Q. Is high-fructose corn syrup bad for you?

By Joyce Hendley, September/October 2007

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A. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a manmade sweetener that’s found in a wide range of processed foods, from ketchup and cereals to crackers and salad dressings. It also sweetens just about all of the (regular) soda Americans drink. HFCS used in foods is between 50 to 55 percent fructose—so chemically, it’s virtually identical to table sugar (sucrose), which is 50 percent fructose. Metabolic studies suggest our bodies break down and use HFCS and sucrose the same way.

Yet, after HFCS began to be widely introduced into the food supply 30-odd years ago, obesity rates skyrocketed. And because the sweetener is so ubiquitous, many blame HFCS for playing a major role in our national obesity epidemic. As a result, some shoppers equate HFCS with “toxic waste” when they see it on a food label. But when it comes right down to it, a sugar is a sugar is a sugar. A can of soda contains around nine teaspoons of sugar in the form of HFCS—but, from a biochemical standpoint, drinking that soda is no worse for you than sipping home-brewed iced tea that you’ve doctored with nine teaspoons of table sugar or an equivalent amount of honey.

Even Barry Popkin, Ph.D., a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who previously suggested, in an influential 2004 paper, a possible HFCS-obesity link, stresses that the real obesity problem doesn’t lie just with HFCS. Rather, it’s the fact that sugars from all sources have become so prevalent in our food supply, especially in our beverages. He scoffs at the “natural” sweeteners sometimes added to upscale processed foods like organic crackers and salad dressings. “They all have the same caloric effects as sugar,” he explains. “I don’t care whether something contains concentrated fruit juice, brown sugar, honey or HFCS. The only better sweetener option is ‘none of the above.’”

At EatingWell, it’s our philosophy to keep any sweeteners we use in our recipes to a minimum—and likewise, to limit processed foods with added sugars of any type, including HFCS. We recommend you do the same.

Did you know?

The corn syrup found on supermarket shelves is only a distant cousin to the high-fructose corn syrup used commercially. Both start by processing corn starch with enzymes and/or acids, but the HFCS process is much more complex and results in a different chemical structure.

