Welcome to Almost Fit. This is part 2 of a series on High Fructose Corn Syrup, and includes the first five of ten reasons why I avoid it. This series has been brewing for a long time, but it is in part being offered as a response to the nationwide ad campaign in favor of using HFCS (You can find some of the commercials on YouTube). If you enjoy this article, please consider sharing it with a vote on Digg or StumbleUpon. Thanks.

Despite the Corn Refiners Association’s $30 million dollar attempt to suggest that we poor unintelligent consumers are simply confused about the wonderful benefits of a diet that is rich in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), I still find their benevolent story hard to, ahem, swallow. I guess you could say that I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. The suggestion that it is our own dimwitted ignorance that causes some of us to avoid HFCS, and that the big government-subsidized businesses associated with corn refining really only have OUR best interests at heart by adding a chemically-produced sweetener to our foods, is insulting at best.

Before I get into it, here’s my disclosure: Although I like to think from time to time that my ever-expanding forehead is thanks to excessive cerebral exercise and fits of right brain vs. left brain blindfolded fire-juggling mental ping-pong matches, I will confess:

I am not a rocket scientist (in the literal, or figurative, sense – but don’t tell my younger sisters I actually admitted it) – so don’t take my word for it. I am also not a physician, or a nutritionist. These are my conclusions, but your mileage may vary. Thus, my suggestion is very clear: Read about it for yourself and make your own decisions.

BUT, to me, that is the best part, because in my opinion, you don’t have to be a scientist, nutritionist, physician, or politician (I jest) to see through the murky veil that the CRA is casting. All you need is a little common sense, to take responsibility for what you eat, and an ability to read at a 5th grade level. Toss in a little discernment when you watch expensive television ads, and you can find the truth.

Because as you might have noticed, and as one reader pointed out in the comments in part 1, the novel notion of “truth in advertising” is very much dead.

[Pause, take a breath. Resume.]

On with the show.

10 things we really know about HFCS – or – “Uh, Whutt, Mr…Kottehhr?” – Vincent Barbarino, evil genius/HFCS consumer

I’ve recently spent a fair amount of time reading the why’s and wherefore’s of HFCS, and I have to say that as expected, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. But in the end, I don’t think it is as complicated as it is often made out to be. Unfortunately, I think some of the confusion is coming from those of us on this side of the fence whose good intentions turn into a little bit of blind enthusiasm. We are so excited to help others that we wind up making bigger assumptions that sometimes turn out to be false. The problem is of course that those assumptions become ammunition for the other side. My goal with this series is of course to ensure that I’m not contributing to that cycle, and hopefully set some of those misconceptions straight.

Oh, and one other thing…

I should clarify that my criteria for the credibility of a study begins with the basic question: Who paid for it? What is their agenda? If the study was sponsored by the CRA or any of the indirect affiliates that the corn industry uses, it has about as much credibility with me as a drunken speech on honor and nobility by Joey Butufuoco. And if you’re too young to remember who that is, just trust us old folks. He’s not the model of royalty that Bevis and Butthead made him out to be.

I’ve broken this list into two posts, primarily to make it easier to digest. And metabolize.

Here goes.

1. Fructose and HFCS are not the same. This we know. And, it’s important.

The distinction between fructose and HFCS is important to get straight. Why? Because the mixing of facts between straight fructose and HFCS is the number one argument that is used to distract from the legitimate reservations on ingesting HFCS. Sadly this misunderstanding has led to a lot of easily-dispelled myths being put forth by well-intentioned folks who do not have a zip code in the back pocket of Big Corn.

HFCS vs. Sugar: A quick science primer

Here are the basics: Sugar, or sucrose, is a bound, naturally occurring compound that is composed of equal parts glucose and fructose. It’s made by plants, in it’s whole form, naturally. HFCS is an unbound version of fructose and glucose with a completely different molecular structure. It is not made by plants (although it is made IN, ahem, plants, like power plants (sorry. couldn’t resist the bad pun).

HFCS is manufactured through a chemical process that breaks down natural components of sugars, extracts and converts the remaining compounds into industrially “usable” substances, and then recombines the usable bits to make a viscous syrup. It is par for the course for industrial food: break down natural foods into individual components, strip out what they consider “usable” in the manufacturing process, fundamentally change it with more chemical processing, and then recombine it into something that sells. (For a detailed description of this process, and one of the references for this series, see this link from the Weston A. Price Foundation: The Murky World of High Fructose Corn Syrup.)

Both sugar and HFCS contain fructose, but the form that it takes in HFCS (monosaccharide) is vastly different in chemical terms than the bound version that occurs in natural sugar (disaccharide).

So does it matter that much of the fructose in HFCS is not bound to glucose?

Fructose, in the form of either sugar or HFCS, is processed by the liver almost exclusively. This is important because the liver converts a good portion of fructose into triglycerides in the body. The unbound, synthetically produced fructose component of HFCS is processed differently than the bound fructose component of sugar. Fructose in HFCS is “shunted”, meaning that it skips any processing that occurs in the cells of the whole body to extract that fructose and then send to the liver. The unbound version goes straight to the liver, quickly. And even more important: in it’s unbound state (meaning fructose that is not bound to glucose), it is processed much more quickly into fat than a natural, whole food.

