The Dangers of High-Fructose Corn Syrup
Recently, you may have been hearing about the health problems associated with a diet high in high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). But what does this sweetener do to your body biologically that makes it so dangerous? In this article, I will explain the history and the process of making HFCS, as well as the biological reasons why HFCS can be harmful to your health.
Up until the 1970′s, the only major sweetener was sugar (sucrose). But between 1975 and 1985, HFCS began to be rapidly introduced as a sweetener in the United States, less than 3 decades after its invention in 1957. This rapid introduction happened because in the United States sugar has high tariffs, which makes natively grown corn a much cheaper solution. Currently, although we know the risks of HFCS, removing these ingredients from American foods would be very difficult because it would devastate the corn industry, an important American agricultural industry. These high-fructose corn syrups are ny of a group of corn syrups which have undergone enzymatic processing in order to increase their fructose content and are then mixed with pure corn syrup (100% glucose) to reach their final form. Standard HFCS comes in 3 varieties: HFCS 90 which is approximately 90% fructose and 10% glucose; HFCS 55 which is approximately 55% fructose and 45% glucose; and HFCS 42 which is approximately 42% fructose and 58% glucose.
So what makes this sweetener more unhealthy than plain sucrose? It all starts with the basic structural difference between high-fructose corn syrups and sugar. While sucrose is a dissacharide composed of glucose and fructose linked together with a glycoside linkage, HFCS is instead composed of unlinked molecules of glucose and fructose. Confused by why this glycoside linkage makes a difference (or by all of these technical words)? Luckily, I have a diagram:
Still confused? Oh well, you really don’t need to know the details, I just like to try to make sure you are aware of them so that you don’t just think I’m making my information up. To put it as simply as I can, the structural difference between sucruse and HFCS is that sucrose has bonds between the glucose and fructose. But why does this matter? It matters because it takes your body energy and time to break the bond between the glucose and fructose in sucrose, where as these molecules can be readily absorbed in HFCS.
On the most basic level, this is unhealthy because if it takes less energy for your body to absorb HFCS than sucrose, then your body burns less calories digesting HFCS. But this is not the only or the most significant reason why HFCS is bad for you; more importantly, it is much harder for your body to regulate the absorption rate of HFCS. While the process of breaking the bonds in sucrose naturally helps regulate the rate of absorption of this sugar molecule, the sugars in high-fructose corn syrup are not bonded and therefore cannot easily be regulated. Another huge problem with HFCS is that it is extremely high in fructose, which has shown to convert to fat much more readily than glucose. This means that a diet high in fructose will make you fatter much faster than a diet high in glucose.
There are other problems associated with fructose that are not necessarily weight related. Most importantly, while glucose is metabolized by every cell in the body, fructose is mostly metabolized in the liver. This can ultimately lead to some liver problems often seen in alcoholics.
So what can I do to avoid HFCS? To start, stop drinking everything except water and maybe some 100% fruit juices. I repeat, do NOT drink soda for many reasons including its extremely high HFCS content. In addition, eat processed food and try to eat more fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy. Try to avoid eating lots of cereals and bread that contain HFCS (most do). Now that you know a bit about the problems with HFCS, good luck eating healthy.
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