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Ärende: another HFCS article
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FD
GS24VKMH1.DTL&type=printable =====

Sugar coated -- We're drowning in high fructose corn syrup. Do the risks go
beyond our waistline?

- Kim Severson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004

An overweight America may be fixated on fat and obsessed with carbs, but
nutritionists say the real problem is much sweeter -- we're awash in sugar.

Not just any sugar, but high fructose corn syrup.

The country eats more sweetener made from corn than from sugarcane or beets,
gulping it down in drinks as well as in frozen food and baked goods. Even
ketchup is laced with it.

Almost all nutritionists finger high fructose corn syrup consumption as a major
culprit in the nation's obesity crisis. The inexpensive sweetener flooded the
American food supply in the early 1980s, just about the time the nation's
obesity rate started its unprecedented climb.

The question is why did it make us so fat. Is it simply the Big Gulp syndrome
-- that we're eating too many empty calories in ever-increasing portion sizes?
Or does the fructose in all that corn syrup do something more insidious --
literally short-wire our metabolism and force us to gain weight?

The debate can divide a group of nutritional researchers almost as fast as
whether the low-carb craze is fact or fad.

Loading high fructose corn syrup into increasingly larger portions of soda and
processed food has packed more calories into us and more money into food
processing companies, say nutritionists and food activists. But some health
experts argue that the issue is bigger than mere calories. The theory goes like
this: The body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently
than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way
metabolic-regulating hormones function. It also forces the liver to kick more
fat out into the bloodstream.

The end result is that our bodies are essentially tricked into wanting to eat
more and at the same time, we are storing more fat.

"One of the issues is the ease with which you can consume this stuff," says
Carol Porter, director of nutrition and food services at UC San Francisco.
"It's not that fructose itself is so bad, but they put it in so much food that
you consume so much of it without knowing it."

A single 12-ounce can of soda has as much as 13 teaspoons of sugar in the form
of high fructose corn syrup. And because the amount of soda we drink has more
than doubled since 1970 to about 56 gallons per person a year, so has the
amount of high fructose corn syrup we take in. In 2001, we consumed almost 63
pounds of it, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA suggests most of us limit our intake of added sugar -- that's
everything from the high fructose corn syrup hidden in your breakfast cereal to
the sugar cube you drop into your after-dinner espresso -- to about 10 to 12
teaspoons a day. But we're not doing so well. In 2000, we ate an average of 31
teaspoons a day, which was more than 15 percent of our caloric intake. And much
of that was in sweetened drinks.

Beyond soda

So, the answer is to just avoid soda, right? Unfortunately, it's not that
simple, because the inexpensive, versatile sweetener has crept into plenty of
other places -- foods you might not expect to have any at all. A low-fat,
fruit-flavored yogurt, for example, can have 10 teaspoons of fructose-based
sweetener in one serving.

Because high fructose corn syrup mixes easily, extends shelf-life and is as
much as 20 percent cheaper than other sources of sugar, large-scale food
manufacturers love it. It can help prevent freezer burn, so you'll find it on
the labels of many frozen foods. It helps breads brown and keeps them soft,
which is why hot dog buns and even English muffins hold unexpected amounts.

The question remains just how much more dangerous high fructose corn syrup is
than other sugars.

Fructose, as the name implies, is the sugar found naturally in fruit. It can be
extracted, turned into granules and used like sugar in the kitchen. It used to
be considered a healthier alternative to sucrose -- plain old table sugar. It's
sweeter, so less is needed to achieve the same taste. Diabetics use it because
fructose doesn't stimulate insulin production, so blood sugar levels remain
stable.

The process of pulling sugar from cornstarch wasn't perfected until the early
1970s, when Japanese researchers developed a reliable way to turn cornstarch
into syrup sweet enough to compete with liquid sugar. After some tinkering,
they landed on a formula that was 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose --
sweet enough and cheap enough to make most soda companies jump from liquid
sugar to high fructose corn syrup by the 1980s.

The results were dramatic. -- a whopping increase of 4,080 percent.

Journalist Greg Critser lays out a compelling case against high fructose corn
syrup in his 2003 book, "Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in
the World." He argues that federal policies that aimed to stabilize food prices
and support corn production in the 1970s led to a glut of corn and then to high
fructose corn syrup. With a cheaper way to sweeten food, producers pumped up
the size and amount of sweet snacks and drinks on the market and increased
profits.