Secondly, despite the spin in the ad campaign, HFCS does NOT typically contain equal parts fructose and glucose (as sugar does). Unbound fructose is the majority share, generally 55% in foods drinks that use it as a sweetener. The CRA is quick to point out that this difference has not been proved to show substantial difference in how fructose is processed by the liver, but the results (often depending on who sponsors the study), vary greatly.

So from a scientific perspective, where does the rubber hit the road? From an article on Mercola.com:

“[HFCS] is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar, and, because most fructose is consumed in liquid form (soda), its negative metabolic effects are significantly magnified.

Among them:

• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Metabolic Syndrome
• An increase in triglycerides and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels
• Liver disease”

Bottom line? There is one indesputable scientific fact in this debate: HFCS is not a whole, natural food in any way – it is an industrial product. Sugar on the other hand, is a natural food with a dietary track record of many thousands of years of human consumption. HFCS? About 35 years or so – a 35 years where we have become the fattest, the fastest, in our history. Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.

What we do know from our extensive experience with any sugar is that if you DO eat sugars of any kind, it should be in very moderate amounts. It shouldn’t be added to everything you eat to make it cheaper and last longer…but I’m getting ahead of myself. If you are going to eat moderate amounts of sugar, eat it only in the foods that really need it – and eat the real thing, not a synthetically invented substitute without an extensive track record of human safety.

2. HFCS is used in foods that would not normally contain sugar – as an unnecessary sweetener and chemical preservative

Because the food industry uses HFCS in foods that would not normally contain a sweetener, we consume more fructose in particular, on whole. Rather than replacing the fructose we would have eaten in sugar, all we did was increase our consumption of both – even when we’re not seeking sweet foods.

Again, this is a great distraction from the other big use of HFCS: As a preservative in most industrial food products.

In industrially produced foods, food manufacturers add HFCS for a few reasons:

1. It adds sweetness of course, which means consumers will eat more of it (humans by nature seek out sweeter foods – likely because they generally contain more energy)
2. It is a great preservative, so products can be transported farther, stored longer, and so forth, ultimately making it cheaper
3. It is a cheap way to add a “natural” look to preserved food

Here’s why this matters: Think about it – many traditional foods we eat do not normally have sugar (much less a chemical preservative and sweetener) added as part of the recipe in the first place. A good personal example is the artisan bread I make. The basic recipe is very simple: flour, water, salt, and yeast. While some natural sugars and carbohydrates occur as a result of the combination of the ingredients, I do not need to add any sugar at all – it is what it is.

Compare that to the traditional white bread we have grown up eating – which typically contains a fair amount of HFCS to keep it “fresh” for days or weeks while it’s trucked all over the globe. If you eat this bread, not only are you getting the sugars that result from a breakdown in carbohydrates (which the healthy human body can handle), but you are getting an additional shot of fructose from the HFCS as a preservative (and I would add, slight sweetener to encourage us to eat more), delivered directly to the liver to become triglycerides. Why? because the manufacturer has found a cheap way via HFCS to keep the bread “fluffier” for a while, and hopefully (in my opinion) get you to crave it.

So in the end, we are consuming, on whole, way too much fructose, because manufacturers have unnecessarily slipped an HFCS Mickey into most industrially produced food products. Although those small quantities may not in themselves seem significant (again, which Big Corn is quick to point out), spread that over 80% of all industrial foods we eat, throw in a soda or two (or four, for me in those days), and then top it off with eating the natural sugars we normally eat, and the obesity epidemic suddenly becomes pretty darn obvious: We are eating too much of the sweet stuff.

Remove the HFCS, and remove half of the problem.

3. HFCS in its most common form is no sweeter than sugar. This is true – and a great distraction

I bring this up for one significant reason: This argument is a great muddying-the-waters point for the CRA, because they love to point out how wrong this perception is, which MUST mean everything else you’ve heard is wrong too, right? It’s that old tactic again – distract from the real issue for long enough, create confusion on irrelevant points, and people will just give up.

The idea that HFCS is actually sweeter than sugar is for the most part, not true. The truth is that pound for pound, the most common form of HFCS is of the same sweetness as sugar. I’ve read numerous sites that get this confused, stating anywhere from 6 times as sweet to 150 times as sweet. This is simply not true. HOWEVER, I’m not sure that I see this (even if it WERE true) as an important argument anyway.

To me, the bigger problem is that we develop a craving for sweet things when we eat them, which food manufacturers understand all too well. In other words, adding a sweetener, regardless of whether it’s sweeter than sugar, is a win for the manufacturer because a) the product is more desirable to your brain because it has a sweetener (which translates to energy), b) the product lasts longer, adding the perception of value, and c) it’s cheaper to produce, so the packages contain more of it.

Sweeter or not – our food often doesn’t need it. Unless we’re trying to develop an overconsumptive addiction and gain some weight. Is that what we’re trying to do, as consumers? Who’s idea is that, anyway?

4. HFCS is manufactured using Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s). It is not “Natural”. CRA, get your facts straight.

