High-fructose corn syrup

[the small soldier]

I honestly don't think corn syrup is any worse for you than other types of sugars. They're all bad in large amounts.

if you believe that then read this:

Princeton University - A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

 

[1Johnboy]

I honestly don't think corn syrup is any worse for you than other types of sugars. They're all bad in large amounts.

^^^^ 4 year old post but that statement is as wrong as can be.

 

[stevesmi]

^^^ yup. if i eat anything with HFCS i feel like shit immediately after. there is such a sugar high that i feel naseous.. like i just ate a whole bag of candy.

i avoid the stuff totally. its so bad that i was at a gas station the other day looking for something to eat and EVERY SINGLE THING in that place had HFCS. and people wonder why we are an obese nation!

for a bodybuilder i would say eating that stuff would screw up your diet for a week.

 

[PickMe69]

Re: What is making you fat: High-fructose corn syrup

Want to clear up a few things.

While most people concerned about their weight fixate on fats and carbohydrates, nutritionists say the real problem is sugar. .

Carbohydrates are sugars. Same thing.

And not just any old sugar, but the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) that has replaced cane and beet sugar in processed foods and soft drinks over the past 25 years.

Fructose breaks down into Glyceraldehyde - 3 Phosphate feeding into glycolysis the same way glucose feeds into glycolysis (the mechanism by which our body breaks down sugars) and the same way lactose (from galactose - milk) fedds in.

Nutritionists recommend no more than 10 to 12 teaspoonfuls of added sugar of all sorts a day. Instead, the average American’s daily dose is more like 35 teaspoonfuls—most of it coming from soft drinks. A single 12-ounce can of pop contains the equivalent of 13 teaspoonfuls of sugar in the form of HFCS..

This is the problem, not necessarily with fructose, but with american culture as a whole. We merely have way too many carbs in our diet.

.In Europe, where HFCS can’t compete with cheap cane or beet sugar, only 15% of the adult population has MetS. In America, a staggering 33% suffers from the condition..

There's a statistical term for a correlation between two statistics that are not related but due to a third variable (but for the life of me I can't think of that term right now) but I believe this would be an example. I don't think it is HFCS alone causing the increase but the type of food american's tend to eat and in "american proportions".

Fructose apparently tricks the brain into thinking you are hungrier than you actually are. Unlike carbohydrates made up of glucose, fructose does not stimulate the pancreas into producing insulin. Nor does it promote the production of leptin, a hormone made by fat cells. Under normal conditions, the amount of insulin and leptin in the body signal to the brain that you’ve had enough to eat. Meanwhile, fructose doesn’t seem to suppress the production of ghrelin, the hormone that triggers appetite, which normally declines after eating..

It doesn't "trick" the brain. What happens is the following: fructose is broken down into GA-3P feeding into glycolysis just like glucose, but because it isn't glucose and therefore doesn't contribute to blood sugar levels it doesn't cause fluxs in insulin levels. But insulin also causes fat cells to be produced rather than broken down (ie the storage of glucose). So by ingesting fructose from my understanding you are actually creating chemical energy in your body without increasing fat storage.

In tinkering with the body’s hormonal balance, fructose also causes the liver to spew more fat into the bloodstream than normal. Thus, consuming foods or drinks laced with HFCS is like eating a high-fat meal. .

Not true, the liver produces fats via lipogenesis, which is stimulated by increases in insulin from glucose, this is because when the body has more glucose than it needs for metabolic energy and muscle contractions (storage in glycogen) the body will use byproducts from glucose in lipogenesis.

Edit: Just saw the Princton study, very interesting results, I'm going to read more into but it wouldn't change anything I've stated above, just that HFCS affects the body different than I would expect.

 

[PickMe69]

"The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles."

That's the key point in the Princeton Article. IT JUST DOES! Haha, their studies definetly suggest that HFSC does cause an increase in fat weight but its interesting that they can't conclude exactly why. The information in my previous post is just fact, not opinion, and can be found in a biochem text book, therefore there must be something interesting going on with HFSC. (Maybe I'll be able to do some research on it soon)

But it does change my argument about the correlation rates between HFSC in America and Europe with obesity rates. They may be more related than I originally believed.