Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 26 July 2025 — 1700 words
“High-fructose corn syrup ‘is just a formula for making you obese and diabetic,’ RFK Jr. has said.” [ source ] That’s the narrative in the Wild and Wacky World of Nutrition. It is based on the ever-present, ubiquitous, error of mistaking association and time-coincidence with causation.
“In 2004 Bray et al ( link ) published the hypothesis that HFCS is a direct causative factor for obesity. They based their hypothesis on a temporal relation between HFCS use and obesity rates between 1960 and 2000.” [ source ]
In that paper, this is the money graph:
[Extra points to readers who can see what was omitted from this graph – which omission substantially negates Bray’s hypothesis. ]
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High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is just sugar.
When we use the word “sugar” in everyday language, what do we mean? Most of us mean “table sugar” – what white granular sugar that is in our sugar bowls, or comes in little packets at the café or in 5 pound bags from the grocery store.
And what is “table sugar”? It is sucrose.
There are lots of sugars in the natural world. A “ sugar”, in biochemistry, is “any of the class of soluble, crystalline, typically sweet-tasting carbohydrates found in living tissues and exemplified by glucose and sucrose.” There are several more sugars commonly found in foods: fructose, lactose, maltose, galactose.
Here’s a rundown of the most common sugars that humans ingest in their diets:
Sucrose: Chemical Formula – C12H22O11
This is our common white table sugar. It is the most used sweetener in foods and beverages. Sucrose is a compound sugar, a disaccharide, consisting of exactly 50% fructose and 50% glucose, one molecule of each bonded together.
Glucose: Chemical Formula – C6H12O6
Glucose is the most important source of energy in all organisms. Glucose circulates in the blood of animals as blood sugar. Dietary glucose can be directly absorbed and becomes then is often referred to as “blood sugar”.
Dextrose, also labelled D-glucose, is another name for glucose – they are the same molecule. D-glucose with water (H2O) becomes Dextrose monohydrate and is one of the two sugars that make up high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS ) [the other is fructose].
Fructose: Chemical Formula – C6H12O6
Fructose is often referred to as “fruit sugar” and is the sugar found in fruits and plants. It has the same chemical formula as glucose, but has a slightly different structure. The liver converts substantial portion of fructose into glucose for distribution in the bloodstream.
Lactose: Chemical Formula – C12H22O11
Lactose is a disaccharide composed of galactose and glucose. It has the same chemical formula as sucrose but has a slightly different structure. When found in mammal milks, it is commonly known as “milk sugar”.
Galactose: Chemical Formula – C6H12O6
Galactose is one of the sugars that make up the disaccharide lactose. It has the same chemical formula as fructose. It is sometimes itself referred to as “milk sugar”.
Maltose: Chemical Formula – C12H22O11
Maltose, or malt sugar, is a disaccharide formed from two units of glucose. It has the same chemical formula as lactose. It is found in sprouting seeds that have their sprouting stopped and then dried, known as malt. Malted barley is used to make beers and whiskeys, while other malted grains as used to make malted milk, malt vinegar and malt-flavored confections.
All of these sugars are metabolized and utilized by the body as sources of primary energy: mostly through the conversion to glucose. Dietary glucose needs no processing by the body and can be directly absorbed and enter the bloodstream as “blood sugar”, your body’s source of energy. Other sugars require some breakdown, or conversion, primarily into simple glucose.
[Note: This biological chemistry is far more complicated than this simple explanation but it suffices for this essay.]
“Dietary sugars are absorbed in the hepatic portal circulation [in the liver] as glucose, fructose, or galactose. The gut and liver are required to process fructose and galactose into glucose, lactate, and fatty acids.”
“Fatty Acids” sound bad to our ears; we have a bad image of both acids and fat. But, “Fatty acids (mainly in the form of triglycerides) are … the foremost storage form of fuel in most animals.” [ source ] Likewise, lactate, once considered “a waste by-product of anaerobic glycolysis [utilization of glucose in the muscles] with multiple deleterious effects”, is now better understood to be not only “a readily accessible fuel that is shuttled throughout the body but also a metabolic buffer ….it also acts as a multifunctional signaling molecule through receptors expressed in various cells and tissues.” [ source ]
Why this focus on sugars?
The War on Sugar is the nutrition science narrative which says “sugar is bad because we eat too much of it” — is then used to vilify food producers who use sugar in their products – positioned as unnecessary, too much, wrong kind – an endless attack on a substance that is not only innocent, but is a necessary part of the human metabolism and the main source of quick energy for most higher life forms on earth.
The War on Sugar has morphed into the War on Food (UPFs) (and here and here). Why do I think that the War of Food (specifically the hobby-horse of nutrition science vilifying so-called Ultra-processed Foods – UPFs) is a continuation, an extension, of the War on Sugar?
All of the anti-UPF studies have a commonality that looks like this:
All of the other categories are either slightly beneficial or “nothing done/no effect” as the hazard ratio uncertainty bars include one. I discuss this in detail in What Junk Nutrition Science Looks Like. In every research paper on so-called UPFs, the findings mirror the above chart of hazard ratios – the deleterious effects claimed for UPFs all derive from the over consumption of sugars of all types, usually represented by sugar-sweetened beverages and sweetened snack foods, which is associated with, but does not necessarily cause, over-weight and obesity and thus diabetes, and some effects from processed red meats ( see The Meat War). None of the other sub-categories of UPFs show any clinically significant negative effects at all.
