Science Says High-Fructose Corn Syrup Is Pretty Much The Worst Thing Ever

Sci­ence attempts to de-mystify orange drink

The title pretty much says it all.

In addi­tion to caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant weight gain in lab ani­mals, long-term con­sump­tion of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnor­mal increases in body fat, espe­cially in the abdomen, and a rise in cir­cu­lat­ing blood fats called triglyc­erides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to obe­sity trends in the United States.

“Some peo­ple have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no dif­fer­ent than other sweet­en­ers when it comes to weight gain and obe­sity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, … When rats are drink­ing high-fructose corn syrup at lev­els well below those in soda pop, they’re becom­ing obese — every sin­gle one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

The researchers don’t yet have all the answers, but the pro­cess­ing of corn syrup into HFCS seems to a fac­tor.  The unbound sugar mol­e­cules that can be metab­o­lized almost instantly end up get­ting con­verted to fats in our bod­ies, rather than some­thing a bit more use­ful, such as fuel/energy.  Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the com­par­i­son of HFCS against plain ol’ table sugar (in higher con­cen­tra­tions than the HFCS).  Reg­u­lar old white sugar is a rel­a­tively whole food, at least the sugar cane or beets don’t undergo molecule-altering chem­i­cal processes that ren­der their resul­tant sweet­en­ers use­less to our bod­ies as a fuel source.

And, the other thing i’ve been say­ing for years now:

The new research com­ple­ments pre­vi­ous work … demon­strat­ing that sucrose can be addic­tive, hav­ing effects on the brain sim­i­lar to some drugs of abuse.

Sci­ence Says High-Fructose Corn Syrup Is Pretty Much The Worst Thing Ever