Why excess fructose make you fat.
Before I tell you what HFCS is, let me describe what fructose is and what it’s used for.
Fructose is a simple natural sugar found in fruit and honey. Fructose is a good natural sugar that is good for our body.
High Fructose Corn Syrup was manufactured in the 1970’s as a cheap alternative to real sugar. Because of the refining cost of sugar vs. the refining cost of corn, HFCS was about 70% cheaper to manufacture than actual cane sugar. Thus, corn-derived sweeteners like maltodextrin and high-fructose corn syrup saturated the market.
The plain jane sugar you buy at any grocery store contains 50% glucose and 50% fructose.
High Fructose corn syrup contains 20% glucose and 80% fructose….thus the name high fructose corn syrup; it contains over 150% more fructose than regular table sugar! Oh its get better, just wait.
Calorie count.
In a lab both regular sugar and HFCS contain 4 calories per gram. So being fair, and keeping all things equal, calories alone is not the problem, metabolizing fructose is.
Metabolizing HFCS
As I mentioned above, regular sugar contains 50% glucose and 50% fructose. When your body metabolizes glucose, it is stored in our livers and muscles so we can use it throughout the day. When we process glucose, the glucose causes our bodies to release insulin (pay attention diabetics). Insulin is a natural hormone and helps the metabolism….you guessed, it metabolize or burns what you ate. However, fructose does not cause your body to release insulin; it causes your body to release the hormone leptin.
Leptin
Leptin regulates our fat storage, leptin also increases the metabolism when it is necessary. So when you have a case of regular table sugar being metabolized versus High-Fructose Corn Syrup being metabolized your body processes it like this. Too much leptin and your body will store more fat. Its kind of like antibiotics, if you keep taking them, it becomes uneffective at what it is supposed to do.
Regular Sugar:
50% Glucose + 50% Fructose = Perfect balance between sugar, energy and fat storage.
HFCS
20% Glucose + 80% Fructose = an imbalance of leptin in your system = over time a built-up resistance to leptin = a built up resistance to negative fat storage = more and more fat people = obesity.
Alternatives:
- Regular unrefined sugar – If your not diabetic
- Non-oxidized agave nectar
- Stevia
Now you know how HFCS works…You can pretty much formulate your own top 5 now but here is mine.
Top 5 reason HFCS sucks
- HFCS is marketed as “natural” because it is made from corn, so it’s good for you…well rattlesnake venom is also “natural” so I guess that means that is good for you too!
- In a recent study almost half of the sampled commercial HFCS contained mercury!
- Fat storage – explained above
- Because Charles Lloyd of charleslloydfitness.com has a blog and he said its sucks, he even wrote an article about it and named it “Why HFCS sucks” or something like that.
- Any company that puts up a website to defend why their product does not suck, then their product does sucks. I would love to see Ferrari put out a website to explain why the Ferrari 599 Floriano does not suck.
As of a few hours ago both Pepsi called the Pepsi Throwback and Snapple are changing their recipes to include cane sugar. Maybe Pepsi won’t taste like battery acid now.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I just seen sweetsurprise.com as an advertiser on your google ads. Conflict of interest?
Not really, if they want to advertise here…thats cool with me.
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.
Thank Juliana