The War on Food has been more than adequately covered here as linked above, but let’s drill down a little to see one major battlefield of those combined scientific wars : High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
There are important things to know about High-Fructose Corn Syrup.
I’ll start by quoting the current information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) “High Fructose Corn Syrup Questions and Answers”:
Corn Syrup is just glucose: “HFCS is derived from corn starch. Starch itself is a chain of glucose (a simple sugar) molecules joined together. When corn starch is broken down into individual glucose molecules, the end product is corn syrup, which is essentially 100% glucose. …. To make HFCS, enzymes are added to corn syrup in order to convert some of the glucose to another simple sugar called fructose, also called “fruit sugar” because it occurs naturally in fruits and berries.”
High-Fructose Corn Syrup is just fructose and glucose, approximately 50/50: “The most common forms of HFCS contain either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose….The rest of the HFCS is glucose and water. HFCS 42 is mainly used in processed foods, cereals, baked goods, and some beverages. HFCS 55 is used primarily in soft drinks. …. The proportion of fructose to glucose in both HFCS 42 and HFCS 55 is similar to that of sucrose.”
[Note: The ratio of fructose/glucose in HFCS is 42/53 or 55/42, both approximately 50/50. Other sugars make up the remaining 5 and 3 %s. Water is not included in the percentages. ]
How is HFCS different from our common table sugar, sucrose?: “Sucrose (sugar), the most well-known sweetener, is made by crystallizing sugar cane or beet juice. Sucrose is also made up of the same two simple sugars, glucose and fructose, joined together to form a single molecule containing one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule, an exact one-to-one ratio. …. In sucrose, a chemical bond joins the glucose and fructose. Once one eats, stomach acid and gut enzymes rapidly break down this chemical bond. … In HFCS, no chemical bond joins the glucose and fructose.”
Compared to table sugar, High-fructose Corn Syrup is either slightly lower in fructose than table sugar as HFCS 42 or slightly higher as HFCS 55. The FDA uses this language “The proportion of fructose to glucose in both HFCS 42 and HFCS 55 is similar to that of sucrose.”
As a note, for pure apple juice the ratio is generally about 66/34 fructose/glucose – much higher in fructose than either of the two standard HFCS formulations.
HFCS Bottom Line:
HFCS is just sugar water, with approximately the same ratio of fructose and glucose as table sugar (sucrose). “High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a fructose-glucose liquid sweetener alternative to sucrose (common table sugar).” [ source ] Some HFCS is lower in fructose and some HFCS is higher in fructose when compared with table sugar. HFCS is a liquid, as the sugars are mixed with water.
With the basics covered here in Part 1, Part 2 will focus on the question:
If HFCS is just sugar water, with a similar composition to table sugar, why is it vilified?
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Author’s Comment:
As with other Science Wars, this topic is just too complex and complicated to cover in under 1500 words, thus I have spilt it into two parts: this introduction which will be followed shortly by a dissection of the “science” that has been used to turn HFCS into a villain.
I have long held that human nutrition, as a subject, is one field of science that suffers the most from fads, based on poor science, which become self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing: unproven hypothesis becoming ‘facts’ by simple repetition.
Please limit your comments to the materials presented in this, Part 1, of this essay. HFCS is at the center of a swirling controversy with opinions varying wildly. In Part 2, I will cover the studies that have been produced about HFCS.
Thanks for reading.
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Finally a reasonable article in this blog! Kudos
Real men drink their coffee black.
… with a dash of Cayenne Pepper added. (Trust me, its good.)
You’d get lynched in Italy….
Heh. Maybe people in Italy don’t have to deal with a post nasal drip that entices / encourages a sore/strep throat infection that Cayenne Pepper has for me almost completely removed that experience from my life. for what used to be a YEARLY occurrence in my life.
I learned to use Cayenne Pepper in the mid 1990s and have not had near the degree of sore throats since! My sister, an RN, even tried that regimen, and now recommends it too.
“Adding a dash of cayenne pepper to your favorite food or cup of tea when you’re sick provides temporary relief from congestion, clearing up a stuffy nose and loosening mucus in your airways to quiet a cough.
But some research shows cayenne could also help ward off some illnesses thanks to its potential antimicrobial and antiviral properties; an in vitro study found that capsaicin limited the activity of Group A streptococci (the bacteria that causes strep throat) in cells, even in the case of some antibiotic-resistant strains.”
https://www.singlecare.com/blog/cayenne-pepper-benefits/#:~:text=Adding%20a%20dash%20of%20cayenne,of%20some%20antibiotic%2Dresistant%20strains.
Recommended by _Jim: ($12 and change at Kroger)
This is the size (16 oz.) I buy roughly every six months –
The Sri Lankan store down the street from me sells “chili” (cayenne pepper to you) in 2-kilogram bags. Those Sri Lankans like their food really hot.
It’s very important to hit a strep infection with antibiotics ASAP. Left alone it can become an impossible to eradicate chronic infection. Many people who got strep prior to the wide availability of penicillin got chronic infections. That can cause heart damage and a host of other effects.
My father was born in 1938 and got a step infection some time prior to WW2, long before penicillin was available to the public. It became chronic and it would periodically flare up, causing pain all over the right side of his body. Eventually it was figured out that either monthly injections of stabilized liquid penicillin or pills taken daily could keep it in check, but for reasons unknown not eradicate it.
So for the last several years of his life, dad took penicillin every day, once he got the VA to investigate the research on treating chronic strep with penicillin.
In ‘western’ countries it’s long been rare for people to develop a chronic strep infection because it’s routine to fight it with antibiotics. I got it for the first time in my life when I was 50. The doctor gave me a choice between a long course of pills or one shot in my backside. I took the shot. I also managed to get influenza for the first time that year, then simultaneously got thrush (another first for me) and COVID-19. That was a horrible year.
Fun Fact: Before it was figured out how to stabilize penicillin so it would stay in the body for a long time, the urine of patients getting the antibiotic was collected to purify out the penicillin for re-use. It would go through the blood straight to the kidneys and be excreted before most of it came into contact with infective bacteria. The first person treated successfully with penicillin took all of it that existed at the time because so much had to be pumped through him. The rapid excretion prompted a massive scaling up of production to provide the antibiotic for military use during WW2.
Suffered a post-nasal drip and a dry cough for at least a decade. I was allergic to nothing, but found out I was seriously lacking vitamin D. Worked out that if I take 2000-3000 IU of it daily I have no post nasal drip, no cough. Almost a year, now.
I’ll research the Cayenne Pepper. Might be a good alternative. Thanks for the heads-up.
I sometimes add a dash of cayenne to the coffee grounds before I make a brew. It peps it up!
Funny as it may seem, I never thought to add a few dashes to the grounds before brewing!
When I first started with Cayenne Pepper I was putting it into a cup of beef or chicken bullion, but there is way too much salt in a bullion cube for a lot of people. Great remedy/pain reliever for a sore threat already in progress though.
NB. The use of Cayenne Pepper in the manner being described here by me and a few others is meant to be used as a preventative measure, and not a cure of, or for, a sore throat. Whenever I slacked off the use of Cayenne Pepper I noticed the early signs of, indications of, potential sore throat conditions.
real men don’t have to prove that they are… but yet again real men are not deniers either.. so what would you know about it
Those who use “denier” deny debate, deny the right of free speech, deny free scientific debate, deny those with the courage to speak truth to cancel power, and deny the First Amendment.
And are incapable of say what is “denied”, or of proving it that it actually exists.
Calling someone a “denier”, in the climate sense, is like calling someone a “Goldilocks” denier.
What’s your tribe’s current definition of a denier?
“Deniers”
Is that all you got?
Pissweak.
I suspect a soy latte boy.
If you’re not shaking, you have not had enough coffee.
I know I do! (Puffing chest out.)
JK ==> Thank you.
(he replied graciously)
🙂
As I commented in an earlier thread, the issue isn’t HFCS or sugar itself, but the substitution of these for animal fats in our diets based on the earlier government junk science that vilified the latter. The resulting ‘gordification’ of the population simply follows from the facts that fats in foods satisfy hunger cravings, while sugars (and artificial sweeteners) basically ramp up our appetites, causing us to overeat.
It’s interesting that the ramp up in HFCS started in the late 70’s when the food pyramid was first introduced and picked up by the FDA in the early 90’s. The food pyramid pushed carbs and when the government started pushing the food pyramid the rate of Type II diabetes increased substantially, starting at about 2% of the population with Type II diabetes in 1992 and shot to 7% by 2010.
Yes, interesting. We should also keep in mind that food companies would have been hard-pressed to buck the Federal ‘guidelines’. Note the similarity with how government basically dictated responses to ‘climate change’ and COVID..
Number of people diagnosed and number of people who actually have it are 2 different things. In the 60’s, people going to the doctor unless you were bleeding or falling over were considered wimps. Now we go to the doctor for a nasal hair tickle.
Not THIS 90-yr. active ‘oldie but goodie’… haven’t been to a doctor since 2006, at the end of a ‘broken bones’ episode.. and prior to that, only 1 visit in the 1960’s for a ‘snip’.
That is part but not the whole story.
High intakes of all carbohydrates plays merry hell with the body’s biochemistry.
This leads to fat build up in the arteries, and insulin resistance.
Its called ‘metabolic syndrome’ and ‘pre diabetes’
Personally I have found that processed wheat flour (bread, cake, pastries, donuts, pastas etc) is way worse than sugars.
Although its extremely easy to miss how much sugar you are putting into yourself with e.g, a bottle of Coke
Anecdotally I have to agree. I love good bread and used to down a half a loaf of good French bread with kosher butter but once I got into my 60’s a big slab of cake, thick PBJ sandwich, large plate of pasta or the aforementioned bread would leave me feeling like cr*p for a couple of hours. I’ve shifted to much higher protein dietary fare and I feel a lot better.
Recently tried making buckwheat bread. Slathered with butter and jelly (apricot preserves) it’s become my latest thing. I see that Russians eat around 33 pounds of buckwheat per person annually – and they’re so healthy there! (Time elapsed between induction in army and deployment to the Ukrainian front: 3 wks).
Bread is mainly starch, a glucose polymer. Table sugar is sucrose, about 15cal/tsp, so a 100 cal slice of bread is equivalent to ~7 tsp of sugar….You’d probably unashemedly snarf down a sandwich but balk at the thought of eating 14 tsp of sugar at a time.
Pre-diabetic? Stupid concept. Was a woman who bore three kids in her 20s “pre-pregnant” as a 16y/o? Diabetes is a classic example of the interaction of environmental factors & genetics. Not just anybody can develope the combination of hi BS and diabetic complications.
It should be noted that in anaerobic glycolysis (a process common to all heterotrophs), the second step is to turn phosphorylated glucose into phosphorylated FRUCTOSE….and that virtually all ingested fructose is turned into its isomer glucose by intestinal cells upon initial absorption. Almost no fructose is passed along the portal circulation to the liver.
Unfortunately, JFK Jr et al. are using the same tactics.of utilizing pseudoscience to achieve personal political goals as the Warmists have been using all these years.
Down with Big brother!
My nephew has suffered from a rare brain disease for years, plus he’s had diabetes and obesity. His doctors had him on all sorts of very expensive meds and nothing seemed to work. He finally went to a specialist, who put him on a diet of all meat/protein. NO carbs, and of, course, NO sugar. His wife, too, started on the same diet. So far he has lost 50 pounds and was taken off the diabetes meds, and his wife has lost 100 pounds and is no longer in a wheelchair! They both feel MUCH better, have more energy and are looking forward to even more good results. I cautioned about the risk of all that protein wrecking their kidneys, but they are monitoring for that, too. Carbs AND sugar are killers! They are allowed one ‘free’ day a month, when they eat ‘some’ of the bad stuff.
Gordo was happier.
Frank ==> People are generally eating the same amount of sugar (see Part 2 when it is posted later in the week).
Looking forward to reading it.
Foods like break quickly break down into sugars. They are not labeled “sugar” but that’s what they amount to.
Max ==> Yes, simple carbohydrates, like bread, do fairly quickly break down into sugars — more complex carbs, break down a little slower, but all carbs are essentially long chains of sugars strung together.
The article states that they are ALL sugar, including the ‘sugar substitutes’. Ok, so when the bottle of soda says ZERO CALORIES, and then list’s all the ‘sugar substitutes’ .are they lying? If the sugar substitutes are sugar, then they MUST have the same calories, right? Plus, the added ‘benefit’ of causing you to crave more,, thereby getting fatter. I also attribute the high levels of obesity to the trend to push the ‘supersizing’ bit! Americans are getting fatter because they are EATING too much! Too much of the wrong things! Sugar, in ALL of it’s forms, IS additive!. .
One of my earliest memories was being in hospital in 1949, so I would have been 5. This was in the UK, A nurse brought me breakfast which comprised bacon and a fried egg (just imagine, in a hospital!). Neither of which I’d ever eaten before, so I balked at it and only ate the toast. Nurse came back and said “look at all that lovely fat; it’s good for you”. She of course had lived through World War 2 when fats were very scarce, and knew the value of them.
The diabetes industry is still pushing low-fat to no-fat diets with a little protein (boiled skinless chicken, steamed fish etc.) And what else is there to eat? Carbs!
I beat type 2 diabetes with a high fat, high protein diet so I know from simple observation that it works. I still eat a limited amount of toast and marmalade (at my age, there aren’t many sinful pleasures left)
But, but, but it’s so nice to have a scapegoat when we look down at the scale and cringe. Not my fault, it’s the food manufacturers’ fault! (Now in the case of salt, I do think the manufacturers have it in for us.)
It’s July and I live in Florida… I put extra salt on everything on top of the salts in the Gatorade!
The scapegoat is starch and sugar. Not fat.
Fat doesnt make you fat. Bread does. Pasta Does. Donuts do,. Cokes do.
Not very likely that homemade sourdough bread does. imo
It’s the starch that does it, Sturm.
Steve ==> Yes, very true. HFCS does not cause overweight, obesity, or diabetes. Eating too much and eating too much sugar altogether probably contributes to those two conditions.
A few years ago the CDC (before they became a political puppet pushing masks useless against viruses, and untested drugs) concluded a long term study on salt, with a large number of participants. They found that except for people who actually had a physical problem with maintaining a proper blood sodium level, there was no need to reduce salt consumed with food. The body naturally maintains the correct level of blood sodium, excreting any extra, and human biochemistry can handle quite a bit of extra salt, the kidneys can take it. (AFAIK, the study didn’t examine *massively excessive* salt intake.) Another correlation the study found was people who consumed *too little* salt had a higher incidence of heart disease.
That’s a “Well, duh!” moment. Our nerves and muscles run on sodium. Without enough sodium the nerves don’t transmit signals well and muscles have problems contracting and can cramp. Anyone who works in high temperatures or exercises and sweats a lot knows that. That’s why Gatorade and other sports drinks have sodium and other electrolytes for nerve and muscle function.
But the whole low sodium food industry was quick to “debunk” the CDC study, going back to the poorly done, small scale study from the early 1970’s they’ve long used to “prove” a high salt diet is the Worst Thing Ever.
Gregg ==> Yes, precisely correct. That is The Salt Wars — which see here at WUWT.
Salt raises the blood pressure. High blood pressure causes heart problems. It’s a long, slow process. You don’t realize how bad it is until it’s too late.
I remember looking into this a while back, when I removed salt from my diet and it did absolutely nothing to change my BP. I got active again and went back to my previous diet, and the BP went back to normal. What I discovered is that the salt/BP connection apparently impacts about 1 in 4 people. If you’re not one of them, reducing salt won’t help.
But note: getting active fixed the problem. Wow, what a surprise.
I choose pop-tarts and an occasional doughnut in the morning expressly for the sugar/energy content.
