High Fructose Corn Syrup differs from natural cane and beet sugar in that the former is a syrup and the later a crystalline solid which limits how much can be used in various foods and drinks. Shortly before the 1970s, Japanese researchers were able to convert corn sugar by using an enzyme that breaks it up into fructose and glucose. However, the expense of the process made it uncompetitive from natural sugar produced in the USA and the Caribbean.
The food corporations profits suffered greatly because they could not competitively sell prepared foods at a cheaper price than the real foods. Reagan solved the problem by subsidizing corn where it could be sold at close to nothing and still sold for profit in Mexico due to the high subsidy. Reagan also put a high tariff on imported corn. This made it possible to make very cheap high fructose corn syrup and had the additional benefit of allowing corporate food companies to use much more of HFCS in prepared foods making it more palatable.
Without this excess sugar in drinks and prepared foods, they will not be palatable or even edible. In an NY Times article on the jump page, one person described the sugarless prepared food as spit out food.
Almost all prepared foods have high levels of corn and or soybeans stripped of fiber and flavor which required the use of artificial flavors and sugar to make frozen foods cook quickly in a microwave oven in minutes. Sugar is a pleasure food so it makes us feel good so we eat more.
One further advantage well known by restaurants and fast food places is that high fructose corn syrup does not suppress our appetite as does cane or beet sugar so we eat more regular food. Mice given equal calories of cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup HFCS at Princeton showed that HFCS flavored rat chow became obese while the normal rats ate less and did not become fat.
Obesity doubled from 1985 to 2,000 in America.
90 minute video at http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/02/highfructose-corn-syrup-alters-human-metabolism.aspx
Robert H. Lustig, M.D., University of California at San Francisco, Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism, Dr. Lustig describes the complicated metabolism of Fructose in the liver. Unlike natural cane and beet sugars, it results in triglyceride fat and low density lipoproteins in high amounts which are highly correlated with obesity and dementia. Some doctors now prefer examining the ratio of high density lipoproteins (HDL) to Triglycerides in determining the danger of heart disease.
I recommend watching the 90 minute video in 15 minute segments because he provides information most of you may not be familiar with. I had to rewind and go through it more than once even though I am fairly well versed in biochemistry. You do not have to understand everything, but try to get the general conclusions from his ground breaking research.
Remember when you google, there is contrary opinions from corporations such as http://www.sweetsurprise.com/ sponsored by the Food Corporations. Berman is paid to counteract scientific evidence on many topics with propaganda. What is propaganda? Watch FOX cable news or not. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com Rachel had Berman as a guest.
Jim Kawakami, Jan 4, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
http://www.mercola.com/ Scientists have proved for the first time that fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis. Fructose, a sweetener usually derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease. Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems. … http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/02/highfructose-corn-syrup-alters-human-metabolism.aspx
Diabetes in 2010 Treatments Improving but Prevention Critical Anne L. Peters, MD, www.Medscape.com Dec 29, 2010,
… The next bit of news is that the A1c level, long used for treating diabetes, is finally officially part of the diagnostic criteria for diabetes. In January in the standards of care from the American Diabetes Association, the A1c took its place alongside fasting blood glucose level and oral glucose tolerance tests for the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
This has engendered a fair amount of controversy, like all change does, but I personally like using the hemoglobin A1c for diagnosing diabetes. To a large extent, I've been doing it for many years. It's a very nice way to tell if somebody has sustained hyperglycemia. It's a measure that tells us what the blood glucose levels have been over the preceding 3 months, and it really helps us clinically determine where a patient fits on the spectrum and what kind of treatment they need. So, I'm very glad we can use the hemoglobin A1c level officially for diagnosing diabetes, and I believe it will be here to stay. …
There were a number of reports and reviews about diabetes and cancer in 2010. I think the key take-home message here is that patients with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk for cancer and that we need to make sure we do cancer screenings and take extra good care of those patients because they may be at greater risk.
In terms of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the news was both good and bad in 2010. The good news was that the drug liraglutide (Victoza®) was approved. This is a GLP-1 agonist, it's a once-daily drug, and I find it extremely helpful in treating my patients with type 2 diabetes.
The first GLP-1 agonist that came out was exenatide (Byetta®) about 5 years ago, and liraglutide was the second agent in this class. We had hoped that there would be a once-a-week Byetta approved, also a GLP-1 agonist, but this drug was slowed down in terms of its approval by the FDA.
There were a number of other devices and techniques that were also slowed down in terms of their approval. For the most part this was not because of new data indicating something was wrong with the new drugs or devices, but rather that the FDA needed more data. The FDA has had a turnover in recent years, so that the people looking at these agents are asking for more data now before they will approve drugs and devices.
A drug that has tangled a great deal with the FDA (Avandia®) -- there are new warnings on Avandia in terms of its use, and it's very restricted now. It's not going to be a first-line drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Pioglitazone (Actos®), which is also a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma agonist, is still on the market and the recommendations for its use haven't changed much.
My final note for 2010 is that a very old drug, metformin, which has been used worldwide since 1957, has only been shown to be better and better, which is a pretty good thing for a drug. We know the side effects associated with metformin, but recent data suggest that not only does this drug lower blood glucose levels, it also helps reduce rates of cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes and may also reduce mortality.
Metformin holds up over the long haul and in all the treatment algorithms is really the first step in our pharmacologic treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes. So that's 2010. This has been Dr. Anne Peters for Medscape. Thank you. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/734788?src=mp&spon=17
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