It's not natural

Critser writes that despite the food industry's arguments that sugar is sugar,
whether fructose or sucrose, no group "has yet refuted the growing scientific
concern that, when all is said and done, fructose ... is about the furthest
thing from natural that one can imagine, let alone eat."

Although some researchers have long been suspicious that too much fructose can
cause problems, the latest case against high fructose corn syrup began in
earnest a few years ago. Dr. George Bray, principal investigator of the
Diabetes Prevention Program at Louisiana State University Medical Center told
the International Congress on Obesity that in 1980, just after high fructose
corn syrup was introduced in mass quantities, relatively stable obesity rates
began to climb. By 2000, they had doubled.

Further, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2002 published research
that showed that teenagers' milk consumption between 1965 and 1996 decreased by
36 percent, while soda consumption increased by more than 200 percent. Bray
argues that without calcium, which nutritionists agree can help the body
regulate weight, kids got fatter. He says that he could find no other single
combination of environmental or food changes that were as significant to the
rise in obesity.

Other studies by researchers at UC Davis and the University of Michigan have
shown that consuming fructose, which is more readily converted to fat by the
liver, increases the levels of fat in the bloodstream in the form of
triglycerides.

And unlike other types of carbohydrate made up of glucose, fructose does not
stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin. Peter Havel, a nutrition researcher
at UC Davis who studies the metabolic effects of fructose, has also shown that
fructose fails to increase the production of leptin, a hormone produced by the
body's fat cells.

Both insulin and leptin act as signals to the brain to turn down the appetite
and control body weight. And in another metabolic twist, Havel's research shows
that fructose does not appear to suppress the production of ghrelin, a hormone
that increases hunger and appetite.

"Because fructose in isolation doesn't activate the hormones that regulate body
weight as do other types of carbohydrate composed of glucose, consuming a diet
high in fructose could lead to taking in more calories and, over time, to
weight gain," he says.

However, Havel isn't convinced high fructose corn syrup is by itself the
problem. That's in part because it is composed of 55 percent fructose and 45
percent glucose, which is similar to the 50-50 combination of fructose and
glucose found in table sugar. Havel's studies have focused on fructose by
itself and not as part of a high fructose corn syrup mixture.

"Whether there is an important difference in the effects of consuming beverages
sweetened with a mixture of 55 percent as opposed to 50 percent fructose would
be hard to measure," he says. "Additional studies are needed to better
understand the nutritional impact of consuming different types of sugars in
humans."

Still, other researchers are finding new problems with high fructose corn
syrup. A study in last month's Journal of the National Cancer Institute
suggests that women whose diet was high in total carbohydrate and fructose
intake had an increased risk of colorectal cancer. And Dr. Mel Heyman, chief of
pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at UCSF, is seeing sick children whose
bodies have been overloaded with fructose from naturally occurring fructose in
fruit juice combined with soda and processed food.

"The way the body handles glucose is different than fructose,'' he says. "It
can overload the intestines' ability to absorb carbohydrate by giving it too
much fructose. That can cause cramps, bloating and loose stools."

The jury's still out

Like others in the field, he says there is much to discover in how sugar works,
but he disagrees that high fructose corn syrup is somehow reprogramming our
bodies toward obesity. Rather, he says, we're just eating too much of it.

Nutrition theory holds that the basic make-up of fructose-laced corn syrup is
not much different than table sugar. They react about the same in the body,
says Dr. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard
School of Public Health. "There are some modest differences in metabolism, but
I don't think fructose per se is the culprit."

Neither do the food companies that use it in copious amounts.

Says Stephanie Childs, a spokesperson for the Grocery Manufacturers
Association: "At the end of the day, how any sweetener affects your weight
depends on how many calories you are taking in overall. Overemphasizing one
nutrient at the detriment of others is not going to solve the problem."

Even some leading nutrition reformers aren't convinced that high fructose corn
syrup is of itself the issue. The bigger battle, says Michael Jacobson,
executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer
advocacy group, is to get added sugars listed on food labels with a percentage
of daily value. That means a consumer could look at a package and see that, for
example, one soda provides almost all the sugar a person should eat in a day.

