than or equal to the % USRDA of carbohydates, or grams of fiber at least 1/10 the grams of carbohydrate. It makes you feel more full with less food and prevents the sugar rush and crash from your liver absorbing the carbs too quickly.

Re:It's all about the fiber

[Norwell Bob]

All fructose is processed by the liver in the same way as alcohol. That includes fruit juice.

All this changes in the presence of fiber. If you eat a piece of fresh fruit, the fiber in the fruit changes the way the fructose from the fruit is absorbed so it's not such a huge shock to the liver.

Fruit juice != fruit. Drinking a tall glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 6~8 oranges, but without the fibers. Your liver treats the massive sugar dump much differently than eating the equivalent # of [fruit].

The FDA wants to toss fruit juices into the same category of "bad" drinks as sugar laden sodas.

Exactly true, and yet millions of (nutritionally) uneducated mothers and/or fathers insist that their children drink plenty of juice (most of which is probably only 10% real fruit juice to begin with), instead of soda... because it's "healthy".

I won't go off on my usual rant about the terrible food pyramid we've been brainwashed with since the 60s ("eat a shitload of bread, but NO FATS!"), but the bigger problem I'm seeing every day is just an utter ignorance about what people put into their body, or an unwillingness to try something different.

"It says LEAN Cuisine on the box! That means I'll lose weight by eating it."

My dad taught me something when I was younger, probably without even meaning to... if you can't pronounce all the ingredients, you shouldn't eat it. Of course, as a kid, I ignored that advice and just ate whatever tasted good. My mother did her best, but she grew up in an Italian household, which means a lot of pasta and other starches. When she went back to work, the fridge was filled with microwaveable "food", that I could nuke whenever I thought I was hungry. Guess who was a fat kid who sucked at sports, couldn't keep up with friends when there was running, biking, climbing, or jumping was involved? Guess who grew up to be a fat adult who tried all the same shit (pills, "diet" meals, "magic" exercise apparatus, etc.) as many other fat people, with the same results... still fat.

It took a combination of a rough period in my life, combined with pure dumb luck... I was really low and, rather than drown myself in booze, I decided that I'd had enough, and that it was time to work on me. I got an email from a major men's magazine, offering a 30-day free trial of a book (which I've shilled on /. before), the title of which appealed to desire to be more of a man than I saw in the mirror at the time. The price of the book was less than a night at the local watering hole, so I went for it. When it arrived, first I thumbed through it. There was a lot of *common sense* stuff in there that just hadn't occurred to me before. So, I went back and READ it. Many an a-ha moment. Then I went back again and applied it. Now, at the risk of sounding like a braggart, I'm one of the most fit guys in the office. People are constantly asking for, and then either disregarding or outright refuting my advice. The result is, they're still fat, and I'm still not.

Bottom line is, there's no magic pill, there's no silver bullet, there's really no secret. Back in the caveman days, right up to a half century ago, you almost had to try to get fat. Now, the food manufacturers (think about that phrase for a moment) are pumping chemicals into their products to make them taste better, cheaper. When I was a kid, McDonald's was a once-in-a-while treat. Now it's considered by many to be a viable option for all three major meals. People get in their car and drive to the store a block away. Hell, I see parents put their kids in the van and drive TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY to wait for the bus. People would rather wait in their car for 20 minutes in the Dunkin' Donuts drive through than park, get out, and be in and out of the place in 2 minutes. Schools have dropped gym class to save money and make more time for standardized tests. My oldest son tells me they don't really

Re:Queue . . .

[eldavojohn]

If the rats had free access, how did they control for the amount consumed?

Your criticisms may be apt but I would like to point out that after listening the evil shroud surrounding HFCS I decided to do an experiment with myself to see if eliminating HFCS from my diet while eating the same as I always have would cause me to lose or gain weight.

And I had to make sure only to buy things at Trader Joes since my local grocery store carried but one loaf of bread with no HFCS in it and it was hilariously marked up as some organic bullshit.

The problems didn't stop there. HFCS is quite literally everywhere. It's a preservative, a sweetener, everything. It got to be really ridiculous. After about a month of the whole charade my weight was about the same but I had been having wild cravings of ketchup (no, I wasn't pregnant). After satisfying this with some baked potatoes and french fries here and there loaded with ketchup, it dawned on me to inspect the label of my Heinz ketchup bottle. Fucking HFCS. Seriously? Upon returning to the store the "organic" ketchup is ridiculously expensive.

Due to government subsidies and advanced food science, you cannot control your intake of HFCS. It's bloody impossible in today's America. I don't know how to fix this but you can be damned sure the Corn lobby likes it this way. I'm not saying it's as evil as trans fats or bad cholesterol but holy hell is it pervasive and uncapitalistically inexpensive!

Re:Queue . . .

[smaddox]

Sugar in general should be avoided. Fructose, which is the bad half of sugar and HFCS, is the culprit. It can only be processed by the liver, and during processing it wreaks havoc on the body's systems for controlling hunger, satiation, insulin, etc.

Take the time to watch this talk by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology. It might save your life (by extending your life).

Re:Queue . . .

[RyanFenton]

Make your own ketchup - it's REALLY easy, actually - just google for recipes. It's pretty much just tomato, vinegar, onion powder, and sugar (salt and oil optional), plus perhaps a little starch to get the right texture. Buy canned tomatoes in bulk, throw a can or so of them into a blender with everything else, cook and stir until smooth and even, then put it into a container in the fridge. Cleanup is just running water over everything. 15 minutes work for as much as you want to make. Incidentally, a little more sugar/oil/vinegar makes it into french dressing.

There you go - good ketchup without HFCS.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Queue . . .

[AK Marc]

It's just the corn industry. The restrictions on sugar imports drive up the price so that sugar can't win (it can compete, but companies will take HFCS at 5% less or whatever). Then, because sugar beets would be barely cheaper and sugar cane could be grown in some areas, they get price subsidies on the corn. So importing the cheap sugar cane sugar is expensive, and growing it here results in reduced yields that can't compete with the subsidized corn.

It's the same reason that marijuana is illegal. The cotton lobby made it illegal because they feared hemp. Then it became a moral issue (that oddly, no one had about tobacco and we had just swung the other way on with alcohol) and we exported our morals to the rest of the world. But at least the rest of the world tastes our HFCS and doesn't use it...

Re:In humans too...

[Ifandbut]

One thing seems for certain, Laboratory Rats are a miserable lot. They seem to be susceptible to cancer and just about everything else you can imagine. Why not test something really hardy instead? Why not politicians?

Rats are much better human analogs then politicians.