Sweet poison - a must read!

[Luffers]

I've no idea who the author is its just an e-mail I received.

[Indiscreet]

Yeah it's very "OMFG, ASPARATAME!" but to be fair, I have had aspartame poisoning and I won't touch the stuff ever again. Most sugar free gum contains it, as does Diet Coke and other fizzy pop.

[Rickeezee]

Getting paranoid now!

I gave up sugar ages ago and have been using Fructose fruit sugar instead and also have the occasional Diet Pepsi.

From reading the previous posts fructose is mentioned as being bad as well.

Whats the low down on Fructose being bad for you please?

[NU_nutrition_TS]

Here is a good summary of the main points:

Is Fructose Dangerous?

[ATZ]

Heres a decent counter argument or shall we say clarification on Fructose and HFCS

Straight talk about high-fructose corn syrup: what it is and what it ain't. | BodyRecomposition - The Home of Lyle McDonald

[NU_nutrition_TS]

I have a great many reservations about Lyle MacDonald and his grasp of science (as he appears to admit in one of his responses to readers' comments!).

If you Google HFCS 'myths' (i.e., look for web sites that support the harmlessness of HFCS) then you will find an alarming number of them quote this same 2008 'study' by J. S. White. But who is J. S. White?

John S. White PhD is the owner and president of White Technical Research in Argenta, Illinois, USA, a company that Dun & Bradstreet lists as a manufacturer of industrial organic chemicals. He has been researching HFCS and other sugars and sweeteners (like honey) for 25 years. But is that as an independent, unbiased researcher or as someone with a vested interest in the corn/corn syrup/chemical sweetener industry?

More detail on John S White:
John S. White, Ph.D., is president and founder of WHITE Technical Research, an international consulting firm located in Argenta, Ill., serving the food and beverage industry since 1994. White worked in food industry research and management for 13 years, developing a specialization in nutritive sweeteners. He is one of the foremost experts in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the result of 26 years of research on the production, functionality, applications and metabolism of this sweetener. He enjoys present and past affiliations with...the Corn Refiners Association (Washington)!

He features in a 'webinar' entitled "Dispelling the Myths About High Fructose Corn Syrup" alongside Audrae Erickson, President, Corn Refiners Association (CRA)!

I think that speaks volumes!

[Ripped Barbarian]

I personally don't think HFCS is much worse than sucrose (they are both bad!)

But:

Quote

Cane sugar and beet sugar are both relatively pure sucrose. While the glucose and fructose which are the two components of HFCS are monosaccharides, sucrose is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose linked together with a relatively weak glycosidic bond. A molecule of sucrose (with a chemical formula of C12H22O11) can be broken down into a molecule of glucose (C6H12O6) plus a molecule of fructose (also C6H12O6 — an isomer of glucose) in a weakly acidic environment. Sucrose is broken down during digestion into fructose and glucose through hydrolysis by the enzyme sucrase, by which the body regulates the rate of sucrose breakdown. Without this regulation mechanism, the body has less control over the rate of sugar absorption into the bloodstream.

HFCS obv not requiring this enzymatic breakdown.

Quote

In his recent book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, journalist Michael Pollan claims that the way that the body processes HFCS is different from the way it processes the glucose and fructose found in other sugars. Digesting sucrose requires the production of an enzyme called sucrase, which breaks the bond between the glucose molecule and the fructose molecule. Because the body regulates its production of sucrase, it can only digest sucrose at a certain rate. Because digesting HFCS does not require sucrase, the rate at which it is digested is not similarly regulated by the body