High Fructose Corn Syrup – A Major Enemy of Lasting Weight Loss Success
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High Fructose Corn Syrup – A Major Enemy of Lasting Weight Loss Success
Sydney Strong is a staff writer at Weight Loss Successoholics who offer a ground breaking online coaching program for Lasting Weight Loss Success. Weight Loss Successoholics FREE monthly magazine “Power of 3″ offers articles and insights on the Encouragement, Eating and Exercise essentials for Lasting Weight Loss Success. Claim your copy today at http://www.weightlosssuccessoholics.com
If you are remotely interested in nutrition and weight loss, you’ve probably heard of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). You possibly know that HFCS is found in thousands of food products. Recently, you may have heard that, due to its negative reputation, the Corn Refiners Association has attempted to change the name of HFCS to ‘corn sugar.’
But what is High Fructose Corn Syrup? Is it really just another sweetener?
High Fructose Corn Syrup is a sugar substitute made from processed corn. Also known as glucose-fructose syrup or glucose/fructose, HFCS began to replace natural cane sugar in the 1980′s because it was cheap. Today, you can walk into any grocery store and find aisles of products that contain HFCS. In the United States, HFCS is found in soft drinks, breads, condiments, even ‘healthy’ foods like fruit juice, yogurt and granola bars.
HFCS doesn’t occur in nature. While it is made from corn, most of the nutrients found in natural corn are removed during processing. Yet, according to the Corn Refiners Association and the (US) Food and Drug Administration, HFCS is a ‘natural’ food product and once they enter the bloodstream, common sugar and HFCS “appear to be metabolized similarly in the body”.
However, researchers at Princeton University came to a different conclusion. Using rats as subjects, they designed two studies to examine the effects of High Fructose Corn Syrup on weight gain. In the first study, they fed one group of rats water sweetened with HFCS. The other group received water sweetened with table sugar. Even though the sugar concentration was the same, the rats that received the HFCS gained more weight.
The second study was more startling. A control group was fed a diet of raw rat chow, while the other group received a diet of rat chow sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup. The group of rats that ate a diet rich in HFCS gained 48% more weight than the control group. According to the study, “in humans, this would be equivalent to a 200-pound man gaining 96 pounds”.
Another study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation concluded that consuming fructose-sweetened beverages increased visceral fat (fat around the organs) and, in overweight and obese people, decreased insulin sensitivity. Decreased insulin sensitivity means that their bodies were less efficient at breaking down glucose; over the long-term, decreased insulin sensitivity is thought to lead to diabetes.
High Fructose Corn Syrup might just be another sweetener, but the evidence suggests it’s not so “sweet”, especially for people who are trying to maintain a healthy weight.
How Can You Avoid HFCS?
- Start reading labels and don’t buy food that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup. While some products might be labeled ‘all natural’, they may still contain HFCS.
- Switch to water. Soda, energy drinks, bottled teas, many fruit juices and lemonades might taste delicious, but they frequently contain HFCS.
- Limit fast food intake. Since HFCS is so cheap, restaurateurs often add it to their foods to enhance taste and increase calorie counts. Since you can’t always avoid fast food, do some research and learn which foods at which restaurants are made with HFCS.
- Whenever possible, opt for food that your great-grandparents would recognize: fresh fruit, vegetables, unrefined grains, and lean meats.
Watch out for this enemy of your Lasting Weight Loss Success!
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Thanks for the informative article! High fructose corn syrup is certainly an enemy for weight loss success. This synthesized sweetener is also a major enemy to the health of children–especially children who eat at most public schools–and become fast/processed food addicts by the time they leave first grade. High fructose corn syrup is in most of the foods–and many other health damaging additives like transfat, sodium nitrate/nitrite, artificial flavors/colors, preservatives, and lots and lots of sugars of every kind. The school foods are not cooked anymore–the fast food “stuff” comes in packages.
How can a nation that feeds its children trash food expect healthy adults? Is this what the corn refiners and pharmaceuticals want?
Thanks for keeping such health issues in the forefront. The American public is awakening to a new health consciousness thanks to writers like you.
We need to love our children enough to feed them real food. Do the corn refiner leaders consume that artificial red drink (from their commercials) and give it to their children? Or do they just expect other American parents to give it to their children?