I'm not sure why high-fructose corn syrup gets singled out as a uniquely evil sweetener, other than its close association with sugary soft drinks (possibly the most nutritionally-useless source of calories in the American diet) and the feeling that it is less "natural" than other sugars. But I liked the straightforward way the HFCS vs. table sugar issue was discussed in the Jan/Feb issue of the Nutrition Action Healthletter:
"To hear some critics talk, high-fructose corn syrup is the real villain. Table sugar gets a free pass.
In fact, high-fructose corn syrup is roughly half fructose and half glucose, as is table sugar (sucrose) once it breaks down in the body. And although the fructose half may cause some problems, the glucose half causes others. So if there's a villain, it's all added sugars."
Later in the article, they point out that when considering the dangers of HFCS, many people (including self-appointed health guru Dr. Mercola) "confuse high-fructose corn syrup with fructose, as though high-fructose corn syrup were mostly fructose. It's not....Glucose makes up the rest of both HFCS and sucrose. So it's not surprising that researchers find few differences - in blood sugar, insulin, ghrelin (which stimulates appetite), or leptin (which curbs appetite) - when they pit high-fructose corn syrup against table sugar."
Other than some sketchy correlational studies showing that the switch from white sugar to HFCS in sodas coincided with a rise in obesity levels, and various rat studies looking at effects on leptin (which have come to contradictory conclusions, as far as I know), I'm not really familiar with any evidence to suggest that HFCS is any worse than any other sugar. Is there science to back this up?
If not, this isn't to say that there aren't reasons a person might choose to avoid eating HFCS, such as:
* You prefer the taste of table sugar (or think that you do) - the taste difference in sweetened soft drinks is obvious (since that's almost the only ingredient), but it's not like switching from regular Coke to Jones soda or Mountain Dew Throwback is a health-conscious choice. I somehow doubt that most people could tell the difference between two store-bought chocolate chip cookies that are identical except for the type of sugar used.
* Creating a personal rule to avoid HFCS helps you avoid eating a lot of the most commonly-available (e.g. in the vending machine at work) sweets you encounter. Requiring yourself / getting in the habit of eating only sweets with other sugars helps you avoid temptation and make sweets consumption more planned and intentional, thus bringing down your overall sugar intake. (Note that I specifically mean a rule against HFCS rather than an attitude against or belief about HFCS - these are very different things.)
* You like to eat a more upscale or foodie diet. You avoid foods that give off a chemically, not-healthy vibe. You have sort of pseudoscientific views or feelings about food. Maybe you hate Big Corn. HFCS just doesn't fit in with the general sense of how you see yourself or how you see yourself eating. It may be a lot less about HFCS per se and more about what HFCS represents.
I don't think a person's decision to reduce HFCS consumption is a bad idea at all. I can see it being an especially effective strategy if you do not shop at Whole Foods or other "health" (cough) food stores that are very, very happy to provide sweets made with "brown rice syrup," "dehydrated cane juice," and other sugars by any other name, and instead you have to get off your duff and bake for yourself if you want a sugary snack. It's all the more effective if you're lazy, busy, or don't like cooking.
But I do think scaremongering and scientifically unvalidated claims about HFCS have the potential to bias public policy, as well as individual choices, in bad ways. And the extent to which people complete the heuristic of "HFCS = bad" with "No HFCS = good," we run the risk of going back down the road of idiocy that brought us jelly bean packages proclaiming "A Fat Free Food!"
I just did a google search which turned up a really funny observation along these lines: "I'm also pleased to see that the new Pizza Hut ads for "The Natural" pizza has a disclaimer that the sauce contains no HFCS!" Heh, yes, because of course the biggest health risk of eating Pizza Hut is the HFCS in the sauce. But when I looked at the site, I realized they were completely serious. (I am not at all trying to single this person out as some special case of moron or anything like that; it was just a perfect example of the thing I'm talking about.)
I could only find four things in my kitchen that contain HFCS: Robert's Dr Pepper, All Bran cereal, ketchup, and barbecue sauce. My normal cereals, granola bars, yogurts, pasta and pizza sauce, etc., all came up free of HFCS. Because I would be surprised if I ate even one of those four things in a given month (and how much ketchup does a person eat at a sitting anyway), and I rarely eat out, I probably am already limiting my HFCS consumption quite a bit without even trying. Good for me! I think I'm going to go eat a dozen Ande's mints to celebrate! OK, actually, I am going to eat one. Mmmmm. Sugar.