Pls don’t h8t me … /s
So did I before I had heart attacks from clogged arteries. Now I don’t touch either.
Used to be under strenuous bike riding I felt I had a literal ‘restrictor’ plate (like NASCAR used to mandate just beneath carburetors) somewhere in my system, but after continuing to exercise since that time (several decades, maybe even 3 decades back now) I’ve not had that experience again.
Was I advised by an MD in any way on this? No … should I have – don’t know; but things for me at least worked themselves out for the better with no ‘medical’ intervention as I have continued to exercise on a more or less regular schedule through the years, including during the hot summer weather here In Texas … I go out in the mornings early and get the bike riding in!
_Jim ==> Exercise more is good for you – no doubt about that.
70 and __no__ meds. How many can say that?
78 and no meds. Hang in there.
I’d like to know how NASCAR engines make 600 horsepower sucking air through four 1″ diameter holes. At Talladega, Daytona, and other superspeedway tracks the holes are 7/8″ and make “only” 500 HP or less. Since 2019 they use tapered spacers instead of restrictor plates. The airflow choking down from the throttle body is less turbulent and throttle response is better VS the sharp transition to the old, thin restrictor plates.
It’s called VE.
Volumetric Efficiency? I’m hazarding a SWAG (scientific wild-addled guess) on that …
When I was younger, frosted pop-tarts were my favorite…brown sugar-cinnamon.
The crows and I (big Texas crows) have been enjoying pop-tarts this summer. I’ve been sharing half a pack (sounds like cigs right?) with them in the morning on my bike ride. They now gather on a fence adjacent to one of the practice fields over at the Jr High complex, waiting for me to show up just before dawn … I also put out a little plastic cup with water, and also some unshelled peanuts and cut up flour fajitas … they have a blast with that assortment!
I would add that carbohydrates like potatoes, pasta, bread, rice etc get broken down into simple sugars like glucose in your gut. Fruits have significant fructose content same happens to them in your gut. So these are the most significant sources of sugar in your diet
That process begins in your mouth with chewing, as enzymes in saliva convert starch to sugar. It is likely that the more complex carbohydrates you list are the real culprits in the obesity chain.
Yes lipase?
Amylase. Lipase breaks down fats and is produced in the pancreas.
If you chew a piece of bread for an extended period of time it will start tasting sweet due to the action of amylase.
That is a crude sketch only,. Its not juts a matter of how much of these you have in your diet its also a function of how quickly they end up as lipids in the blood stream
Fruit and veg have relatively low sugar content and its bound up in cell walls. But wheat flour has the cell walls smashed to pieces. It hits the bloodstream massively quickly and destroys the insulin capability leading to blood sugar and cholesterol spikes and arterial plaque.
Unless you have a glucose level monitoring kit, you wont be able to track this, but if yiu get sleepy after a meal of starch, that’s a very very bad sign.
Mike ==> All the carbohydrates are starches and sugars…starches are primarily just long chains of sugar molecules strung end to end. The body breaks those chains down into glucose.
That’s what i was referring to
Yes. Glycemic index plus glycemic load matter.
Human diet is very complex and many gurus claim to know the answers but what goes on inside a human cell is still not fully known. Some people are carnivore diet only – not for me but there are examples. I do not have sugar or salt avqailable in my kitchen. What is the ideal diet ?….ideal food?
The worst thing is cereals, and the worst cereal is one that has been milled.
We never evolved to process large amounts of carbohydrates.
Meat fish fat and fruit – that is where we started. Even vegetables are really only a poor substitute for fruit.
I long time ago I concluded a bit of everything, combined with enough exercise to sweat off and burn off the excess is the best solution.
That is still my sense. It would help if I followed that better. I have decided it’s time to take action on my A1C level that’s been around 6.0 for a few years. Boy, oh boy, oh boy – those continuous glucose “biosensors” are incredible nags. Sigh, another area where I have a lot to learn!
Ah well, I made it 3/4ths of a century without having to worry much about what I eat.
Please could you include units when referring to HbA1c. I have a glucose bio sensor, but I’ve turned off the alarms on the app as it kept alarming during the night.
Hmm. To the best of my knowledge, A1C is always “percent” as in “the portion of hemoglobin proteins that are glycated, or holding glucose.” It’s a measurement of long term (weeks) exposure to glucose.
Your sensor is likely trying to report blood glucose levels, but is really looking at glucose in interstitial fluid, which has about a 30 minute delay from blood levels. (Stelho/Dexcom has a rather weird statement of accuracy.)
The level your sensor is reporting should be in mg/dl (milligrams of glucose per deicliter of blood) or mmol/l (millimoles per liter of blood.) The former is used in the US, the latter everywhere else.
The Cleveland Clinic is my go to resource for a lot of medical stuff – they write for their patients, including future ones. That means they don’t have to spread advertising links across several pages like WebMD has to.
See https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/9731-a1c for a very good description of A1C and a handy table linking it to the “estimated average glucose (eAG)” in the units your sensor is reporting. [And why did this get promoted to a bigger font?]
The app also reports HbA1c in mmol/mol along with %.
You are probably right.
However, about 10% of people have digestive issues and benefit from a low fodmap diet. As far as sugars are concerned this means avoiding HFCS, honey, many fruits, and most artificial sweeteners. These people do better with only table sugar and maple syrup.
