what’s in your food? (part four)
This month we’re taking a look at the ingredient list and defining what some of those “mystery” ingredients are. If you are going to eat it, you should know what it is, right?
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Until the 1970s most of the sugar we ate came from sucrose, derived from sugar beets or sugar cane. Then sugar from corn – corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, dextrine and especially high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – began to gain popularity as a sweetener because it was much less expensive to produce and supported commercial corn growers, who faced lower demand due to soy products’ rise in popularity. High fructose corn syrup can be manipulated to contain equal amounts of fructose and glucose, or up to 80 percent fructose and 20 percent glucose. Thus, with almost twice the fructose, HFCS delivers a double danger compared to sugar.
(With regards to fruit, the ratio is usually 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose, but most commercial fruit juices have HFCS added. Fruit contains fiber, which slows down the metabolism of fructose and other sugars, but the fructose in HFCS is absorbed very quickly.)
High fructose corn syrup is extremely soluble and mixes well in many foods. It is cheap to produce, sweet and easy to store. It’s used in everything from bread to pasta sauces to bacon to beer as well as in “health products” like protein bars and “natural” sodas.
For many years, the US Department of Agriculture investigated the harmful effects of dietary sugar on rats. They discovered that when rats are fed a diet deficient in copper, with fructose as the carbohydrate, they develop severe problems in their vital organs: liver, heart and testes exhibit extreme swelling, while the pancreas atrophies, invariably leading to death of the rats before maturity.
These experiments should give us pause when we consider the great increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup during the past 30 years, particularly in soft drinks, fruit juices and other beverages aimed at growing children, children increasingly likely to be copper deficient as modern parents no longer serve liver to their families. (Liver is by far the best source of copper in human diets.)
Pure fructose contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals and robs the body of its micro-nutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use. While naturally occurring sugars (like sucrose) contain fructose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains a good deal of “free” or unbound fructose. Research indicates that this free fructose interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals like magnesium, copper and chromium. Among other consequences, HFCS has been implicated in elevated blood cholesterol levels and the creation of blood clots. It has been found to inhibit the action of white blood cells so that they are unable to defend the body against harmful foreign invaders, and has been directly linked to the rise in Type-II diabetes among Americans. Consumption of fructose causes a significant increase in the concentration of uric acid, which can be an indicator of heart disease. Furthermore, a study of 25 patients with functional bowel disease showed that pronounced gastrointestinal distress may be provoked by malabsorption of small amounts of fructose. It interacts with oral contraceptives and elevates insulin levels in women on “the pill.”
Not only does fructose have more damaging effects in the presence of copper deficiency, fructose also inhibits copper metabolism–another example of the sweeteners double-whammy effect. A deficiency in copper leads to bone fragility, anemia, defects of the connective tissue, arteries, and bone, infertility, heart arrhythmias, high cholesterol levels, heart attacks, and an inability to control blood sugar levels.
Although these studies were not designed to test the effects of fructose on weight gain, they observed that increased body weight was associated with fructose ingestion, most likely because fructose ingestion affects the production of two hormones, insulin and leptin, that have key roles in the long-term regulation of food intake and energy expenditure.
The magnitude of the deleterious effects of fructose varies; some people – hypertensive, hyper-insulinemic, hyper-triglyceridemic, non-insulin dependent diabetic people, people with functional bowel disease and post-menopausal women – are more sensitive to fructose than others. But EVERYONE should avoid over-exposure to fructose. One or two pieces of fruit per day is fine, but commercial fruit juices and any products containing high fructose corn syrup are more dangerous than sugar and should be removed from the diet.
Based on the article by Bill Sanda, BS, MBA, in "Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts," the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation.