IF YOU CAN’T CONVINCE THEM, CONFUSE THEM.
—Harry Truman
The current media debate about the benefits (or lack of harm) of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in our diet misses the obvious. The average American increased their consumption of HFCS (mostly from sugar sweetened drinks and processed food) from zero to over 60 pounds per person per year. During that time period, obesity rates have more than tripled and diabetes incidence has increased more than seven fold. Not perhaps the only cause, but a fact that cannot be ignored.
Doubt and confusion are the currency of deception, and they sow the seeds of complacency. These are used skillfully through massive print and television advertising campaigns by the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to dispel the “myth” that HFCS is harmful and assert through the opinion of “medical and nutrition experts” that it is no different than cane sugar. It is a “natural” product that is a healthy part of our diet when used in moderation.
Except for one problem. When used in moderation it is a major cause of heart disease, obesity, cancer, dementia, liver failure, tooth decay and more.
Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?
The Lengths the Corn Industry Will Go To
The goal of the corn industry is to call into question any claim of harm from consuming high fructose corn syrup, and to confuse and deflect by calling their product natural “corn sugar”. That’s like calling tobacco in cigarettes natural herbal medicine. Watch the slick ad where a caring father walks hand in hand with his four-year-old daughter through a big question mark carved in an idyllic cornfield.
In the ad, the father tells us:
“Like any parent I have questions about the food my daughter eats – like high fructose corn syrup. So I started looking for answers from medical and nutrition experts, and what I discovered whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar. Knowing that makes me feel better about what she eats and that’s one less thing to worry about.”
Physicians are also targeted directly. I received a 12-page color glossy monograph from the Corn Refiners Association reviewing the “science” that HFCS was safe and no different than cane sugar. I assume the other 700,000 physicians in America received the same propaganda at who knows what cost.
In addition to this, I received a special “personal” letter from the Corn Refiner’s Association outlining every mention of the problems with HFCS in our diet – whether in print, blogs, books, radio or television. They warned me of the errors of my ways and put me on “notice”. For what I am not sure. To think they are tracking this (and me) that closely gives me an Orwellian chill.
New websites like www.sweetsurprise.com and www.cornsugar.com help “set us straight” about HFCS with quotes from professors of nutrition and medicine and thought leaders from Harvard and other stellar institutions.
Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?
But are these twisted sweet lies or a sweet surprise, as the Corn Refiners Association websites claim?
What the Science Says about HFCS
Let’s examine the science and insert some common sense into the conversation. These facts may indeed come as a sweet surprise. The ads suggest getting your nutrition advice from your doctor (who, unfortunately, probably knows less about nutrition than most grandmothers). Having studied this for over a decade, and having read, interviewed or personally talked with most of the “medical and nutrition experts” used to bolster the claim that “corn sugar” and cane sugar are essentially the same, quite a different picture emerges and the role of HFCS in promoting obesity, disease and death across the globe becomes clear.
Last week over lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames, one of the foremost nutritional scientists in the world and Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional biochemist, a student of Linus Pauling and I reviewed the existing science, and Dr. Ames shared shocking new evidence from his research center on how HFCS can trigger body-wide inflammation and obesity.
Here are 5 reasons you should stay way from any product containing high fructose corn syrup and why it may kill you.
1. Sugar in any form causes obesity and disease when consumed in pharmacologic doses.
Cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are indeed both harmful when consumed in pharmacologic doses of 140 pounds per person per year. When one 20 ounce HFCS sweetened soda, sports drink or tea has 17 teaspoons of sugar (and the average teenager often consumes two drinks a day) we are conducting a largely uncontrolled experiment on the human species. Our hunter gather ancestors consumed the equivalent of 20 teaspoons per year, not per day. In this sense, I would agree with the corn industry that sugar is sugar. Quantity matters. But there are some important differences.
2. HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by the body.
High fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist, Michael Pollan to observe it for his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.
Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together – glucose and fructose in equal amounts. The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body.
HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is sweeter than glucose. And HFCS is cheaper than sugar because of the government farm bill corn subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and cheaper than products made with cane sugar. This allowed for the average soda size to balloon from 8 ounces to 20 ounces with little financial costs to manufacturers but great human costs of increased obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.