"It simply comes down to this,'' he says. "We're eating too much refined
sugars, be it sucrose or high fructose corn syrup or any other refined sugar."
A sugar glossary

Here's a rundown of the various types of sugar you'll find on product labels.

Brown sugar. Sugar crystals contained in a molasses syrup, with natural flavor
and color; 91 to 96 percent sucrose

Corn syrup. Made from cornstarch. Mostly glucose. Can have maltose

Dextrose. Commonly known as corn sugar and grape sugar. Naturally occurring
form of glucose

Fructose. Sugar found in fruit and honey. Sweetest natural sugar

Galactose. Sugar found linked to glucose to form lactose, or milk sugar

Glucose. Also called dextrose. The human body's primary source of energy. Most
of the carbohydrates you eat are converted to glucose in the body.

High fructose corn syrup. Derived from cornstarch, usually a combination of 55
percent fructose and 45 percent sucrose. Treated with an enzyme that converts
glucose to fructose, which results in a sweeter product. Used in soft drinks,
baked goods, jelly, syrups, fruits and desserts

Honey. Sweet syrupy fluid made by bees from the nectar collected from flowers
and stored in nests or hives as food. Composed of fructose and glucose

Lactose. Sugar found in milk and milk products that is made of glucose and
galactose

Maltose. Also called malt sugar. Used in the fermentation of alcohol by
converting starch to sugar

Maple syrup. A concentrated sucrose solution made from mature sugar maple tree
sap that flows in spring. Mostly replaced by pancake syrup, a mixture of
sucrose and artificial maple flavorings

Molasses. Thick syrup left after making sugar from sugarcane. Brown in color
with a high sugar concentration

Powdered or confectioner's sugar. Granulated sugar that has been pulverized.
Available in several degrees of fineness

Sucrose. Commonly called cane sugar, table sugar or simply sugar

Sugar (granulated). Refined cane or beet sugar; 100 percent sucrose

Turbinado sugar. Raw sugar that has been partially refined and washed
Awash in corn syrup

It should come as no shock to most consumers that a Pepsi or a Fig Newton has
plenty of sugar - most of it from high fructose corn syrup. But what's
surprising is the products where the sweetener hides out and how disguised it
can be by the deceptively small serving size listed on the nutrition label.
Although the numbers below show teaspoons of sugar per serving, people often
eat more than one serving. The U.S. Department of Agriculture advises most
people to limit themselves to 10 to 12 teaspoons of added sugars a day.

How much is too much?

The list below shows how much sugar, mostly in the form of high fructose corn
syrup, is in each of these single servings.

Sunkist soda: 10 1/2 teaspoons of sugar

Berkeley Farms low-fat yogurt with fruit: 10 teaspoons of sugar

Mott's applesauce: 5 teaspoons of sugar

Slim-Fast chocolate cookie dough meal bar: 5 teaspoons of sugar

1 tablespoon ketchup: 1 teaspoon of sugar

Hansen's Super Vita orange-carrot Smoothie: 10 teaspoons of sugar

E-mail Kim Severson at kseverson@sfchronicle.com.

Hidden sugar
  The chart shows how much high fructose corn syrup hides in products. 

PRODUCT                   Servings           TEASPOONS OF SUGAR 
                        PER CONTAINER           Per SERVING 
Bean with Bacon Soup            2 1/2                    1 
Sara Lee Hot Dog Bun             6                       1  
Stovetop Stuffing                8                     Almost 1 
  (chicken flavor)
V8 Splash Smoothies              6                        7  
  (citrus blend)            (8 ounces)                     
Oroweat English Muffins          6                       1/2 
Stouffer's French  Bread Pizza   2                   Just over 1 
  (pepperoni)
Yoplait 99% fat-free yogurt      1                       8 
  (strawberry-banana)
Baked Lay's potatoe chips       10                       1/2 
  (KC Masterpiece barbecue)  
Quaker Oats low-fat corn cakes  14 (1 cake)           Just over 1 
  (carmel-chocolate chip)
Lunchables                       1                       19 
  (turkey and American cheese with drink and dessert) 
Sobe Elixir                      2.5                     6 
  (orange carrot flavor)      (8 ounces)
Red Bull energy drink            1                    Almost 7


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/
02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL 

(c)2006 San Francisco Chronicle 

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