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As far as I can figure out, the only actually bad thing about HFCS is that, because of the subsidies we have on corn (but not sugar cane), it's much cheaper. The fact that it's cheaper means that more foods are sweetened and sweet foods are cheaper than they otherwise would be. That could be bad on a societal level, though of course it has nothing (or very very little) to say about individual choices.
I think taking a "foodie" type of approach to sweets (and snacks in general) can help a little bit. If the only cookies you buy are ones that you regard as fancy and special, then you will probably eat fewer of them and with more attention, vs. just putting a few oreos in your mouth every time you walk past the bag. But that's a very individual thing, obviously.
What I do avoid is artificial sweeteners. I don't know where the evidence comes down on them, but I am concerned that they may (a) promote having a sweet tooth, which can lead to eating more naturally sweetened things, and, more frighteningly, (b) teach my body that sweetness is non-caloric. I think there is some evidence for (b) in rats, but I'm not sure whether human studies have supported or contradicted that idea for humans (or have been inconclusive or whatever). Nevertheless, since for me personally I don't see any real benefit to artificial sweeteners (I don't bake or anything like that, and diet sodas don't add much to my life when I get into the habit of drinking a lot of them), I try to eschew them.
Cane-based sugar actually has a rather draconian tariff and quota system attached to it, so not only is HFCS subsidized, the regular stuff sells for something like 5-6 times the world price.
There's definitely something wrong with a situation where we are all subsidizing the corn that becomes the cheap sweetener making people fat and unhealthy (and contributing to higher & higher health costs, etc). I agree we should avoid sugar in general. I not only won't eat Yoplait for the HFCS, but I get plain yogurt and add my own small amount of jam for taste because they put too much sugar in the flavored stuff anyway (and no, artificial sweetener is not the same as no sugar--your body thinks it's the same thing).
Avoiding HFCS not only eliminates categories of food as Tam mentioned, but you can also avoid supporting and eating GMOs and excessive use of harmful chemicals/pesticides/petroleum products (hello environment & oil wars) by going the organic route. Yes, Sal, I know that's another empirical question. (Is organic sugar "better" for you than HFCS? Does "better" only mean "healthier to the individual eating it"??)
My other question on all this is: Why isn't the burden of proof on the ones (i.e., large corporate entities with investors--not customers--they have to answer to) mucking with our food without telling us (e.g., fighting & winning the battle on the labeling of GMO foods because it will "unnecessarily" freak consumers out; or determining people will buy way more of their product if they add super addictive/yummy sugar, salt, and fat)? Rather than saying, hey, we just messed around with the DNA of these unrelated organisms, but it should be ok, trust me--oh that seems a little scary to you, you don't know what will happen to the food supply in 20, 30, 100 years.. well too bad, nobody's died yet so it can't be that bad (oh yeah, and by the way, you're violating our patent because your field was contaminated by our GMO seed by the trucks driving by your farm). So why is the general populace the experimental guinea pig when it comes to food?? What kind of controlled study is that.
When I look at these things, I see a huge web of inter-related concerns (health, economy, politics, environment, ethics) that no single study is going to answer. I've spent 32 years and counting personally gathering, understanding, and processing data from all around me, and while not perfect, my decisions are informed by the synthesis of all of that.
You can call it pseudoscience if you want, but the fact is that these issues are not purely science. Scientists are notorious for ignoring ethics and big picture ramifications of their work. They leave it to the business or military people using their science to make those calls. We know how well that's worked historically.
From what y'all are saying, I think I could add:
4) Avoiding GMOs, and
5) Ethical considerations,
which seem to be less about fructose per se than more general concerns about food.
As for the pseudoscience comment: I totally agree that there are issues at play here (as with anything) that are beyond the boundaries of science and that should influence individual choices and public policy. Also, everyone has belief priors that are not "scientific" - my own reliance on empiricism is some combination of philosophical and intuitive rather than scientific, for example.
By pseudoscience, I really do simply mean claims that are couched in terms of science (or communicated with the supposed authority of science) but that are not. So the use of techniques such as developing irrefutable claims, relying on anecdotes as data (a very powerful persuasive technique, btw), cherry-picking evidence, and invoking holism (esp common it seems with alternative medicine/food claims)would fall in the pseudoscience category as I'm using the term.
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