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The Effect of High-Fructose Corn Syrup on Metabolism

Jan 16, 2011 | By Angela Ogunjimi
The Effect of High-Fructose Corn Syrup on Metabolism
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High-fructose corn syrup is a common food and beverage sweetener. It's also a preservative. It's also the subject of controversy among food manufacturers and public health officials, and a source of confusion for consumers who are trying to get healthy and lose weight. The Corn Refiners Association wants HFCS to be relabeled "corn sugar." Recent research has shown that the growing consumption of HFCS can wreak havoc on your metabolism and cause weight gain, insulin resistance and high blood pressure.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Consumption

Between 1970 and 1990, HFCS consumption increased by more than 1,000 percent, say Louisiana State University researchers in the April 2004 issue of the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." That far outpaces the growth in intake of any other food in the United States. Food makers have a preference for HFCS because of its many uses, including sweetening, preserving and browning. It's also cheaper and more versatile than other sugars. The LSU researchers say more than 40 percent of caloric sweeteners added to food and drinks comes from HFCS. Almost all sodas in the United States are sweetened with HFCS. Scientists note the strange coincidence that while Americans were increasingly consuming more HFCS, the rate of overweight and obesity was also increasing. They've been studying the link between the two patterns and have identified numerous ways that HFCS could affect your weight and general health.

Fructose Metabolism

Your brain doesn't view HFCS the same way it does other kinds of sugar. This is because of the way HFCS is metabolized in your liver. When you have prolonged ingestion of HFCS, you may be promoting your liver to dump more lipids, like cholesterol and triglycerides, into your bloodstream, putting you at an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of health problems associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes and heart disease. In addition, foods with lots of fructose -- HFCS is a mixture of usually 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose -- may skip your body's energy-balancing mechanisms. An important one is activating leptin, the so-called "satisfaction hormone" that tells your brain when you've had enough to eat and when your body needs to burn more calories. As a consequence, the claims that HFCS makes you overeat and gain weight have merit.

Fat Belly and Fatty Liver

HFCS promotes gaining fat throughout your body. In labs, scientists inject HFCS into mice for the purpose of causing obesity, so that they can determine the inner workings of obesity and metabolism in the body and, hopefully, to create solutions. The fat that tends to develop from too much HFCS is belly fat and fatty liver. Belly fat is called visceral fat, and it's dangerous because it grows deep within your abdomen and begins to shroud your organs. When fat cells begin developing in your liver, you are in line for a host of serious health problems, including fatty liver disease and other metabolic problems.

Effects on Blood Sugar

University of Michigan researchers, publishing in the March 2009 issue of "Cell Metabolism," say that a diet high in HFCS can lead to problems with regulating your blood sugar through the hormone insulin. This is again due to how the sweetener interacts with your liver. Because it promotes your liver to produce more fat, eating too much HFCS can lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The researchers found that a group of genes that is responsible for how your liver metabolizes fat also interacts with your diet. They said these genes react to HFCS in a similar fashion to how it would respond if you ate a diet high in saturated fat. They followed the changes in metabolism when mice ate HFCS. They found that doing so led to insulin resistance and other metabolic disorders.

Limit All Sugars

Evidence for the negative metabolic effects of HFCS is still being gathered. However, the USDA's 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee says Americans eat far too much added sugar of all kinds. The typical American diet has 35 percent extra unnecessary calories, in large part due to sugary foods and soft drinks that could be eliminated. Women should eat no more than 100 calories per day from added sugar of any kind; men, 150. That's roughly 6 to 9 tsp.

References

Article reviewed by Helen Covington Last updated on: Jan 16, 2011

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