GET UPDATES FROM Mark Hyman, MD
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
--Harry Truman
The current media debate about the benefits (or lack of harm) of
high fructose corn syrup
(HFCS) in our diet misses the obvious. The average American increased
their consumption of HFCS (mostly from sugar sweetened drinks and
processed food) from zero to more than 60 pounds per person per year.
During that time period, obesity rates have more than tripled and
diabetes incidence has increased more than seven-fold. Not perhaps the
only cause, but a fact that cannot be ignored.
Doubt and confusion are the currency of deception, and they sow the
seeds of complacency. These are used skillfully through massive print
and television advertising campaigns by the
Corn Refiners Association's
attempt to dispel the "myth" that HFCS is harmful and assert through
the opinion of "medical and nutrition experts" that it is no different
than cane sugar. It is a "natural" product that is a healthy part of our
diet when used in moderation.
Except for one problem. When used in moderation, it is a major cause of
heart disease,
obesity, cancer,
dementia, liver failure, tooth decay and more.
The Lengths the Corn Industry Will Go To
The goal of the corn industry is to call into question any claim of
harm from consuming high fructose corn syrup, and to confuse and deflect
by calling their product natural "corn sugar." That's like calling
tobacco in cigarettes natural herbal medicine.
Watch the slick ad
where a caring father walks hand in hand with his four-year-old
daughter through a big question mark carved in an idyllic cornfield.
In the ad, the father tells us:
Like any parent, I have questions about the food my daughter
eats -- like high fructose corn syrup. So I started looking for answers
from medical and nutrition experts, and what I discovered whether it's
corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is
sugar. Knowing that makes me feel better about what she eats and that's
one less thing to worry about.
Physicians are also targeted directly. I received a 12-page color
glossy monograph from the Corn Refiners Association reviewing the
"science" that HFCS was safe and no different than cane sugar. I assume
the other 700,000 physicians in America received the same information,
at who knows what cost.
In addition to this, I received a special "personal" letter from the
Corn Refiner's Association outlining every mention of the problems with
HCFS in our diet -- whether in print, blogs, books, radio or television.
They warned me of the errors of my ways and put me on "notice." For
what I am not sure. To think they are tracking this (and me) that
closely gives me an Orwellian chill.
New websites like
www.sweetsurprise.com and
www.cornsugar.com
help "set us straight" about HFCS with quotes from professors of
nutrition and medicine and thought leaders from Harvard and other
stellar institutions.
Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation
campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the
safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17
percent of our economy?
But are these twisted sweet lies or a sweet surprise, as the Corn Refiners Association websites claim?
What the Science Says about HFCS
Let's examine the science and insert some common sense into the
conversation. These facts may indeed come as a sweet surprise. The ads
suggest getting your nutrition advice from your doctor. Having studied
this for more than a decade, and having read, interviewed or personally
talked with most of the medical and nutrition experts used to bolster
the claim that "corn sugar" and cane sugar are essentially the same,
quite a different picture emerges and the role of HCFS in promoting
obesity, disease and death across the globe becomes clear.
Last week over lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames, one of the foremost
nutritional scientists in the world and Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional
biochemist, a student of Linus Pauling and I reviewed the existing
science, and Dr. Ames shared shocking new evidence from his research
center on how HFCS can trigger body-wide inflammation and obesity.
Here are 5 reasons you should stay way from any product containing high fructose corn syrup.
1. Sugar in any form causes obesity and disease when consumed in pharmacologic doses.
Cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are indeed both harmful when
consumed in pharmacologic doses of 140 pounds per person per year. When
one 20-ounce HFCS sweetened soda, sports drink or tea has 17 teaspoons
of sugar (and the average teenager often consumes two drinks a day), we
are conducting a largely uncontrolled experiment on the human species.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors consumed the equivalent of 20 teaspoons
per year, not per day. In this sense, I would agree with the corn
industry that sugar is sugar. Quantity matters. But there are some
important differences.
2. HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by the body.
High fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from
"natural" or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn
stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and
Carghill would reportedly not allow the investigative journalist Michael
Pollan to observe it for his book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." The sugars
are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a
chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.
Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane
sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together --
glucose and fructose in equal amounts. The enzymes in your digestive
tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are
then absorbed into the body.
HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but
a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is
sweeter than glucose. And HFCS is cheaper than sugar because of the
government farm bill corn subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and
cheaper than products made with cane sugar. This allowed for the average
soda size to balloon from eight ounces to 20 ounces with little
financial costs to manufacturers, but great human costs of increased
obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.
Now back to biochemistry. Since there is there is no chemical bond
between them, no digestion is required, so they are more rapidly
absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and
triggers
lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides
and cholesterol). This is why it is the major cause of liver damage in
this country and causes a condition called "fatty liver," which affects
70 million people. The rapidly absorbed glucose triggers big spikes in
insulin -- our body's major fat storage hormone. Both of these features
of HFCS lead to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in
appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and
more.