Now back to biochemistry. Since there is there is no chemical bond between them, no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides and cholesterol) this is why it is the major cause of liver damage in this country and causes a condition called “fatty liver” which affects 70 million people. The rapidly absorbed glucose triggers big spikes in insulin – our body’s major fat storage hormone. Both these features of HFCS lead to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and more.
But there was one more thing I learned during lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames. Research done by his group at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body’s energy source). This depletes the energy fuel source or ATP in our gut required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little “tight junctions” cement each intestinal cell together preventing food and bacteria from “leaking” across the intestinal membrane and triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.
High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes in the intestinal lining allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and accelerated aging. Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients and fiber that doesn’t exhibit the same biological effects as the free high fructose doses found in “corn sugar”.
The takeaway: Cane sugar and the industrially produced, euphemistically named “corn sugar” are not biochemically or physiologically the same.
3. HFCS contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA.
An FDA researcher asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing.(i) Poisoned sugar is certainly not “natural”.
When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph, strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects and toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but shouldn’t we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15-20 percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake?
4. Independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT support the use of HFCS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn industry.
The corn industry’s happy looking websites www.cornsugar.com and www.sweetsurprise.com bolster their position that cane sugar and corn sugar are the same by quoting experts, or should we say mis-quoting …
Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has published widely on the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks and their contribution to the obesity epidemic. In a review of HFCS in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,(ii) he explains the mechanism by which the free fructose may contribute to obesity. He states that:
“The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis [production of fat in the liver]. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight [to control appetite], this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may enhance caloric overconsumption.”
He states that HFCS is absorbed more rapidly than regular sugar, and that it doesn’t stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents you from triggering the body’s signals for being full and may lead to overconsumption of total calories.
He concludes by saying that:
“… the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.”
The corn industry takes his comments out of context to support their position. “All sugar you eat is the same.”
True pharmacologic doses of any kind of sugar are harmful, but the biochemistry of different kinds of sugar and their respective effects on absorption, appetite and metabolism are different, and Dr. Popkin knows that.
David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and a personal friend has published extensively on the dangers and the obesogenic properties of sugar-sweetened beverages. He was quoted as saying that “high fructose corn syrup is one of the most misunderstood products in the food industry.” When I asked him why he supported the corn industry, he told me he didn’t and that his comments were taken totally out of context.
Misrepresenting science is one thing, misrepresenting scientists who have been at the forefront of the fight against obesity and high fructose sugar sweetened beverages is quite another.
5. HFCS is almost always a marker of poor-quality, nutrient-poor disease creating industrial food products or “food-like substances”.
The last reason to avoid products that contain HFCS is that they are a marker for poor-quality, nutritionally depleted, processed industrial food full of empty calories and artificial ingredients. If you find “high fructose corn syrup” on the label you can be sure it is not a whole, real, fresh food full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Stay away if you want to stay healthy. We still must reduce our overall consumption of sugar, but with this one simple dietary change you can radically reduce your health risks and improve your health.
While debate may rage about the biochemistry and physiology of cane sugar vs. corn sugar, this is in fact beside the point (despite the finer points of my scientific analysis above). The conversation has been diverted to a simple assertion that cane sugar and corn sugar are not different.
The real issues are only two.
- We are consuming HFCS and sugar in pharmacologic quantities never before experienced in human history — 140 pounds a year vs. 20 teaspoons a year 10,000 years ago.
- High fructose corn syrup is always found in very poor quality foods that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts of other disease promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals and even mercury.
These critical ideas should be the heart of the national conversation, not the meaningless confusing ads and statements by the corn industry in the media and online that attempt to assure the public that the biochemistry of real sugar and industrially produced sugar from corn are the same.
Now I’d like to hear from you …
Do you think there is an association between the introduction of HFCS in our diet and the obesity epidemic?
What reason do you think the Corn Refiners Association has for running such ads and publishing websites like those listed in this article?
What do you think of the science presented here and the general effects of HFCS on the American diet?
Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
References
(i) Dufault, R., LeBlanc, B., Schnoll, R. et al. 2009. Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: Measured concentrations in food product sugar. Environ Health. 26(8):2.
(ii) Bray, G.A., Nielsen, S.J., and B.M. Popkin. 2004. Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 79(4):537-43. Review.
Dr. Hyman, thanks for your newsletter and for this article. I have recommended both to others.
I was banned from the “sweetsurprise.com” blog because I asked various corn reriners (like Audrea Erickson) “exactly how much of that artificial red drink (from corn refiner’s commercials) do you personally consume and give to your children?” Not one has answered–and I have asked many times on other blogs.
