Lurking in your Foods, High Fructose Corn Syrup has negative health benefits.

Courtesy of Popsugar.com

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not a healthier choice or substitute from sugar. While sugar may draw the attention for being unhealthy, High Fructose Corn Syrup has the same if not worse effects on your body.

High Fructose Corn Syrup isn't widley know amongst the public consumer however the people who are very familiar with it are food companies. This is because Fructose Corn Syrup is around 20 times sweeter than regular table sugar according to organicconsumers.org.

However sweeter is not always better because in recent years, according to lef.org Fructose Corn Syrup has largely contributed to the increase in obesity, hypertension, the metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease.

High Fructose Corn Syrup a replacement for Sugar is sweeter but is just as harmful to our health.

By replacing regular sugar in our diets with Fructose Corn Syrup, it has lead to our increased levels of fructose consumption. Molecularly Fructose Corn Syrup can contain up to 30 percent more fructose than regular table. Since Fructose Corn Syrup is an unnatural product for the most part in human history we have consumed about 15 grams of it per day, however in 1997 we shattered that mark by reaching the threshold of 81 grams a day according lef.org.

With this increase of fructose levels in our bodies negative health effects linking to ailments such as metabolic syndrome, elevated triglyceride levels, hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and excess uric acid levels have seen a major increase.

Sugar gets the bad wrap, while High Fructose Corn Syrup is slipped into our food with minimal restraint.

When looking at the nutrition label on a product a person only sees the category for sugar. Most people over look this category because they see the word sugar and automatically think that its table sugar they are measuring in grams.

However the sneaky food and drink companies include the sugar replacements like High Fructose Corn Syrup in the count of sugars in grams. Unless we contact the specific food and drink company people can only find out that High Fructose Corn Syrup is an ingredient in their food or drink. But not how much because the nutrition labels on various food items and drinks do not contain a broken down list of how much of each type of sugar is in the item.

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Not knowing about how much Fructose Corn Syrup is in our diet or in our food or drinks is a major concern to some for three reasons:

1. According to organicconsumer.org research has lead to show average Americans eat close to 132 calories of Fructose Corn Syrup per day, while the top 20 percent of sweetener consumers eat anywhere between 300 to 700 calories per day. All of which are unhealthy calories that are not beneficial to our health.
2. The United States consume the most High Fructose Corn Syrup pounds per person in the world at about 55 pounds a person. 
3. The higher the use of Fructose Corn Syrup a countries has increases their percent to contract type two diabetes by about 2 percent.

As the Director of Nutrition at the University of Maryland, Colleen Davis discusses how keeping the consumption of any type of sugar to a minimum will help decrease your risks for contracting an ailment from the over consumption of High Fructose Corn Syrup.



In general people should keep their consumption of any type of sugar to a minimum, because with each gram of sugar you consume you are putting yourself at more of a risk. Surprisingly Davis's analysis of keeping sugars below the 100-150 calories a day mark, bodes well for the average American who consumes around 132 calories per day of sugars. For those who consume 300-700 calories of sugars a day they are putting themselves at risk for contracting one of the ailments that High Fructose Corn Syrup can induce.

The one reason why many Americans are putting themselves at risk so much is because High Fructose Corn Syrup resides in many of the food and drinks Americans consume. Soft Drinks, which is overly consumed amongst Americans contains High Fructose Corn Syrup. But while soft drinks are the leading source of Fructose Corn Syrup, it is also lurking in other foods such as fruit juices, candy, ketchup, amongst many other daily foods and drinks that the Americans consume.

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People can sweeten their foods and drinks with out the risks.

According to sustainable.org some ways people can enjoy their food with out using Fructose Corn Syrup are:
• Natural sweeteners – raw honey, maple syrup, or fruit juice
• No soda. In general with HFCS or not it still holds your sugar amount for one day in one can.
• 100% Fruit Juice mixed with water, sweet snack with less sugars.
• Cook. If you cook you have the control of the sugar intake

Davis provides some interesting insight on sugars because, while substitutes may be deemed healthier if consumed a lot will add up and make the fact that your sweetener is healthier than Fructose corn syrup or table sugar null.

However a simple use of a natural sweetener can help sweeten your food or drink as well as reduce the risks you may come across from using sweeteners such as High Fructose Corn Syrup or table sugar. A real quick example of this is in a cup or glass of tea, instead of using sugar for hot tea or getting the already sweet ice tea, use a table spoon of honey. This sweetens the tea or ice tea to the same effect as regular sugar would in hot tea or sugar or artificial sugars used to sweeten ice tea.

Not only would this reverse the bad and harmful effects of sugar and artificial sugar on the body but it  would also lower the caloric intake of sugars per day. At the same time it would also be promoting positive results on the body because honey has been linked to helping prevent cancer, reducing throat irritation, and regulating blood sugar along with a host of many other positive health benefits.

The makeup of High Fructose Corn Syrup

According to the United States National Library of Medicine and The National Institute of Health the most used type of Fructose Corn Syrup is similar to sucrose or table sugar. 

This Fructose Corn Syrup is made up of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Which, compared to table sugar or sucrose is very similar. Table sugar and sucrose is made up of 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose making it a little less sweet creating the need by food manufacturers for the sweeter Fructose Corn Syrup.

The advantage to these food manufacturers is that the free monosaccharides in Fructose Corn Syrup provide better flavor enhancement, stability, freshness, texture, color, pourability, and consistency in the foods that they are added to in comparison to sucrose. However while Fructose Corn Syrup provides positives for the food industry, it provides negatives for the body.

With Fructose Corn Syrup and regular sucroses make up being so similar, Davis answers whether or not they should both be carefully scrutinized in the foods they are added to and enhance in flavors.

Since the make up of both the fructose and glucose are so similar Davis believes they should be both carefully scrutinized. This is because since the make up is so similar the negative effects are similar as well.

With the make up being similar this is why Davis groups all the sugars in one group saying that we need to regulate the whole bunch of sugars because of their negative effects. If we consume more than 100-150 calories a day of any type of sugar this is when you run the risk of contracting an ailment from the consumption of too much sugar. This would include diabetes, obesity, and even cardiovascular disease.

According to the United States National Library of Medicine and The National Institute of Health one of the main differences between Fructose Corn Syrup and other sucrose is in the monosaccharides that reside in the free solution of High Fructose Corn Syrup, but in other sucroses it resides as a disaccharide.

To be healthy since the effects of Fructose Corn Syrup and other sugars are so close in make up as well as negative effects, the only healthy choice is to stay away from both and look for a more natural sweetener to sweeten food and drinks.