Table Sugar as Harmful as High Fructose Syrup, Researchers Say

Amy Taylor June 22, 2015

High fructose syrup has been dinged by health experts and nutritionists for the past years. But according to researchers, even table sugar can have real health hazards.

For instance, people who are fond of all-natural sodas sweetened with pure cane sugar are still doing themselves harm, just as if the sodas had been loaded with high-fructose corn syrup instead, said Mario Kratz, a research associate professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health in Seattle.

"The science is pretty clear that normal household sugar doesn’t differ from high-fructose corn syrup," said Kratz, who specialises in nutrition and metabolism. "They are equally bad when consumed in sugar-sweetened beverages."

Same composition

According to Jennifer Temple, an associate professor of exercise and nutrition sciences at the University at Buffalo in New York, table sugar has the same composition with high-fructose corn syrup.

What’s more, science hasn’t been able to demonstrate that high-fructose corn syrup affects the human body differently than any other source of added sugar, said Claudia Perkins, a registered dietician with the Texas A&M Health Science Centre Diabetes Education Program.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, all sources of dietary sugar contain a mix of glucose and fructose. Both table sugar and honey contain 50 per cent glucose and 50 per cent fructose, while high-fructose corn syrup is usually 45 per cent glucose and 55 per cent fructose.

Dr Kathleen Page, an expert on diabetes and obesity and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, virtually every cell in the body can process glucose as an energy source, but the cells require the hormone insulin to be able to absorb glucose and unleash its stored energy. That same insulin also serves as a signal to the brain that you’ve eaten enough. Meanwhile, fructose can only be processed in the liver and doesn’t send that insulin-generated signal to the brain that one is full.

In her recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, found that people who drank beverages sweetened with pure fructose tended to exhibit greater hunger than those who drank beverages with pure glucose.

The problem with this study is, according to Lisa Cimperman, a clinical dietician at University Hospitals Case Medical Centre in Cleveland, is that the subjects were fed with pure fructose, which doesn’t happen in real life. "It’s not applicable to the way we eat. All foods are a mixture of fructose and glucose," Cimperman said. "When you look at the metabolic effects of fructose and glucose in isolation, you are not approximating the way we eat in real life."

Some nutritionists disagree, saying that the human body responds pretty much the same way to both high-fructose corn syrup and sugar. According to Temple, high-fructose corn syrup’s ill effects on the American diet stem more from economics than biology.

But all of them agree in some point: to stay fit and healthy, we must limit our sugar intake.

Source of this article: High Fructose Corn Syrup: Questions and Answers