"Corn sugar" First the name change and now this

[bloomington-lib]

From "6 biggest lies about food busted" on yahoo

Myth 2: High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is worse for you than sugar.
The Truth: The idea that high-fructose corn syrup is any more harmful to your health than sugar is “one of those urban myths that sounds right but is basically wrong,” according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy group. The composition of high-fructose corn syrup is almost identical to table sugar or sucrose (55 percent fructose, 45 percent glucose and 50:50, respectively). Calorie-wise, HFCS is a dead ringer for sucrose. Studies show that HFCS and sucrose have very similar effects on blood levels of insulin, glucose, triglycerides and satiety hormones. In short, it seems to be no worse—but also no better—than sucrose, or table sugar. This controversy, say researchers, is distracting us from the more important issue: we’re eating too much of all sorts of sugars, from HFCS and sucrose to honey and molasses. The American Heart Association recently recommended that women consume no more than 100 calories a day in added sugars <6 teaspoons>; men, 150 calories <9 teaspoons>.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/6-biggest-lies-about-food-busted-2391419

[derby378]

1. CSPI has a hit-and-miss track record

They're a bit on the fritzy side. We'll see how this plays out.

HFCS still has to be manufactured in a laboratory instead of grown naturally, which is a little taxing on the environment.

[thunder rising]

2. Got a link to the study about the satiety levels? Junk foods love HFCS: the gift that keeps giving

[nenagh]

3. HFCS is the Trans Fat of the Sweetner world..

Ughhh

[TexasProgresive]

4. Have you read this study?

I read a study years ago that used these same Wistar fatty rats to test a Triglicderide lowering med. To induce the rats to have high triglicerides the were given 10% Fructose in their water.

VLDL triglyceride kinetics in Wistar fatty rats, an animal model of NIDDM: effects of dietary fructose alone or in combination with pioglitazone.

1. T Kaumi,
2. T Hirano,
3. H Odaka,
4. T Ebara,
5. N Amano,
6. T Hozumi,
7. Y Ishida and
8. G Yoshino

+ Author Affiliations

1.
Department of Medicine, Hyogo Medical Center for Adults, Japan.

Abstract

The effects of dietary fructose alone or in combination with a new oral agent, pioglitazone, on VLDL-triglyceride (TG) turnover were studied in genetically obese Wistar fatty rats characterized by hyperinsulinemia (7,488 +/- 954 pmol/l), hyperglycemia, (22.5 +/- 1.4 mmol/l), and hypertriglyceridemia (4.39 +/- 0.54 mmol/l). They had an increased hepatic TG production (16.2 +/- 0.1 micromol/min; lean rats, 5.4 +/- 0.3 micromol/min) as well as a longer half-life of VLDL-TG from lean donors (8.8 +/- 1.4 min, lean recipients; 2.3 +/- 0.9 min). In addition, in lean recipients, the half-life of VLDL-TG from fatty donors was longer than that from lean donors (4.80 +/- 0.56 vs. 3.14 +/- 0.23 min). Although feeding fructose into fatty rats did not change plasma glucose and insulin levels, it produced a twofold increase in TG levels (8.74 +/- 1.15 mmol/l). This was associated with a 1.7-fold increase in TG production to 27.5 +/- 1.2 micromol/min, while no significant change was found in the half-life of lean VLDL-TG in fructose-fed fatty recipients (10.9 +/- 2.4 min) or in that of VLDL-TG from fructose-fed fatty donors in lean recipients (4.46 +/- 0.76 min). Daily administration of pioglitazone (3 mg/kg body weight) in fructose-fed fatty rats ameliorated glycemia and triglyceridemia to the level of lean rats (8.1 +/- 0.7 and 1.18 +/- 0.05 mmol/l, respectively) and insulinemia to a lesser extent (2,712 +/- 78 pmol/l). A fall in TG levels was associated with improvement of an impairment in the ability of fructose-fed fatty rats to remove lean VLDL-TG (half-fife: 2.6 +/- 0.6 min). Pioglitazone, however, produced no change in TG production (25.9 +/- 2.7 micromol/min), the half-life of VLDL-TG from fructose-fed fatty donors in lean recipients (4.17 +/- 0.38 min), or the activity of lipoprotein lipase and hepatic lipase in postheparin plasma. We conclude that in Wistar fatty rats 1) hypertriglyceridemia is attributed to TG overproduction and impaired TG catabolism, and the latter is due to changes in both VLDL, such that they are less able to be removed, and changes in the nature of Wistar fatty rats, such that they are less able to remove VLDL-TG; 2) fructose further increases hepatic TG production with a resultant deterioration in hypertriglyceridemia; 3) pioglitazone normalizes TG levels by altering the physiology of the Wistar fatty rats in a manner that increases their ability to remove VLDL-TG from the circulation.

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/45/6/806.abstract

[sense]

5. 55:45 and 50:50 are not the same.

That is the problem. They're trying to use those numbers to show how close they are to the same and the problem with hfcs is due to the inequality between the levels of fructose and glucose. That 55 fructose and 45 glucose changes how our bodies process and use HFCS as opposed to how we process sugar. HFCS is used by our bodies differently than sugar. Our bodies want to store HFCS as fat and that leads to all sorts of health problems and makes it much more difficult for us to lose fat and become healthier.

I don't understand how we can know that changing the type of molecules in a substance in chemistry can change something benign into something toxic, yet we don't apply that outside of the classroom to the substances we consume.

[northernlights]

6. I have not yet taken biochemistry, but one of my classmates

in clinical chemistry last spring told me that the they took a look at HFCS. As I recall, he said the problem isn't with natural high fructose sugar. The problem is with the artificially made version. I got the impression it is actually an isomer of the original, that they are unable to get one atom to attach on the correct side of the molecule and as a result we're unable to metabolise it properly.

I expect to take biochem next year, so will get the full scoop then...