It’s everywhere! It’s everywhere! Pick up any box or bottle at the supermarket, and chances are, you’ll be looking at a product that contains high-fructose corn syrup. It’s been stealthily sneaking into our food since the 1970s, replacing real sugar as the sweetener of choice. As rates of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease in America have skyrocketed, many consumers and medical professionals have begun to wonder if the HFCS we’re consuming every day is playing a part in our national health crisis. Some dieticians and health practitioners decry the sweet syrup as poison, although corn growers claim that it’s just as safe as regular sugar. Since we consume it in everything from soda to sandwiches, it’s worth knowing the truth about this abundant sweetener.
Not All Sugars Are Created Equal
Our bodies mainly utilize three types of naturally occurring sugar: glucose, fructose, and sucrose. Glucose is our body’s main source of energy, and it’s found in starchy and fiber-filled foods. Fructose is a chemically simpler sugar that’s found in fruit, some nuts, and some root vegetables. The combination of glucose and fructose results in sucrose, or simple table sugar, which is made by plants, including sugar cane. Corn doesn’t naturally contain fructose, but it does contain glucose, and in 1957, scientists discovered an enzyme that would allow them to chemically transform the glucose into fructose. Combining this processed syrup back with glucose syrup results in high fructose corn syrup, a product usually made with 55 percent fructose syrup and 45 percent glucose syrup. It’s almost sugar, but not quite.
In the 1970s, food manufacturers became very skilled at making HFCS, and due to widespread availability of corn (our government subsidizes its production) and the high tariffs on imported sugar, HFCS became cheaper and more readily available than real sugar. Since it’s so inexpensive, it comprises about half of the sweeteners consumed today in the United States. Originally, HFCS was thought to be not only a cheaper alternative to white sugar, but also safer for diabetics, since fructose doesn’t cause blood sugar to spike. It’s also more water-soluble than real sugar, and mixes well into many products, especially beverages.
Besides being much less expensive than real sugar, food companies love to use HFCS because it’s also a preservative, keeping perishable foods fresher longer. It’s in crackers, pasta, canned vegetables, condiments, and just about any other kind of processed product, even those that we don’t normally think of as sweet. It helps bread stays fluffy, cookies stay crisp, and the food producers reap the benefits of cheaper, more efficient manufacturing.
Since food and beverage companies rely on HFCS to sweeten so many products, Americans today consume massive quantities of it, much unknowingly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans ingest about fifty-two pounds of HFCS per year. Some claim that it appears in up to 80 percent of the foods we eat. Many public health officials have pointed out that the increased use of HFCS in processed foods virtually mirrors the rise in diabetes, obesity, and heart disease of the past thirty-five years. While there’s no definitive proof that HFCS is directly causing these health problems, there’s some evidence that it’s not exactly helping, either.
Is Fructose Making Us Fat?
Fructose is not our body’s preferred energy source, so it processes fructose differently than it processes glucose or sucrose. While glucose can be utilized by any cell in the body, fructose is broken down by the liver, which turns much of the leftovers directly into triglycerides, a fat that’s harmful to your heart. Also, since fructose is so chemically simple, it gets processed into fat much quicker than does regular sugar.
Fructose also affects our hormones. Exposure to fructose increases insulin resistance, requiring the body to produce more insulin to manage our blood sugar, which can ultimately lead to Type II diabetes. Fructose also fails to trigger the release of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and food intake. When this hormone isn’t released, the body doesn’t recognize when it’s full, which can lead to overeating. Plus, the cheapness of HFCS has made it easier for companies to increase portion sizes, leading to king-size candy bars and giant buckets o’ soda.