Cynthia ==> Nearly everyone has odd quirks about diet and nutrition. Some people are sensitive to dietary salt, some more sensitive to sugar — table sugar is the same as HFCS — about 50% each glucose and fructose.
I suppose some people might have issues with fructose — if so, they have to avoid table sugar too.
Obesity I believe is caused by the decline in food prices relative to income. This was caused by the green revolution in farming. We weren’t designed to forage in our refrigerator or pantry
Actually its driven by cheap highly processed foods such as those poor people eat, Bread, cookies, cakes, donuts, pasta, And sugary drinks.
I don’t buy into the phrase “processed food” as having any meaning. Cooking and food prep is all processing. In the case of meat cooking aka processing makes it more nutrition by breaking down proteins. Food after all is just carbohydrate, protein or fat whether its processed or not. What happens our guts is clearly a case of ultra processing. There carbohydrate gets broken down into simple sugars. Proteins into amino acids.
HFCS comes from corn (obviously)….The US grows over 90 million ac of corn annually, but <2 million ac of sugar cane & beets. Law of Supply & Demand applies here…. HGCS is cheap compared to sucrose…..In 1970 a bu of corn was ~$3…@3% annual inflation (too low?) since then, that bu should be worth $12 today, but corn is less than $4. HFCS is really cheap to use compared to 50 y/a.
In the UK I suspect our diet is not really comparable, but what is comparable is the urge of the elites to tell people what they should and should not consume, or how much they are allowed.
I, personally, have never been overweight – thanks to my metabolism and [bad] habits. We are all different, after all; and genetics is Lady Luck in person. Sugar is sugar and there are quite a few sugars to choose from. What we in the UK used to do in the 60s and 70s was teach kids how to cook etc. Euphemistically called Domestic Science. Now many of them have no clue what vegetables are…
“New research shows fewer than a third of children can identify a courgette or a beetroot
”https://barleycommunications.co.uk/news/new-research-shows-fewer-than-a-third-of-children-can-identify-a-courgette-or-a-beetroot/
But they understand Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats etc and how to place an order through their phone.
What we in the UK used to do in the 60s and 70s was teach kids how to cook etc.
My daughter, a more recent grad, took one of those classes. Channeling one of her lessons she explained to me how one should not fish around in murky soapy water because there might be a sharp knife in there somewhere… (cue theme from “Jaws”). Don’t know If cooking was part of the curriculum.
There was a paper published in the last couple of years based on genetics. It found that some people retained a stone age gene which triggered eating and fat deposition in preparation for winter months and food shortages.
The trigger for this gene was found to be Fructose and the assumption made was that as fruits ripen in the late summer and early autumn the fructose content ‘told’ the body to eat and prepare for winter by laying down fat. They also surmised that it was year round exposure to fructose that kept the body laying down fat all year round leqading to obesity and diabetes.
I’ve just looked up a report on this – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10363705/
A google search brings up multiple references and citations.
Often subjects are more complex than they first appear.
Thanx
I’d love to read that paper.
OK. Nitpicking is important here. NONE of these sugars have the same *chemical* formula. In general ALL monosaccharides have the same *empirical* formula – similar for disaccharides – but no two sugars with different chemical (as opposed to common) names have the same *chemical* formula. It’s a very important distinction.
For instance – I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. As a result I suffer from low liothyronine (T3) which lowers my metabolism. I have supplements (both T3 and thyroxine – T4) to help with this. But my supplements are LEVOthyroxine and L-liothyronine. One common finding in Hashimoto’s patients is that they have relatively high concentrations of R-liothyronine (sometimes called rT3 or reverse-T3). There is a lot of controversy I don’t want to weigh in on here about the effects of rT3. At best it has no effect at all on your system. It has the IDENTICAL *chemical* formula as normal T3, but the chirality is wrong, so your body can’t use it. It’s just a useless molecule floating around in your blood. At worst, some argue it has a negative impact on your metabolism. Like I said, I don’t want to weigh in on that controversy here. But the point is, there are *empirical* formulas, like all monosaccharides have the same *empirical* formula. There are also *chemical* formulas – like normal T3 and rT3 having the same *chemical* formula – which by definition also means they have the same *empirical* formula. But their chirality is different. This COMPLTELY changes their biological function.
For *many* but *not* all molecules of biological importance, chirality is HUGELY important to whether or not it works at all, or works correctly. For just about ALL molecules of biological importance CHEMICAL formula is hugely important to how it works.
Monosaccharides ALL work differently in the body. Disaccharides are generally broken down into monosaccharides, so how they impact your body depends on the two monosaccharide units that make up the disaccharide. And, yes, the body converts some monosaccharides to other monosaccharides for various reasons based on various conditions. But just saying the body can convert them back and forth doesn’t mean just go crazy, the body will work it all out. And I’m not suggesting that is what you are saying, but it can be read that way unless great care is taken to make clear that’s not what you mean.
It’s important to point out here, also, right, that changing the handedness of sugars (and therefore NOT changing either the *empirical* or *chemical* formula) can often render the sugar unusable to the body and therefore have ZERO caloric content. So this nitpicking REALLY matters.
