High Fructose Corn Syrup; Good or Bad?

Consumers -- at the grocery store and restaurants -- are increasingly demanding sodas and other products sweetened with sugar, not corn syrup.

The trend is so strong that the Corn Refiners Assn. has launched a major marketing campaign and Internet site,



The Corn Refiners Assn. contends that high fructose corn syrup is just as natural as table sugar and honey. Others say it's not natural at all, because it is manufactured through a chemical process and does not occur in nature by itself. The Center for Science in the Public Interest called the corn refiners' campaign "deceptive."

FRUCTOSE FOR DIABETICS?

In the past, fructose was considered beneficial to diabetics because it is absorbed only 40 percent as quickly as glucose and causes only a modest rise in blood sugar.5 However, research on other hormonal factors suggests that fructose actually promotes disease more readily than glucose. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver.6 The livers of test animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics.

Fructose reduces the affinity of insulin for its receptor, which is the hallmark of type-2 diabetes. This is the first step for glucose to enter a cell and be metabolized. As a result, the body needs to pump out more insulin to handle the same amount of glucose.