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High Fructose Corn Syrup and Diabetes

High Fructose Corn Syrup and Diabetes
photo by: jerine
Defeat Diabetes Foundation
Researchers at Rutgers University found that soft drinks sweetened with HFCS may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children. 

Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient.  Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find.  For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and zanthan gum, read: corn.”

In 2006, Rodale Press, the Prevention Magazine folks (who were right about organic agriculture), published a book called “The Sugar Solution.”  Page 6 reads, “And there’s growing evidence that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), now the most ubiquitous sweetener in the American food supply, is directly linked to the national’s twin epidemics of overweight and diabetes.  HFCS’s role? This sweetener seems to bypass the body’s “I feel full” mechanisms.  In a study of 93,000 women, Harvard School of Public Health researchers recently linked a 10 pound weight gain and 83% high diabetes risk directly to the consumption of HFCS.”

In August 2007 researchers at Rutgers University found that soft drinks sweetened with HFCS may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children.  In a laboratory study of commonly consumed carbonated beverages, the scientists found that drinks containing the syrup had high levels of reactive compounds called carbonyls that could trigger cell and tissue damage leading to diabetes.  These reactive carbonyls are also elevated in the blood of individuals with diabetes and linked to the complications of the disease.  Based on the study data, Chi-Tang Ho, PhD, professor of food chemistry, estimates that a single can of soda contains about five times the concentration of reactive carbonyls found in the blood of an adult person with diabetes.

Reprinted with the permission of the Defeat Diabetes Foundation.

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