This one really annoys me, and it has ever since 7-Up (famous for their, “Make 7 – Up Yours” campaign) tried to pull a fast one by putting “100% Natural” on their HFCS-laced soda. Even the FDA couldn’t be persuaded, which says a lot. The truth is, the overwhelming majority of HFCS begins as genetically altered corn, which is easier to grow in volume as a monoculture. Sure, it is possible that some random strain somewhere got mixed in with the batch of GMO corn, but even if that were the case there’s one big catch: two of the enzymes used to manufacture HFCS are always genetically modified to make them more stable during the heating process.

GMO’s are associated with some pretty heavy duty side effects, some of which you can read about here. But for me, one of the most important is that it has been shown that the consumption of genetically modified foods often leads to dangerous food allergies (more so than their organic counterparts). And if you develop a food allergy to corn, you are going to have a heck of a time finding products in this culture that aren’t touched by corn. This is made worse because if you do develop an allergy to corn, it’s not just the genetically modified versions that you are allergic to – it is ALL varieties.

Put plainly, if you are skeptical at all of genetically modified food, you should simply avoid HFCS. Why care? Beyond the immediate knowledge that it leads to food allergies and a slough of other provable health problems, the most important reason is that genetic modifications have no track record in human consumption as being safe. To put it plainly, the process is so new that we have no idea what the longterm ramifications of messing with nature are going to be. In our history, this is generally not a good idea.

It doesn’t require a lengthy discussion by the leading thinkers – it requires common sense.

5. The environmental damage from subsidized corn overproduction far outweighs its value

Rather than rephrasing this, I’m just going to quote from an interesting article in the Washington Post earlier this year. What do you think?

“Most corn is grown as a monoculture, meaning that the land is used solely for corn, not rotated among crops. This maximizes yields, but at a price: It depletes soil nutrients, requiring more pesticides and fertilizer while weakening topsoil.

“The environmental footprint of HFCS is deep and wide,” writes Pollan, a prominent critic of industrial agriculture. “Look no farther than the dead zone in the Gulf [of Mexico], an area the size of New Jersey where virtually nothing will live because it has been starved of oxygen by the fertilizer runoff coming down the Mississippi from the Corn Belt. Then there is the atrazine in the water in farm country — a nasty herbicide that, at concentrations as little as 0.1 part per billion, has been shown to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites.”

Milling and chemically altering corn to form high-fructose corn syrup also is energy-intensive. That’s not to say that corn is evil and other foods aren’t; all crops require energy to grow and transport. What makes corn a target is that federal subsidies — and tariffs on imported sugar — keep prices low, paving the way for widespread use of high-fructose corn syrup and, in the process, keeping the American palate accustomed to the sweetness it provides.

Corn is a useful crop with high yields, although it uses more fertilizers and insecticides and causes more soil erosion than other crops, according to David Pimentel, a professor in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Organic corn is not a large part of the industry, but it should be,” he says. Pimentel published a study in 2005 demonstrating that, over 22 years, growing corn organically produced the same yields as conventional growing and used 33 percent less fuel.”

You may not be concerned with this reasoning – it’s a personal decision whether you support the notion that we’re damaging the earth in our current food production practices. However, it affects us all not only in our quality of life, but in the things we pay for, like fuel. The subsidized overproduction of corn costs a huge amount of natural gas and petroleum to produce, particularly through the use of synthetic fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers are generally made from fossil fuels, which if you haven’t been paying attention, are in increasingly short supply. And when supply is short, price goes up.

Who do you suppose are the winners and losers in that scenario?

The amazing part is, you don’t have to use rocket fuel to grow plants – as many, many farmers are proving by growing, profitably, organic crops. It’s possible. It just takes effort, thought, and support.

Sign me up.

Part Three: High Fructose Corn Syrup – The Cure for Common Sense?

That concludes part two. Hopefully you made it through without much damage. [UPDATE]: Here’s part 3, “High Fructose Corn Syrup – The Cure for Common Sense?“

Here are some resources for you to check out if you want to read further. As I said in the beginning, this decision is my own – and my sole recommendation here is that you read for yourself and come to your own conclusion.

If you are curious about what foods contain HFCS, you can either read the labels, or you can check these links for extensive (and incredibly useful) lists of foods that are tainted with HFCS:

Foods and products containing HFCS:

http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2005/06/09/foods_and_products_containing_high_fruct

Focus on fast food that contains HFCS:

http://www.foodfacts.info/high-fructose-corn-syrup.shtml

Dangers of excessive fructose consumption via HFCS and sugar:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/76/5/911

A link to the Bray Study, 2004 (full text):

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/4/537

Sources for this series

Here are a handful of sources for this series. I encourage you to read them for yourself. A complete list will be included in the conclusion of this series. Thanks for reading.

• http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html
• http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/537
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup
• http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-fructose-corn-syrup/AN01588
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030603294.html
• http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241209472_eng.pdf
• http://blogs.webmd.com/healthy-recipe-doctor/2008/01/high-fructose-corn-syrup-new-bad-boy-in.html
• http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup
• http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-soda2-2008aug02,0,1313143.story
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070523163049.htm

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