Sugar Is No Healthier Than High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup is terrible for you. I want to clarify this. But if you study the ingredient labels carefully to avoid this, or if you choose Jones Soda or Mexican Coke because of the “real” sugar, you may have been tricked.
Both table sugar, or sucrose, and high fructose corn syrup are sugars. People all over the world, and especially Americans, eat tons of sugar, and this seems to contribute to obesity and metabolic disorders . The 2015 Diet Guidelines will set a limit for the first time on the amount of added sugars we should eat. End of story, sugar is bad for you. But is there a difference between high fructose corn syrup and table sugar?
Difference Between High Fructose Corn Syrup and Sugar
Fructose and glucose are two different types of sugars, each being a small molecule with six carbon atoms. When they are chemically bonded to each other, we call the result sucrose or table sugar. It is 50% glucose and 50% fructose.
Old-fashioned corn syrup is composed primarily of glucose, but when processed into “high fructose” corn syrup, it produces a fructose content of 42% or 55% (55% fructose syrup is used in soft drinks). … Thus, the fructose content of high fructose corn syrup and table sugar, while not identical, is very similar.
When you ingest sucrose, it floats intact through your mouth, esophagus, and stomach only to be cut in half by one of the many copies of the enzyme, sucrose, that adhere to the walls of your small intestine . The result of grinding is two molecules, one glucose and one fructose, each of which is absorbed into the cells of the small intestine using specialized transporters. From these cells, it enters our bloodstream. Congratulations, you just ate and metabolized sugar.
When we eat high fructose corn syrup, it doesn’t need to be broken down as fructose and glucose have never been linked to each other. Thus, it is simply absorbed directly through the same fructose and glucose transporters as in the above scenario.
By the time any of the sweeteners enter your bloodstream, it’s already a glucose-fructose soup, so it’s very difficult to find an explanation as to why high fructose corn syrup should have any other effect on your body than sugar.
Fructose may be bad for you, but that doesn’t mean high fructose corn syrup is inferior to sugar.
Let’s say we accept the theory (controversial, but noteworthy) that fructose is really very bad for you, much worse than glucose. Even Robert Lustig, one of the most outspoken proponents of this theory, has stated several times that he considers high fructose corn syrup to be the equivalent of sugar. Both are high in fructose.
Yes, high fructose corn syrup may contain more fructose than table sugar * . But here’s a reality check from Examine.com :
In a worst-case scenario, high fructose corn syrup might be 55% fructose; For 100 g (400 kcal) of sugar eaten, this will give an additional 5 g of fructose compared to the same amount of calories from sucrose.
It seems that in practical situations the extra fructose is too negligible to be of practical value, and excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup to the point where fructose can be practically relevant is associated with excessive sugar intake in general.
The people at Examine.com analyzed the evidence for a difference between the two sweeteners and found that both had the same effect on satiety (how full you feel) and leptin, the hormone that controls hunger. Studies on insulin response and weight loss have similarly shown no difference between the two sugars. A2007 review published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition concluded that high fructose corn syrup does not play a significant role in weight gain compared to sucrose.
But didn’t research show that high fructose corn syrup is more “toxic” than sugar?
It’s true that a study came out from the University of Utah a few months ago that said high fructose corn syrup was more “toxic” than sucrose.
The study was conducted on wild-type mice (not inbred laboratory mice) that lived in specially built “mouse barns” where they could freely fight, mate and give birth to children. The researchers compared mice that consumed 25% of their calories from sucrose (table sugar) to mice that consumed 25% of their calories from a mixture of fructose and glucose, the equivalent of high fructose corn syrup. They reported in The Journal of Nutrition that female mice that ate a mixture of fructose and glucose gave birth to fewer babies and shortened their lifespan. The university issued a press release entitled ” Fructose is more toxic to mice than table sugar .”
To understand the results, I called toxicologist John DeSesso , who specializes in developing animal experiments, to find out if the substances affected the reproduction and development of animals.
“I’m not very impressed with their statements,” he said, noting that there are guidelines for assessing reproductive toxicity in animal studies, and the Utah study did not follow the usual pattern. Because the researchers conducted extensive observations of the entire mouse population (for example, the number of babies or deaths over a given period of time), they could not accurately determine what was happening, and they have no theory why sugar would be much more “toxic” to female mice than for males. They also did not double-check their results by examining the pancreas or livers of rodents, which could confirm whether diabetes or other metabolic changes are causing them.
DeSesso also noted that since this type of experiment is new, it is difficult to know how to interpret the results. “This is not to say that this paradigm is bad, but it is somewhat untested.” He said he’d be interested to see if the results could ultimately be reproduced and explained, but that the experiment cannot be inferred from the experiment that we know there is something wrong with the high fructose corn syrup.
We are all suckers
Here’s a deep thought: What if we demonize high fructose corn syrup to make us feel better by eating a lot of sugar?
It’s easy to decide that you will be drinking Pepsi-Cola Made With Real Sugar (formerly Throwback) instead of regular Pepsi, or that you will support a company like Jones or Whole Foods that avoids high fructose corn syrup. So you can drink your fancy soda or organic lemonade while turning your back on the plebeians drinking Coca-Cola, even if you both consume the same amount of sugar.
What would be harder – but healthier – is finding ways to minimize sugary foods and beverages in your diet in the first place. We’ve already written about some of the ways you can avoid sugar and make it less harmful. So if you still want to check labels for high fructose corn syrup, check your sugar while you consume it.