High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the 'flavor-of-the-moment' current stand-in for everything that is wrong with the world. It has been blamed for childhood obesity by prominent politicians, hyped by food activists as the cause of environmental catastrophes, and casually called poison by people who want to police our dinner tables. Both science and common sense beg for skepticism. But now there are five good reasons to call shenanigans on the supposed link between obesity and HFCS. And they’re all published in a recent supplement to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The five papers confirm that the anti-HFCS doctrine—instigated by activists and disseminated by a scientifically ignorant and bewildered media... is groundless. As USA TODAY reports, the studies “find no special link between consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.” In other words, HFCS affects our bodies in the same way as regular table sugar. The sugar-is-natural/HFCS-is-evil routine was getting a bit old anyway. So I'm glad that some research is finally validating that, as one researcher put it, “sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup are not that different."
USA TODAY suggests these five papers were a reaction to previous studies—one in the same journal and by the same author—which concluded that there was a link between HFCS and obesity. Those studies, of course, look pretty shaky today. The real lesson here goes deeper than sugar and syrup: Don’t allow half-baked science to metastize into nutritional dogma.
The kind of high-fructose syrup that is added to so many different foods in the USA is made from corn and consists of 53% fructose and 47% glucose, both of which are slightly different sugars. Table sugar, which scientists call sucrose, is made from sugar cane or sugar beets and consists of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Sooo... the "high" in HFCS is 3% more than table sugar, hmmm... At high levels of consumption, fructose, whether from high-fructose corn syrup OR from table sugar, increases triglycerides (fat) in the bloodstream, which could be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The Harvard School of Public Health reports that the amount of trans fat in the average American's diet has not changed since the 1950s. Since that time, our life expectancy has grown - but so have our irrational fears.
In a court of law, the burden of proof falls on those leveling the accusations. But public opinion doesn’t work that way. In the media, even unfounded accusations immediately put the defendants in the unfair position of having to prove their innocence (anybody ever read about McCarthyism or the Salem Witch Trials?). This inversion of opinion vs. fact allows nutrition activists to adopt a “guilty until proven innocent” approach when slandering their bogeyman-of-the-month.
Bottom line: Trans fat definitely isn't healthy, but that doesn't make HFCS nearly the apocalyptic danger a few charismatic agenda-wielding fearmongers say it is.
The five papers confirm that the anti-HFCS doctrine—instigated by activists and disseminated by a scientifically ignorant and bewildered media... is groundless. As USA TODAY reports, the studies “find no special link between consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.” In other words, HFCS affects our bodies in the same way as regular table sugar. The sugar-is-natural/HFCS-is-evil routine was getting a bit old anyway. So I'm glad that some research is finally validating that, as one researcher put it, “sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup are not that different."
USA TODAY suggests these five papers were a reaction to previous studies—one in the same journal and by the same author—which concluded that there was a link between HFCS and obesity. Those studies, of course, look pretty shaky today. The real lesson here goes deeper than sugar and syrup: Don’t allow half-baked science to metastize into nutritional dogma.
The kind of high-fructose syrup that is added to so many different foods in the USA is made from corn and consists of 53% fructose and 47% glucose, both of which are slightly different sugars. Table sugar, which scientists call sucrose, is made from sugar cane or sugar beets and consists of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Sooo... the "high" in HFCS is 3% more than table sugar, hmmm... At high levels of consumption, fructose, whether from high-fructose corn syrup OR from table sugar, increases triglycerides (fat) in the bloodstream, which could be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The Harvard School of Public Health reports that the amount of trans fat in the average American's diet has not changed since the 1950s. Since that time, our life expectancy has grown - but so have our irrational fears.
In a court of law, the burden of proof falls on those leveling the accusations. But public opinion doesn’t work that way. In the media, even unfounded accusations immediately put the defendants in the unfair position of having to prove their innocence (anybody ever read about McCarthyism or the Salem Witch Trials?). This inversion of opinion vs. fact allows nutrition activists to adopt a “guilty until proven innocent” approach when slandering their bogeyman-of-the-month.
Bottom line: Trans fat definitely isn't healthy, but that doesn't make HFCS nearly the apocalyptic danger a few charismatic agenda-wielding fearmongers say it is.
