Evils of High Fructose Corn Syrup
Summary
High fructose corn syrup is a cheap, highly processed, fake sugar product. It is addictive
and makes people fat. It may be the worst food additive ever created. Avoid it at all
costs. Here is why.
The Fructose Myth
First the basics. Fructose is a simple sugar that gets its name because it is the main
sugar in fruit. It also occurs in stems, in leaves, in roots and other underground parts,
and in nectar. Fructose is one of the two component sugars of sucrose, or common
table sugar. The other is glucose. Of these three, fructose is the sweetest.
Now the myth: Fructose is a better choice for dietary health than other sugars because
it has the lowest glycemic index. It does, indeed have a very low glycemic index of 19,
compared with 100 for glucose and 68 for sucrose. However, it is by far the worst
possible sugar for dietary health.
The glycemic index is merely a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar
levels. As such, it is an arbitrary number that has nothing to do with the true caloric
values and actual metabolic fates of different carbohydrates in the body. It is a big
mistake to think that the glycemic index has any bearing on how sugars are metabolized.
The key for understanding the effect of dietary fructose on health is its impact on the
liver, not on levels of blood sugar. Unlike glucose, fructose passes directly to the liver.
The liver converts it into triglycerides (fat) and ships it out for storage.
This means that fructose has its greatest impact in raising triglyceride levels. Scientists
call this fructose-induced lipogenesis, which just means that fructose leads to fat. Credit
for this discovery goes back to 1916. Substantial research throughout the 1960s to the
1980s documents how it works.
One of the hundreds of observations that explode the fructose myth (i.e., it is a myth
that it is better for health than other sugars) is this: Research in 1992 on diabetic
patients consuming a high fructose diet