What is High Fructose Corn Syrup
What is High Fructose Corn Syrup

In this post I am going to talk about What is High Fructose Corn Syrup, and the top 5 reasons it sucks.

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.

What is High Fructose Corn Syrup

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.

What is High Fructose Corn Syrup

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.

This concludes my post on What is High Fructose Corn Syrup .


Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd

Self processed fitness missionary and author of most of the ridiculous fitness articles written on Charles Lloyd Fitness.com. I am not really a writer, but a workout fiend who happens to have a blog. The single mission of this website is very simple: Get You In Shape. I have been blessed with the gift of good health and want to share it with you. Join Me.

    8 replies to "What is High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)? And the top 5 reasons it sucks!"

    • Mike Robinson

      I just seen sweetsurprise.com as an advertiser on your google ads. Conflict of interest?

    • Charles Lloyd

      Not really, if they want to advertise here…thats cool with me.

    • Juliana

      There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.

    • Charles Lloyd

      Thank Juliana 🙂

    • Rahvell

      I don’t know where you got your information, but HCFS80 isn’t in any sort of popular usage, whatsoever, nor has it ever been. For almost all food and drink additives, they use HCFS55 and HCFS42, which are 55% and 42% fructose, respectively (Don’t ask me about the semantics of how 42% constitutes “high”). HCFS90 (even worse than tha 80 you mentioned) is only used in “Light” foods, and in extremely small amounts, as you don’t need much to sweeten things at all. The primary use of HCFS90 is being diluted to make 42 and 55.

    • Charles Lloyd

      You are not siting all of the information of HFCS55 and HFCS42 Rahvel. HFCS55 is 55% fructose, however you are leaving out a *bit* of information of… I don’t know…42% glucose! 55% fructose is absolutely high, then add another 42% of glucose (simple sugar). Transversely you can take HFCS42 which is 42% fructose and 55% glucose.
      So what you are saying is over 90% sugar is not high? WOW.

    • Maegen H.

      Well said, sir!

      I have my B.S. in biology and this was actually one of my test questions. So later when I saw this commercial saying that “your body cannot tell the difference”, I was appalled. People need to know the truth, and education is the only way of spreading the truth!!

    • Charles Lloyd

      Thanks for the comment Maegen, I seen that commercial also, hilarious to say the least. For some reason (maybe because of my writing style) people seem to think that I just throw up random blog post without fully researching/studying this stuff for months/years, now we have a person with a B.S. in biology telling you the same thing!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.