As an example – yes – pure apple juice has a way higher fructose/glucose ratio than does sucrose after sucrose is broken down. But the number of apples one would have to eat to get as much total fructose+glucose as many HFCS containing food portions is so large no one ever does it. But that nuanced point really isn’t made here. I suspect that’s what you’re leading up to in your second part, but that’s the real issue. So, now, if historically most people got sugar from fruits (in small amounts because there isn’t a huge amount of sugar in reasonable portions of fruit) and then for the first half of the 20th century from added sucrose, then the ratios of CONSUMED fructose/glucose were always pretty close to 50/50 during that period. Radically shifting those CONSUMED ratios and how the body reacts to those shifts, to the very best of my knowledge, isn’t an issue that has been the focus of much study. If so, I hope to see that in your second part. But just saying, “sugar is sugar is sugar.” isn’t a statement that has solid science behind.
Note, your comments are automatically moderated until at least one is approved.
Thanks! I guess there’s a timeout. I have definitely posted comments here before – but it’s been a while!
An example of different sugars being processed differently is lactose, which requires lactase to be converted into something that the human body can digest. The gut bacteria can have a field day with undigested lactose, hence the problems that lactose intolerant folks (people lacking the ability to produce lactase) have with dairy products.
“ I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis”
I would give it back.
Merrick ==> I was careful to point out that that actual human metabolism of sugars was more complex than presented, but for the vast majority of people, it makes little to no difference.
Kip “the vast majority of people” all have different genetics and you you can’t dissociate metabolism (simple use of the carbon) from the specific effects that individual sugars have on control elements of human gene expression.. You can’t even dissociate them in, for example, species of yeast. Completely different. If you really want to get into this, you’re going to need a 500+ part Series.
No, Kip is right.
Disaccharidases in digestive juices and gut endothelial cells turn lactose, maltose, sucrose, etc into their constituent hexoses and then intracellular isomerases turn them into glucose, which is the major form (99%+) of hexose in the portal circulation.
When those disaccharidases ( like lactase) has insufficient activity, or even when the carb load in the diet just overwhelms the transport receptors in the intestinal cells, the the excess, unabsorbed carbs can cause an osmotic diarrhea. The carbs unabsorbed for whatever reason proceed down the GI tract to the colon, loaded with flora. That serves as an increased food load for the bugs. They metabolize it into H2, CH4 & some CO2, manifesting itself as bloating, cramps and increased flatus.
Well yeah, other than the kinetics ……..
Then there was the effects of “low fat”
diets operating on the hypothesis of Ancel
Keys that saturated fat was the cause of
heart disease. That led to high carb and therefore high sugar diets.
The minor little issues were that Keys did
not distinguish between saturated and trans fats, and he ignored satiety when making up
diets.
‘The minor little issues were that Keys did not distinguish between saturated and trans fats, and he ignored when making up diets.’
Ancel Keys was the Michael Mann of dietary ‘science’, i.e., using suspect data and suppressing dissent. Much of the alarmism over dietary fat intake was spurred by President Eisenhower’s heart condition, which is ironic given that Ike had earlier expressed grave concern over the impacts of government-funded science.
Ancel Keys was the Michael Mann of dietary ‘science’
Also (remembering from what I read), the “seven countries” study originally included more than seven countries, but he dropped those that didn’t match his hypothesis.
re: “Ancel Keys was the Michael Mann of dietary ‘science’”
I would have put it: Ancel Keys was the Anthony Fauci of dietary ‘science’
but either way …
There’s plenty of room in the Pantheon of junk science…
Its been pretty much proved that carbs, not fat, are what causes high blood fat levels. But all carbs are not equal. Rice or potatoes where the starch is inside cell walls is way better than bread or pasta where is been milled out and is free to hit the bloodstream in a rush.
.,
What were these before they self-identified as fats?
Wow. Just posted a moderately long comment – then it disappeared. I hope it is just being looked at by moderators and will reappear!
Merrick ==> I think the Moderator handled that issue for you.
Thank You Mr. Hansen. I’ve been typing out similar, far briefer versions of this for freakin’ years. Very nicely done!
Niel ==> Thank ylu.
OK – I’ll do a very short version in case the other one doesn’t pop out of moderation.
No, monosaccharides don’t all have the same *chemical* formula. They have the same *empirical* formula. Don’t think that matters? Biological molecules often have chirality. There are SUGARS that have the WRONG chirality, but taste basically the same as their counterparts with the “right” chirality. Your body metabolizes and gets calories out of one – your body can’t do ANYTHING with the other, so gets no calories and just flushes it out through your kidneys. Whether or not that’s a problem for your kidneys (and liver) is a separate discussion. So, no, two DIFFERENT chemicals with the same *chemical* formula can act very differently in your body, and DIFFERENT chemicals with DIFFERENT *chemical* formulas but the same *EMPIRICAL* formula do NOT act the same in your body. That’s not *literally* what you are saying in your part 1 – but MANY here are clearly reading it that way. My earlier comment that disappeared went into more detail. I am just hoping you’re more careful in your part two to address this reality adequately.
Why are all of my comments being deleted?
Coke providing a ‘healthy’ cane sugar option to HFCS is marketing, not science.
The real health answer is don’t drink Coke, period. Even Coke Zero (sweetened with aspartame) —aspartame has associated carcinogenic and neurological risks.
I read recently that Mexican Coca-Cola, sweetened with sucrose, over time breaks down to fructose/glucose in Coke’s acidic environment.
Somewhere along the way I learned about “invert sugar” used in pastries. It’s made with sucrose, water, and acid, and heat. The result is the sucrose breaks down to, yes, fructose and glucose.
https://www.hanielas.com/invert-sugar-syrup/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY66qpMFOYo
President Trump partly bullied Coca-Cola into making (some) Coke with it (boo) and partly created a political environment where consumers didn’t have to suffer so much from the corn subsidy industry (yay).
