Fructose--or "Corn Sugar"--Is Not The Same As Sugar

by Dave Wittenborn - September 16, 2010

On September 14th, the Corn Refiners Association petitioned the FDA to approve the use of the name "corn sugar" to replace "fructose."

While this may be the equivalent of placing a fake nose and glasses over the substance formerly known as high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, the assumption by corn refiners such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland that the general public is too stupid to see through the disguise is nowhere near as offensive as the outright lies being told by the industry that your body can't tell the difference between HFCS and sugar.

If you would like an in-depth, but very entertaining explanation of how your body metabolizes fructose differently than sugar, watch this outstanding presentation by Dr. Robert Lustig, M.D., a UCSF Professor in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism.

vidlink

Here's the deal. HFCS used in most food products is a blend of about 55% fructose and 42% glucose. Sugar, or sucrose is also composed of about the same proportions of the same two substances. The difference, and your body considers it to be a BIG difference, is that in regular sugar, the fructose and glucose components are chemically bonded together. In HFCS, they are not chemically connected.

 This diagram depicts roughly what a molecule of sugar would look like, fructose and glucose, bound together. Take away the "bar" that connects the two, and you have the equivalent of HFCS.

Because of this difference, according to researchers at Princeton University, your liver metabolizes HFCS in a very different, and harmful, way than it metabolizes the same amount of calories from cane sugar, leading to significant relative weight gain and other health problems from HFCS.

As if that's not enough, recently a UCLA research team found that cancer cells that were fed fructose grew at a significantly faster rate than did cells that were fed common sugar.

Study author Dr. Anthony Heaney, Associate Professor of Medicine and Neurosurgery at UCLA's cancer center, said it was likely that fructose would also speed the growth of other cancers as well. The study was published in the August 1, 2010 issue of Cancer Research.

The bottom line is this: if HFCS was indeed the same as sugar, the corn refiners would be providing research to prove it, rather than hiding behind the smoke and mirrors of changing its name. The truth is, it's NOT the same, and independent research proves it. The FDA should ignore the name change request and focus on the lies being told to the public.

Corn byproduct fructose literally fuels cancer cell growth, study finds

By Reuters | Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

"They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda.

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. "Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different," Heaney's team wrote.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," Heaney said in a statement.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.