Do any fellow Americans suspect that these “dealers of addictive HFCS” do not consume that artificial red drink, or give it to their children–but expect other American parents to give it to theirs. The corn refiners indicated that “mothers who were concerned about what their children consumed” were stupid and misled.
I don’t want to be the only one asking them this question. Please join me in asking this question of the corn refiners lobbyists who are spreading lies and half truths, and trying to degrade important health research.
Therese Pompa has a blog article running down this very article by Dr. Hyman. Please go to the sweetsurprise blog and ask these lobbyists if they drink that artificial red drink (from the first corn refiner’s commercials).
Hello.
I am a Sport Conditioning Coach and have always been very sensible on the eating issues. Recently I watched the video Sugar: the bitter truth. Scary! It opened my eyes and I am preparing on post on my blog/website to let all my friends and clients about it. I need an info though.
In the past 4 years I have always used FRUISANA, which claims to be completely different from HFCS. What is the truth? Is it as bad as HFCS, is it as any other sucrose? Can it lead to same troubles? I obviously use a teaspoon per day, but in the past I advised many clients to swap the cane or white sugar for it. Can you please give me a quick opinion?
Thanks
Thank you Dr. Hyman for being a true health voice in America. I’ve recommended your articles and newsletters to many people.
Therese, of the CRA (comment above), as well as all the other corn refiners and dietitians who work for them, do not let me comment on “sweetsurprise” blog because, as a health teacher, I have expressed concern about the fast food meals that are being served to American school children.
I have asked each of them, “How much of that artificial red drink (from the corn refiners’ commercials) do you personally drink and give to your children?”
Not one has answered, and yet they expect other American parents to give that stuff to their children, and (in their commercials) even made fun of the mother who questioned the red drink pouring mother.
Dr. Hyman, thanks for being concerned about the health of American children (as well as all Americans), and not being afraid to voice that concern.
Hi Marco, thank you for your comments. We cannot offer a comparative analysis of this product against HFCS. Perhaps someone in our community has heard of it and can comment.
Wishing You the Best of Health!
Thanks very much for an informative article. I’ve understood the dangers of HFCS for years, and raised my kids to eat only healthy, whole foods. I’m appalled when I see the big corporations involved in the manufacturing/food processing industries pushing their products like the tobacco companies did for years…..very, very sad how many Americans don’t take time to understand how to eat right.
So, yes, I DO think there is a huge connection between HFCS and obesity, etc. It’s obvious to me that this is a huge culprit, yet parents continue to feed their kids these products without batting an eye.
Not sure parents will get it till it’s too late. Scary, and very sad. Not sure what the ultimate solution/answer will be!
A concerned Grammy of 11!
Heard from the manufacturer of Bunny bread that the FDA said that it was okay just to list HFCS was corn syrup
So, if I switch to sugar sweetened soda from my current HFCS sweetened soda, how much weight can I expect to lose? It’s clear from your article that the loss should be fairly substantial as I am clearly only drinking HFCS sweetened drinks because they are sweeter and cheaper. Would my decreased consumption due to the lack of sweetness and increased cost factor into this? Also in regard to fructose not triggering insulin production, how do I go about sucking the fructose out without getting any of the glucose? I mean, they are mixed together fairly well at the factory right? Should I shake the product first? Or perhaps tap it like one packs cigarettes before smoking? One last thing, you use the phrase “not natural” a lot in reference to the processing required to create HFCS, I wonder if you’ve ever looked inside a sugar beet? I’m fairly certain sugar doesn’t start out as a clean white crystal. Anyway, good luck selling your arguments, I’m sure the check from the sugar industry you cashed already will go a long way to easing your guilt for posting such nonsense. (Yes I realize this will get deleted very quickly.)
Dr. Hyman,
You have written a wonderfully supported article about the differences between HFCS and sugar and the dangers of both. I am extremely appreciative of this as it is indeed very difficult to get a straight answer out of anyone who actually sells the product. You also state at the top of your website “Your fork is the most powerful too; you have to change your health and the planet…” To this, I agree, but there are other factors to be considered, specifically money.