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I may have seen that video but only skipped through it before.
At the risk of topic drift, Trader Joe’s used to have some totally awesome dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Then they suddenly weren’t so awesome. The ingredients changed around so much that I couldn’t figure out what happened to the cocoa butter and chocolate liquor. However, one thing stood out – the sodium per serving dropped from 75 mg to 30 mg.
The video mentions that Mexican Coke has more salt than US Coke!
Moderators – please send me an email if necessary – please tell me why all of my comments are being deleted. I am logged in – what else is required for me to post a comment?
Moderators – sorry for the slew of comments – but *most* of them are now showing again tagged as, “Awaiting for approval.” For quite a while, one after another, they would all appear that way, including the first relatively long one which STILL is not appearing, but then all disappeared one after the other. I am am glad most of them are at least showing again as awaiting moderation – sorry again to you and all for all of them – but I really hope you find the first one that more carefully explained why all mosaccharides having the same *empirical* (not *chemical*) formula REALLY matter and the statement “sugar is sugar is sugar” is not good science.
As with all these Science Wars, the goal is control.
Taxes.
Bans.
Where have we heard this before?
The parallel appears to others too. Taxes, bans and controls are what pi22 people off, and are possibly a goal, but are not what I think keep advocates going.
If you went to a good school, spent 4-10 years of life and however much money studying nutrition without digging into much chemistry and someone is willing to pay a salary to buy food and mortgage for saying “I am a nutritionist and say HFCS is bad”, then…
Judgmental skinnies and defensive fatties will argue on message boards – the weapons they fight with pay the bills for a nutritionist.
Kip, Excellent article. The chemistry looks to be correct. One very minor point. Not all organisms run on glucose. There are a few microorganisms that operate aerobically in various ways.
Two other minor (I think) points. First, as you are well aware “they” quietly moved the goalposts a few decades ago by redefining overweight and obese. I don’t see that reflected in Bray’s chart and I can’t think why it would not show up there. Makes me wonder about the rest of his data, Second, One reason other than cost for using HFCS in food instead of sugar is that Fructose is significantly sweeter than Sucrose.
All that said, I have long had some doubts about the assumption that Fructose is OK whether in corn syrup or combined with Glucose to make table sugar (Sucrose). What I’m dubious about is that the body really only burns Glucose which powers muscles and other tissues. Fructose (And Galactose from dairy) have to be converted to Glucose to power the body. Unfortunately, those conversions are not especially efficient and Fructose->Glucose especially produces triglycerides (fats) as well as Glucose. There’s nothing wrong with fats. They’re a compact long term way to store energy for future use. Some amount of tryglycerides in the bloodstream is normal and probably necessary, But I wonder if a lot of triglycerides in the bloodstream may be too much of a good thing.
Bottom line. It may be that neither table sugar nor HCFS is all that good for one when consumed in excess. It may be we’re better off with starches which (as I understand it) produce Glucose without much in the way of byproducts when digested.
don k ==> Well, this from you: “It may be that neither table sugar nor HCFS is all that good for one when consumed in excess.” is certainly true, as will all dietary components — one can have TOO MUCH and WAY TOO MUCH.
Even Ice Cream has a limit! (sadly….)
Kip. “Even ice cream has a limit.”
Our dogs would disagree with you on that point. They expect ice cream and yogurt to be shared with them. Overall they seem to think they are smarter than people. They may be right.
In today’s age there in no such thing as Dietary Science, only Dietary Advocacy. I have yet to see any study replicated, and it is time we stopped listening to this garbage from advocates. There is too much Cronyism involved in the entire Dietary world, it is impossible to know what is correct. Being a diabetic and having a medical/technical background, your assessment of the chemical composition, and physiology is spot on. Too bad people are looking for a single simple to point at.
Same analysis applies to so many fields. If you want to design computers and skyscrapers you need science. The evidence is easy to find and see. Health and beauty? people have been working on these things for how long? They’ve given us Chemotherapy, Prozak, Viagra, Botox, Ozempic,…
rpercifield ==> “there in no such thing as Dietary Science, only Dietary Advocacy.” Quite right, Slim.
Want to live past 100? It’s olive oil….and sardines…no, it’s goat and sheep yogurt…no, it’s this and that….but don’t eat blueberries and pineapple within 2 hours of each other – why? I don’t know. Maybe the gorilla diet is best?
“want to live past 100?”
Run Logan run…🤪 supersarc
+100
antigriff ==> I don’t think I’d like to eat a gorilla….
I don’t drink soda pop often, but when I do, it’s Mexican Coke!
Randle ==> I treat myself to one “Mexican Coke” per year or so….the taste of my youth — real Coca-Cola!
Not mentioned is the Randle cycle. When excess sugars are consumed with significant amounts of fats, the fats are stored first and insulin levels have to be higher for longer to induce the storage and lower blood glucose. The combination of fats and sugars is a key part of the problem.
The consumption of sugars when nutrition is deficient does not create obesity or disease. Fat alone does not cause obesity either. The trouble is that most people will not starve themselves.
Eating fats and sugars during excess nutrition leads to diabetes 2 and related disease.
The corn syrup is part of the problem, but only a part.
Diabetes 2 is just nature’s way of telling you to quit eating so much of that crap.