But there was one more thing I learned during lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames. Research done by his group at the
Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute
found that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed
by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body's
energy source). This depletes the energy fuel source or ATP in our gut
required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little
"tight junctions" cement each intestinal cell together preventing food
and bacteria from "leaking" across the intestinal membrane and
triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.
High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes
in the intestinal lining, allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut
bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream
and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity,
diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and accelerated aging.
Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients
and fiber that doesn't exhibit the same biological effects as the free
high fructose doses found in "corn sugar.'
The takeaway: Cane sugar and the industrially produced,
euphemistically named "corn sugar" are not biochemically or
physiologically the same.
3. HFCS contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA.
An FDA researcher asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high
fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated
requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created
soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that
was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains
toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its
manufacturing.(
i) Poisoned sugar is certainly not "natural."
When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph,
strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What
are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of
this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects and
toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but
shouldn't we be protected from the presence of untested chemical
compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food
product comprises up to 15 to 20 percent of the average American's daily
calorie intake?
4. Many independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT
support the use of HFCS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn
industry.
The corn industry's happy looking websites
www.cornsugar.com and
www.sweetsurprise.com bolster their position that cane sugar and corn sugar are the same by quoting experts, or should we say mis-quoting ...
Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nutrition,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has published widely on the
dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks and their contribution to the obesity
epidemic. In a review of HFCS in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,(
ii) he explains the mechanism by which the free fructose may contribute to obesity. He states that:
"The digestion, absorption and metabolism of fructose differ from
those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo
lipogenesis [production of fat in the liver]. In addition, unlike
glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin
production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in
the regulation of food intake and body weight [to control appetite],
this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy
intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may
enhance caloric overconsumption."
He states that HFCS is absorbed more rapidly than regular sugar, and
that it doesn't stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents
you from triggering the body's signals for being full and may lead to
overconsumption of total calories.
He concludes by saying that:
"... the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation
to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in
calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of
obesity."
The corn industry takes his comments out of context to support their position. "All sugar you eat is the same."
True, pharmacologic doses of any kind of sugar are harmful, but the
biochemistry of different kinds of sugar and their respective effects on
absorption, appetite and metabolism are different.
David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics,
Harvard Medical School, and a personal friend has published extensively
on the dangers and the obesogenic properties of sugar-sweetened
beverages. He was quoted as saying that
"high fructose corn syrup is one of the most misunderstood products in the food industry."
When I asked him why he supported the corn industry, he told me he
didn't and that his comments were taken totally out of context.
Misrepresenting science is one thing, misrepresenting scientists who
have been at the forefront of the fight against obesity and high
fructose sugar sweetened beverages is quite another.
5. HCFS is almost always a marker of poor-quality,
nutrient-poor disease creating industrial food products or "food-like
substances."
The last reason to avoid products that contain HFCS is that they are a
marker for poor-quality, nutritionally depleted, processed industrial
food full of empty calories and artificial ingredients. If you find
"high fructose corn syrup" on the label, you can be sure it is not a
whole, real, fresh food full of fiber, vitamins, minerals,
phytonutrients and antioxidants. Stay away if you want to stay healthy.
We still must reduce our overall consumption of sugar, but with this one
simple dietary change you can radically reduce your health risks and
improve your health.
While debate may rage about the biochemistry and physiology of cane
sugar vs. corn sugar, this is, in fact, beside the point (despite the
finer points of my scientific analysis above). The conversation has been
diverted to a simple assertion that cane sugar and corn sugar are not
different.
The
real issues are only two.
1. We are consuming HFCS and sugar in pharmacologic quantities never
before experienced in human history -- 140 pounds a year vs. 20
teaspoons a year 10,000 years ago.
2. High fructose corn syrup is almost always found in very poor
quality foods that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts
of other disease-promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals and even
mercury.
These critical ideas should be the heart of the national
conversation, not the meaningless confusing ads and statements by the
corn industry in the media and online that attempt to assure the public
that the biochemistry of real sugar and industrially produced sugar from
corn are the same.
For more information on the effects of high fructose corn syrup see
www.drhyman.com.
Know I'd like to hear from you ...
Do you think there is an association between the introduction of HFCS in our diet and the obesity epidemic?
What reason do you think the Corn Refiners Association has for
running such ads and publishing websites like those listed in this
article?
What do you think of the science presented here and the general effects of HFCS on the American diet?
Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
References
(i) Dufault, R., LeBlanc, B., Schnoll, R. et al. 2009. Mercury from
chlor-alkali plants: Measured concentrations in food product sugar.
Environ Health. 26(8):2.
(ii) Bray, G.A., Nielsen, S.J., and B.M. Popkin. 2004. Consumption of
high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic
of obesity.
Am J Clin Nutr. 79(4):537-43. Review.
Mark Hyman, M.D. is a practicing physician, founder of The UltraWellness Center, a four-time 'New York Times" bestselling author and an international leader in the field of Functional Medicine. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on YouTube, become a fan on Facebook and subscribe to his newsletter.
No comments:
Post a Comment