Those who make below a certain amount are very familiar with HFCS because they can’t avoid it. You even stated that the cost of producing HFCS is much lower than that of refined white sugar and it is this cost difference that has contributed to the rise of HFCS in the foods we eat. The truth of the matter is it is expensive to eat healthy. When someone is on food stamps, WIC or a very limited budget, they know that the plain loaf of white bread is three times cheaper than the whole grain, no HFCS loaf that is actually smaller. They can get more for their money and therefore more food for their family. Or the ‘red drink’ that everyone is so fond of mentioning in their comments. Little Hugs, the HFCS beverage sold in little barrels, is also about 3-4 times cheaper than a bottle of Juicy Juicy, which is 100% juice. I know because I lived this way for quite a while until we could afford to live otherwise. In fact, when it was possible, we did manage to eliminate HFCS almost entirely from our diet, (it is a stresser for my husband’s migraines, among other things).
I understand you can change a great deal about your health by changing what you eat, and I in way endorse anything that could be considered bad for your health, understand that money is a larger factor in people’s lives than their health. This is how HFCS got ahead to start with and how they are able to maintain their lead. Until a healthy, cheap alternative is found, HFCS will probably, in all reality, stay ahead.
Thank you for dispeling the myth that HFCS and sugar are equals. I’ve eliminated it from my diet and my children’s diet. I wish that everyone understood just how harmful it is and how the lobbyists control so much of our lives! I hope that it is not true that the FDA is allowing HFCS to be labeled as corn syrup!
Yes, I do believe HFCS is one of the primary reasons for the obesity epidemic, and the corn industry has mounted their massive campaign for the same simple reason they switched from cane sugar to corn sugar in the first place: MONEY!
Thanks so much though for mentioning something I didn’t know before about HFCS and which, I believe, is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than the link between HFCS and obesity (!). The fact that HFCS digestion robs the gut of ATP required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining!! I am studying Ayurveda, from which I have learned that undigested food particles moving through the intestinal lining is THE MAIN FACTOR/CAUSE of almost ALL DISEASES….. You didn’t mention arthritis, and especially rheumatoid arthritis, which are caused by this movement of toxins through the intestinal lining and being lodged into the tissues of the body.
The worst part is that the HFCS is so innocuous in our society that even though I am a holistic, alternative health professional (Yoga teacher, massage therapist, Ayurvedic Health Counselor), both of my (grown) children, my boyfriend, and both of his (young) children consume outrageous amounts of soda sweetened with HFCS every day. They know the facts! But they still drink it! The toxins and the poisons in our food supply are practically ubiquitous and even given the knowledge of their dangers, nobody seems to give a damn. I am completely disheartened.
But thank you anyway, and hopefully some people who read this information can use their brain and stop poisoning themselves.
Regarding the question of HFCS owner’s children eating such swill, the answer is pretty simple:
Clearly not.
Let’s face it. The only people that eat products with HFCS are either ignorant, poor, and usually both. People eat these products not knowing the damage they are doing to their bodies, or worse, know the damage, but don’t have sufficient income to get anything else on a regular basis. The weight of children alone depending on their social class can be telling in this regard. I recently returned from a two month trip to Canada, and even though I exercised only sporadically and the diet was inconsistent, I lost ten pounds. I notice that I ate less up there, or rather, I found I was satisfied sooner. The chemical compounds involved might have something to do with that: Canada doesn’t use HFCS, or at least Newfoundland doesn’t. The article speaks accurately, the one change makes a huge difference. However, as long as HFCS is less expensive, and still legal, you’ll definitely see it in constant production. Let’s face it, humans, and especially American business, is exceedingly greedy. They may think they and theirs are too good for such dangerous products, but they have no problem shoving everyone else under the bus to make a profit.
It’s too bad businesses have such pull in US politics, otherwise any intelligent leader would have banned HFCS production by now. Unfortunately, people in power often have the money to buy better products, and couldn’t care less if the poor workers suffer. Fine place we live in, eh?
Hi Reasonable Guy, thank you for your comment. You can expect to lose as much weight as is your commitment in becoming healthy by how thorough you are with eliminating sugar from your diet and following an exercise program as well as eating a healthy diet.
Wishing you good health,
Dr. Hyman Staff
Reasonable Guy, while I agree with you the word natural is as often misused as the word organic. The logic that you are attempting to use is severly flawed. But I’m sure you use the same rational when buying your cigarettes. You want to know how much weight you will lose? NONE, because you are expecting a simple dietary change to do all the work.
