The simple sugar fructose has become quite an item in nutrition. Back in the 1980s when I collaborated with a biochemist to make computer models of metabolic pathways we used to chuckle about the myths then about the virtues of fructose as sweetener. We also were the first in our medical school to introduce nutrition into our lectures in the gastrointestinal (GI) series. He did the biochem and I did the physiology.
We chuckled because the myth that fructose was a healthier sweetener than ordinary sugar was not quite as true as health food buffs would like to believe. The trick is that there is a pathway that sends the fructose into synthesis of triglyceride in the liver and that's not so great.
Much time has passed and the issue is only more of a problem today. The widespread use of high fructose corn syrup has generated a lot of controversy. Now steps have been taken to solve the potential problems. They renamed the stuff! Here's a sample of how things get manipulated: Corporations Have Renamed ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup’
Big Food is at it again, hiding ingredients they know we really don’t want to consume in their products. This time it’s the presence of a new version of high fructose corn syrup. But this is not the innocuous fructose that has sweetened the fruits humans have eaten since time began. This is a questionable ingredient with many names that could be causing all sorts of health problems.
The product is General Mills’ Vanilla Chex, an updated version of the Chex cereal sold in most conventional grocery and discount stores for many years. The front of the box clearly states that the product contains “no high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS), but turn it over to read the ingredient list and there it is – the new isolated fructose.
Why is that a problem? According to the Corn Refiners Association (CRA), there’s been a sneaky name change. The term ‘fructose’ is now being used to denote a product that was previously known as HFCS-90, meaning it is 90 percent pure fructose. Compare this to what is termed ‘regular’ HFCS, which contains either 42 or 55 percent fructose, and you will know why General Mills is so eager to keep you in the dark.
CRA explains:
“A third product, HFCS-90, is sometimes used in natural and ‘light’ foods, where very little is needed to provide sweetness. Syrups with 90% fructose will not state high fructose corn syrup on the label [anymore], they will state ‘fructose’ or ‘fructose syrup’.”
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a food ingredient that has become widely used as a cheaper replacement for natural sugar during the past 40 years. That 40 year time span has also seen skyrocketing incidence of obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic diseases. While as yet it has not been established that HFCS is the direct culprit, the circumstantial evidence is hard to overlook.
Read on below and we will explore this further.
The natural (pun intended) question to ask is Is fructose bad for you?
One of many controversies mixing up the field of nutrition is whether the use of high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks and other foods is causing the paired epidemics of obesity and diabetes that are sweeping the United States and the world. I’ve ignored this debate because it never made sense to me—high-fructose corn syrup is virtually identical to the refined sugar it replaces. A presentation I heard yesterday warns that the real villain may be fructose—a form of sugar found in fruits, vegetables, and honey. It may not matter whether it’s in high-fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, or any other sweetener.
Sounding the alarm is Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a professor of pediatrics and an obesity specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a key figure in a recent New York Times article called “Is Sugar Toxic?” Here’s some background and the gist of the presentation Lustig gave as part of a weekly seminar sponsored by Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition. (You can watch Lustig’s entire talk or a view a similar version on YouTube.)
When fructose is joined to glucose, it makes sucrose. Sucrose is abundant in sugar cane, sugar beets, corn, and other plants. When extracted and refined, sucrose makes table sugar. In the 1800s and early 1900s, the average American took in about 15 grams of fructose (about half an ounce), mostly from eating fruits and vegetables. Today we average 55 grams per day (73 grams for adolescents). The increase in fructose intake is worrisome, says Lustig, because it suspiciously parallels increases in obesity, diabetes, and a new condition called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease that now affects up to one-third of Americans. (You can read more about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in a Harvard Health Letter article.)
Virtually every cell in the body can use glucose for energy. In contrast, only liver cells break down fructose. What happens to fructose inside liver cells is complicated. One of the end products is triglyceride, a form of fat. Uric acid and free radicals are also formed.
None of this is good. Triglycerides can build up in liver cells and damage liver function. Triglycerides released into the bloodstream can contribute to the growth of fat-filled plaque inside artery walls. Free radicals (also called reactive oxygen species) can damage cell structures, enzymes, and even genes. Uric acid can turn off production of nitric oxide, a substance that helps protect artery walls from damage. Another effect of high fructose intake is insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the “fat is bad” mantra prompted a big shift in the American diet. People and food companies replaced fat, often healthy fat, with sugar, almost always refined sugar. But this sort of low-fat diet—one rich in refined sugar and thus in fructose—is really a high-fat diet when you look at what the liver does to fructose, said Dr. Lustig.
As I said above we were well aware of all this in the 1980s. Here we are over 30 years later and things only seems worse.
I want to use this example as one of so very many where corporate interests in no way are directed at people's well being. Not only that, but if their practices are potentially harmful their reaction is not to review what they are doing but rather to find ways to mislead the public (and the scientific community if they can get away with it).
This is but a part of what our corporate oligarchy is all about. The word "greed" is used a lot in this context, but it seems to me that this goes beyond greed. This attitude that corporate entities can do no wrong is not rational yet it permeates our culture as the norm.
I used to use "capitalism" as the word to focus on when addressing these problems. I now write about the "system" for it seems to have gone well beyond capitalism. It is hard to look at the economy and the distribution of goods and services and find examples where the public's welfare is given any thought.
I am a systems theorist. I have spent a lot of time studying complex self organizing systems. Often biological evolution can serve as a model for how this human system is evolving. To over simplify, if it can be done it will be done. As long as there is a niche available it will be exploited. Furthermore there is never a chance to go back and try another path. The system just grinds on and it devours anything in its path that tries to impede it.
Government lost any hope of controlling it long ago. Our politics is in denial about this and we still pretend that we can get it all under control. This too is part of the irrationality our species has shown to be its way of thinking.
The number of ways we are doing ourselves harm keeps increasing yet we are impotent to do anything about it. The story of fructose is but one small example.