High Fructose Corn Syrup

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TokoZAR

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How much do you know about it?

A friend recently told me about this stuff and I've been reading up on it. It's big in the states and is used in practically everything.

Seems that it's used to replace sugar as a sweetener but it's also used a preservative and a bonding agent.

The list of food containing it too long to post here but have a look here
http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2005/06/09/foods_and_products_containing_high_fruct

According to quite a few sites it's really bad for you because our bodies(livers) cannot properly break the stuff down. Very many people are saying it caused the obesity problem in the US and has had a dramatic effect on increasing diabetes.

I for one will try and avoid it just not sure how to check if a product contains it, thing is it goes by quite a few different names in an attempt to disguise it's use.

Do yourself a favour and Google the stuff and read up on it just a bit.

Wonder where is the best place to shop in an attempt to avoid it.
 
I don't know too much about it... but I will say this.

Cool drinks and Soda Pop in the USA tastes like crap becaue of it.
 
MacDonalds adds it to everything. Even their burger buns. Its quite addictive which makes u want more meat flavoured cardboard later.
 
There's a movie called Food Inc. which talks about the food in the US and the use of corn etc - It's frightening - well worth the watch!
 
You can actually taste the difference between canned/bottled soda and soda on tap in the USA, the bottled stuff is gagging sweet. As for it causing the obesity problem I doubt it, when you get super cups of soda with every meal, oversized portions of everything and almost no physical activity then that is the cause.

I literally could not eat more than a 1/3 of my burgers there, if I drank all the soda there would not have being space for anything else, yet I saw people doing it.
 
Biena america's obesity problem is very simple: Portion size and cost. Cheap food that is massive. Americans are hooked on junk food.

I have no doubt it is the junk food epidemic in he states making people so fat, not to mention junk food is addictive. If smoking made people fat half the world would be obese :D
 
From the No Agenda Show I learned that the industry is lobbying to have it renamed to Fructose Sugar from High Fructose Corn Syrup. After that have it renamed to just Sugar.
 
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A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

Now tell me again this stuff does not make you fat?

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
 
I read the same article, this stuff is nasty and they use it in everything.

It's not just the amount that you eat that makes you fat, this chemical messes with your metabolism,your ability to break foods down and according to a few sites your hormones.They claim that you never feel full after you've eaten because your body can't process it properly.

The FDA claims it's generally safe but apparently it's never been tested and they refuse to acknowledge independent studies.

Check their PR website: http://www.sweetsurprise.com/

Trying very hard to convince people its good for them, also trying to hide it's use in food stuffs.

Watching Food inc and King Corn this weekend.
 
Interesting article explaining how it can cause obesity through liver damage:

How Consuming Fructose Can Damage Your Liver


Fructose is very hard on your liver, in much the same way as drinking alcohol.

1.Liver burden number one: After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver—ONLY your liver can break it down. This is much different than consuming glucose, in which your liver has to break down only 20 percent, and the remaining 80 percent is immediately metabolized and used by the rest of the cells in your body.

2.Liver burden number two: Fructose is converted into fat that get stored in your liver and other tissues as body fat. Part of what makes fructose so bad for your health is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar. For example, if you eat 120 calories of fructose, 40 calories are stored as fat. But if you eat the same amount of glucose, less than one calorie gets stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!

Fructose metabolism is very similar to the way alcohol is metabolized, which has a multitude of toxic metabolites that, if consumed in excess, can lead to NAFLD. Metabolically, consuming fructose is very similar to consuming alcohol. The byproducts are similar, which is why the effects on the liver are similar. For a complete discussion of fructose metabolism, see my comprehensive article about this.
Click to expand...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/19/why-do-millions-of-kids-in-the-us-have-liver-disease.aspx?e_cid=20110819_DNL_art_1
 
TokoZAR said:
How much do you know about it?
Click to expand...

I read a book called ‘Fat Land’ by Greg Critser (good book). Critser talks about “The fattening of America”. It’s related to fast food (KFC? McD’s?). Fast food issues that I remember were that fructose = bad (but cheap) and sucrose = good, palm oil = bad (but cheap) and other oils = good (‘good’ is very loosely speaking). Junk food is full of the ‘bad’ stuff. That’s why it’s so cheap to ‘supersize’ and give big helpings to adults. The cash saved by smaller children’s portions and using junk food ingredients is spent on toys. Obscene profits can still be made.
 