Reasonable Guy,
IMO, the biggest difference between HFCS and sugar is that your body recognizes sugar in the feedback mechanisms of your digestive system. In other words, if you eat/drink enough you feel full or if you eat/drink too much you get sick to your stomach. With HFCS, this doesn’t happen. Do your own experiment, one day drink as many throwback Pepsi’s that you can, record the number, than drink as many as you can with HFCS, record the number that you can drink in one day.
So you are right if you consume the same amount of sugar and as HFCS, pound for pound, the results are the same. But you cannot consume as much Sugar as HFCS unless your body has become de-sensitized with overeating.
That’s why childhood obesity has increased, children will only eat as much sugar as their bodies need. My daughter who is one year old, will eat a full meal, I give her a cookie and she will only eat half because she know she is full. (My cookies are made with all natural ingredients, sugar, butter, these tell her that her body has enough). My children are healthy weights, they are not allowed HFCS, only on occasion, like somewhere we can’t get anything else to drink. But children who consume HFCS consume more because their bodies don’t recognize being full so they keep consuming it and this has been known for a while. I read about it in a Men’s Fitness Magazine about 11 years ago!
Switch to sugar and see if it makes a difference, but listen to your body and stop eating it when you feel full. You will eat less sugar, but that’s the point, your not supposed to eat that much!
The highly over exposed commercials came because people were just starting to ask questions. Dr Oz and others are telling people to read the labels. For me those commercials didn’t give me any positive outlook on HFCS. In fact the commercials triggered me to do research. Today, products that contain HFCS do not enter my basket or body and I look and feel great. I’m 52 years old, just wish I started earlier.
You people are hopeless.
As a chemistry major who is using research journals to write a paper on all corn syrups, I have to say that whoever wrote this article is misleading all of you.
The only valid argument he has is that sugar (in any form) in high amounts is not good for you. Let me explain why the rest of the points are wrong….
Sucrose and high fructose corn syrup are basically the same. Both have THE SAME sweetness. Although fructose is sweeter than solid sucrose, the fact that high fructose corn syrup is about 20% water makes the sweetness come down to that of sucrose. That is why they have the ratio of 55%fructose, 42%glucose, 3%other sugars.
Glucose and fructose are basically the same. Being structural isomers, (both have the chemical formula C6H12O6) when metabolized by the body, they have the option of the same three pathways to choose. Those pathways are (in order of the likelihood of them occurring): broken down into CO2 and H2O (create ATP), then stored as glycogen, lastly, and least likely, stored as fat. Having 5% more fructose doesn’t make any difference.
All of the obesity and other crap that people are correlating with HFCS is simply not conclusive. Yes, obesity has been rising- that doesn’t mean high fructose corn syrup caused it. Regardless of the horrible economic conditions, society is eating more food than normal and not all of those people get enough exercise to burn the calories. That’s what is causing the obesity problem. I know that because countries that also have increased food consumption without the use of high fructose corn syrup (like australia) have seen a rise in obesity and obesity-related diseases (like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, ect.).
Lastly, you people need to lay off high fructose corn syrup because they are already starting to replace it with something that really is bad: High maltose corn syrup.
High maltose corn syrup is composed of a slurry of glucose and maltose (a disaccharide of two glucose molecules that is also less sweet than fructose- not to mention being less sweet than glucose itself). The increased solubility of maltose compared to glucose means that more maltose is in it compared to glucose by mass- regardless of the percentages. High maltose corn syrup is usually around 50% maltose and 50% glucose. However, because it is less sweet than glucose (which itself is less sweet than sucrose), more of it must be used. Why is this bad? Because you are essentially getting about 6 glucose molecules when you would usually get 1 fructose and 1 glucose. This extreme increase in carbohydrate consumption would actually cause an increase storage of fat (because the first two pathways would become exhausted). This is what you people are bringing to us all. Thanks.
By the way, if you people are really afraid of HFCS, and since I mentioned it above, then I might as well enlighten you about calories. First of all, make sure you notice the lowercase “c” that I used in the word calorie. I calorie is 4.184 Joules. A Joule is a measure of energy. Therefore, a calorie is a measure of energy. A Calorie (with a capital “C”) is 1000 calories (with a lowercase “c”). This is the one that is written on all of your food. The values seen on food labels are measured by burning the particular item and measuring the amount of energy given off. This is an estimate of how much energy the body would receive from metabolizing the food item. Calories are neither good or bad. They are simply energy. What you allow your body to do with that energy is the thing that should concern you. If you eat many Calories and don’t burn them off by activity or exercise, they can be stored by the body as fat (this is only one option, other ways of storing Calories are available depending on what the Calories came from).
