High Fructose Corn Syrup proposed to be renamed "corn sugar"

rayg said:

I don't suppose it will do any good to combat the solidly
entrenched suburban myth, but I'll try anyway....

Unless you have the fructose malabsorption problem (wikipedia
says 30-40% of people of Central European descent have it),
there is nothing - repeat - nothing - wrong with fructose, or
high fructose corn syrup. Sucrose falls apart into an equilibrium
mix of glucose and fructose, both open and closed chain forms,
in aqueous solution. Fruits, which humans beings evolved to eat,
contain high amounts of fructose. You can buy 100% fructose
on most supermarket shelves. There is no difference in taste
between glucose, sucrose and fructose, which you can test
yourself as they are available commercially in pure form. The syrup
is a syrup for the same reason that all syrups are syrups: because
they have water in them. Fructose happens to be the most
soluble in water of the simple sugars, but it will crystallize
from water at the right concentration and temperature. There
is also no significant difference in calories per gram of those
sugars, but because fructose is sweeter, you can use less
of it to get the same effect, which is why you can buy it
in supermarkets, because some people use it for dieting.

Whether you get 250 calories from a sucrose soda or a
HFCS soda, it's still 250 calories. If you drink 6 of them
a day, you will probably put on a lot of weight. Most of
the people who are doing that are also spending a lot
of time in the drive-thru. Given that a 180 pound man
burns about 2200 calories a day if he's not excercising,
taking in 2700 calories a day will mean that he puts on
a pound of fat per week (3500 calories/pd), and given
that a quarter pounder, large fries and large non-diet
soda is about 1600 calories, it's not too surprising many
people put on weight if they are doing that and drinking
lots of HFCS soda and pastries, but it's the calories,
not the HFCS.

Ray

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kxx said:

gram for gram fructose has been correlated with higher incidence of diabetes, higher triglyceride levels and so on, compared to glucose. Explaining this, biochemically, is an active area of research.

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rayg said:

And I would guess that what they would find is that it's the overall
diet pattern of people who eat lots of fructose that is the problem, not
the fructose itself.



Ray

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kxx said:

Actually, the "solid" studies that have demonstrated these correlations have adjusted (or controlled, or basically have been accounted) for other dietary components. So, two groups each eating food of the exact same composition, EXCEPT for the levels of fructose or glucose.

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rayg said:

And how do they do that? Do they lock two groups of people in
a room for a year and feed them exactly the same things, where one
group gets extra fructose and the other doesn't, and with a control
group that gets extra sucrose, and another control group that gets
extra glucose? Because that's what you would need to do, and I
know that's not being done.

Ray

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RogerMcAllen said:

Soldiers, astronauts, and adventurers/explorers are some of the healthiest people I know, and they survive on highly processed food for months at a time while performing enduring physical acts.

IMO, you are missing the point as to WHY WATER is bad. By itself, it may not be any better or worse than any other beverage. Water appears in all cancerous tumors. You can't argue that having cancer is good for you.

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RogerMcAllen said:

Both of our arguments are stupid because correlation does not imply causation.

HFCS can't make you fat on its own. No one ever stood on a rail car full of HFCS and got diabetes. The uneducated/lazy American consumer eating to excess is responsible for the influx of diabetes, heart disease and even cancer in our society. The HFCS/processed foods argument is a scapegoat for people that don't want to take personal responsibility. I freely admit eating Twinkies and Coke all day will most likely make you fat, but you have to blame the people. Guns aren't bad, murders are bad. Cars aren't bad, drunk drivers are bad. A proper statement regarding HFCS would be, "People making poor diet choices leads to diabetes, etc." as opposed to "HFCS leads to diabetes, etc.".

As is, I think we are skirting on the edges of what is acceptable here so I'll leave it at that.

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