Palimino said:
I read a book called ‘Fat Land’ by Greg Critser (good book). Critser talks about “The fattening of America”. It’s related to fast food (KFC? McD’s?). Fast food issues that I remember were that fructose = bad (but cheap) and sucrose = good, palm oil = bad (but cheap) and other oils = good (‘good’ is very loosely speaking). Junk food is full of the ‘bad’ stuff. That’s why it’s so cheap to ‘supersize’ and give big helpings to adults. The cash saved by smaller children’s portions and using junk food ingredients is spent on toys. Obscene profits can still be made.
Click to expand...

Close to nature = good
Refined anything = bad
 
Is flavoured water unhealthy relative to fruit juice?

The brand I am currently drinking is sweetened with fructose but does not mention the quantity of fructose it contains. However it contains 4g of carbohydrates per 100 ml water so I presume the fructose content can be at most 4g per 100 ml which doesn't seem too bad right? These last few months I've been drinking flavoured water when I felt like drinking something with a nice flavour and all this time I thought I was being healthy but now I am concerned that I may actually be fooling myself.

Also what kind of sugar is contained in (a) milk chocolate and (b) dark chocolate?

I eat a lot of chocolate yet I am not really obese. By contrast I see people who do not really eat sweets but drink a lot of fizzy drinks like Coca Cola and eat lots of junk food like McDonalds and are quite obese.

Curiously plain milk chocolate is a low-GI food. Is it better to eat chocolate or to eat sweets like wine gums (which have a high glycemic index but derive their sweetness from glucose) if I feel like something sweet?

I think that as a measure of how healthy food is, glycemic index can be a bit misleading because foods which are sweetened with fructose will have a lower glycemic index compared to foods which are sweetened with glucose even though it seems that glucose may overall be healthier than fructose.

But since following a low-GI diet, fructose and all, my skin looks really good. I also feel healthier.

Is it possible to rank glucose, sucrose and fructose in terms of how healthy or unhealthy they are relative to each other? My current understanding suggests that, taken in large quantities, glucose is the least unhealthy and fructose the most unhealthy.
 
Also, if somebody could please explain what exactly the difference is between sucrose, fructose and glucose. What is the difference between, and which one is healthier of, white sugar and brown sugar.

I know the following:

  • that fructose and glucose are monosaccharides while sucrose is a disaccharide consisting of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose
  • that fructose is found naturally in fruits
  • that glucose is blood sugar
  • that sucrose is table sugar
  • that fructose is metabolised in your liver into glucose and some unhealthy stuff like triglycerides
  • that fructose does not increase insulin levels
  • that fructose does not stimulate leptin release as much as glucose, with the consequence that meals sweetened with fructose rather than glucose do not cause as much of a feeling of satiety as meals sweetened with glucose
  • that some glucose is necessary for the correct metabolisation of fructose
  • that glucose has the highest glycemic index, followed by sucrose, then fructose
  • that fructose tastes the sweetest, followed by sucrose, then glucose.

If any of this is wrong please write so, or if you can add any useful information, please do so.
 
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I think you've pretty much answered your own questions :)

If you really want to be super healthy, ditch the fructose sweatened waters, and just add some freshly squeezed lemon to your water. It dosn't take long to transition away from the sweet taste.
I'd prefer to eat chocolate over wine gums. Wine gums are just empty calories, whereas chocolate is packed with goodness, just stick to the really dark ones. Transition yourself to a higher percentage of cacao over time.
 
I have just observed the following phenomenon:

These last few weeks I have been following a low-GI diet and I have been eating less sweets than usual.

About two hours ago I ate a roll of Mentos because I needed good concentration for a mental task.

My concentration and energy levels have shot through the roof.

The conclusion I am drawing is that I have become more sensitive to the effects of sugar since having reduced my sugar consumption.
 
Tonight I had two rolls of Mentos because I needed mental clarity for a task I was performing.

Since following a low-GI diet I'm no longer hungry in the evenings. I don't eat dinner anymore because I'm just not hungry.

But tonight I was hungry probably because of the Mentos. Then after dinner I got shaky from my blood sugar spiking and dipping.
 
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