Stop being afraid of the crap people tell you and look information up by yourself. Once again, you people are hopeless.
Sharing with you the knowledge the government is paying for me to get,
-Anthony Lloyd II
Where is the truth.
I am here because my wife has dementia. She went through a nasty divorce 13 years ago and developed a habit of eating jujubs, alot of them. They are essentially HFCS. She would eat 10 or more ounces per sitting, essentially every day till just a year ago.
So, has HFCS been proven to cause dementia?
HI Larry,
We know that balancing blood sugar and having certain nutrients are critical to staving off dementia. You can learn more here: http://drhyman.com/9-steps-to-reverse-dementia-and-memory-loss-as-you-age-2-3304/ We hope you share this info with your wife.
In good health!
So, if there is a difference between sugar and HFCS, is there also a difference between sugar made from sugar beets versus sugar cane?
Hi Tam,
No difference-all sugar that is refined is sucrose. Sucrose is sucrose in the body so moderation or elimination is key!
Dr. Hyman:
Thanks for your insight, research, and expertise in this matter.
I’ve been telling people to stay away from HFCS for a long time, as I know
that none of us need MORE POISONS and TOXINS in our bodies, from
the everyday foods we eat.
I’m almost more than sure, that HFCS is one of the MAJOR contributors to
obsesity, diabetes, and cancer.
Anthony Lloyd II:
Ouch, you didn’t have to call us hopeless and sound so self-important. But yes, the evidence for HFCS being the cause for obesity is inconclusive, as huge companies are shoving a boat load of OTHER toxic substances into our foods, perpetuating the decrease in the overall health of Americans…and the rest of the world. I feel sick knowing I ate a Pop Tart this morning.
BUT, this article and you’re little essay, both agree that HFCS is bad for you. I was prompted to research this topic after I got home from school today, as my friend was vehemently arguing that HFCS wasn’t bad for you. Honestly, any food or substance in whatever you eat that isn’t natural should raise a red flag. So I hopped on my little laptop and began searching for answers. (I hope I’m not one of the hopeless ones!)
I’m currently taking an honors chemistry class at my high school, and last year I took a biology course, so I know what you’re talking about when it comes to Joules, as well as the structure and effects of these substances. What people need to be more aware of is the delusion of calories meaning anything. That’s what marketing is all about, misguiding your focus to something you don’t know about, and unfortunately, most people, who are completely complacent to what actually has an impact on them, will watch the television and say, “Oh, well the commercial said HFCS isn’t bad for you. I am completely satisfied and will take the TV for granted!” Everyone– it’s the ingredients you need to look out for.
ANYWAY, the simple way to avoid all of this crud in your body: research what you’re eating. Be aware of what you’re putting into your body. DO NOT take anything for granted, especially not from the television.
Anthony,
Wow…yes, we all know that the best way to convince someone of your argument is to insult them. Good job!
I would hardly call investigation and critical thought hopeless. There is so much information and misinformation out there. It is nigh on impossible to know what the truth really is. I, for one, am not going to simply take your word-or Dr. Hyman’s, or any other persons/organizations word for it. I will make my own decision based on the facts and opinion that are presented. I hope that others will do the same. The fact that the folks on this page are here at all means that they are at least searching. That’s more than most people do. I applaud us all for that. So, can we lay off the insults please?
Thank you for the article Dr. Hyman,
When the FDA researcher received a barrel of HFCS and had it analyzed for mercury content and found it to have a strange chemical peak that was’nt glucose or fructose,why was’nt that researched further?
I so totally agree with your information on the affects and content of products using HFCS. My problem is I want to know if this substance is addicting. I cannot stop drinking soft drinks, particularly Pepsi. Even though I am gaining weight and I feel bloated all the time, I can’t stop. Also, I’m specially worried about the affect the mercury in it might have on my brain.
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for your interest in Dr. Hyman’s work. For more info check out: http://drhyman.com/stopping-addiction-to-sugar-willpower-or-genetics-4059/
This might help: http://drhyman.com/food-addiction-could-it-explain-why-70-percent-of-america-is-fat-2499/
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