COMMENTS	POSTED
our sugar here is refined, it is not natural sugarcane sugar because sugarcane sugar is a light brown not white so to me all forms of sugar in the us is bad for you. especially man made sugar i don,t eat anything with high fructose syrup in it and to me it tastes like poison. — Anonymous	11/30/2010 - 4:11pm
Hey Joyce, This article of yours infuriates me and I'm sure the rest of the educated world as well. Not all sugar is the same. HFCS has been proven to aid in weight gain in comparison to regular sugar, by tricking our bodies into storing extra fat unnecessarily. Along with this, as other comenters have said, HFCS attributes to cancer. This is brief, and I would just like to say this: To those of you who look at food like its something simple and not worth learning more about, you are missing the big picture. You are hurting yourself, and contributing to American obesity, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and more. — Anonymous	11/27/2010 - 5:12pm
I avoid high fructose corn syrup, as a new study shows that rats eating the same amount of calories per day, with one group eating sugar and the other high fructose corn syrup caused the group to be eating the HFCS to have significant weight gains and abnormal increases in body fat. (http://www.grist.org/article/researchers-yes.-hfcs-is-much-worse-than-table-sugar) — Anonymous	11/18/2010 - 10:57am
I noticed one day that my Dr. Pepper said "With Real Sugar".The government pays companies to put HFCS in their food because we don't have to in port it so it's cheaper. This being said a small amount of HFCS is fine in the place of sugar but it doesn't process right when you have to much and the body usually turns it into fat. Now i'm not saying that sugar is healthy for you but it is sure better than HFCS. Anyhow i find it inevitable that it's going to be in everything as long as the government pays these companies. — Anonymous	11/17/2010 - 6:36pm
It is a simple fact that the human body is designed to metabolize and digest natural substances and solids. That being said anything ("man made" in a lab) is unnatural and shouldn't ever be ingested to begin with! The human body is a very complex "machine" as it were, that runs completely on chemicals and depends on the balance of them. If we change the chemicals that are consumed by our bodies we change the way our body uses them. We can actually trick our bodies in to doing something we don't want it to do; like store fat when we don't need to. At my work there are about 100 employees most of which consume soda on a daily basis about 85%. Of that 85% about 90% are over weight. They range anywhere from 20 pounds over weight to 140 pounds over weight. Now out of the 10% of soda drinkers that are not over weight most are under the age of 25. Of the 90% who do drink soda and are over weight about 95% are over the age of 30. It may not be a scientific experiment but it is true. Unfortunately these processed chemicals are in just about everything we eat. What can we do? Boycott any product that contains these poisons! Well ok maybe not all of them we do have to eat you know. Most of them we can avoid or at least cut back on. Grow a garden buy local grown beef from a butcher things like that. Here is a final thought America is no longer the tallest country in the world! Denmark is with China coming in third! How is that possible? It is possible because of the chemicals and hormones in the food we eat that trick our bodies into growth spurts prematurely! Look around you at the young boys and girls are they as tall as you were when you were 4,7, 10, or 12. Chances are they are taller than you were and they will stop growing before you stopped growing. — Anonymous	11/12/2010 - 6:36pm
I read somewhere that there are people that are 'immune' to becoming fat. I used to seriously abuse all kinds of sugar yet never grew fat. I do not exercise much or participate in any sports. Yet I feel quite healthy and I haven't been seriously ill for the last fifteen years. Are there exceptions? Could it be that my body has a different metabolism? I am also diagnosed ADHD but I do like it. My mother says she ate a lot of aspartame when she was pregnant. — Anonymous	11/12/2010 - 8:31am
It disgusts me that the FDA allows products like this to be included in foods. I try to avoid it, and luckily now more companies are making products without it. Unfortunately though, most people are unaware of the dangers and continue to eat highly processed foods. Its up to us to research what we're putting in our bodies, because the FDA couldn't care less. — Anonymous	10/23/2010 - 4:28pm
the complex structure of HFCS is what makes it worse than regular table sugar. The fact that it's man made and chemically altered affects the way the body metabolizes it. The problem with HFCS is that you find it in basically everything these days... especially food directed towards children. When you see the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup (on products such as fruit juices), can you honestly say you would give this to your child on a regular basis? I know I wouldn't. Research shows that HFCS favors the body 's metabolic fat-making pathways, setting the stage for accumulation of excess body fat. — Anonymous	10/22/2010 - 1:25am
I heard they said it makes yous go insane. That's why, right? — Anonymous	10/16/2010 - 10:52pm
At 22 I suddenly began getting hives, which worsened to swelling (first my lips, then my tongue, and then my throat would begin to swell shut). This all progressed within a month. The doctors tested me and said i had no food allergies, and all they could give me was an EPI pen. It was only after a strict elimination diet that I began to realize that corn was the culprit. Eliminating all corn from my diet was literally impossible. I soon found out that almost everything I ate was somehow derived from corn. Potato chips, sugar-free ice cream, vinegar, pizza, sour cream, bread, shredded cheese, crackers, and alcohol were some of the foods I learned "the hard way" usually had corn in them. In addition, food packages, IV solutions, waxes on fresh fruits, and pills are often made with corn. For me, the more broken down the corn is, the worse my reaction. Ex: Corn starch=hives; Dextrose from corn=anaphylaxis. I still get hives many days and swelling every few weeks due to "accidents" in what I eat. I fully believe that the extreme manipulation of corn into products like high-fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, modified food starch, and dextrose is a big problem for our society. With corn in almost everything, it is quickly becoming a common allergy, just as wheat did in its days of over-use. However, corn is in even more products than wheat, and in hundreds of different forms. Most companies I talk to don't even seem to know if their products are made with any corn derivatives. Read some of your food labels... do you know what half those ingredients are? I still don't know many of them! How can we monitor what we eat, and try to eat sugars and fats in moderation, when companies are finding new ways to disguise forms of sugar, and "low fat" and "sugar-free" foods are full of processed garbage. Even so-called "health food" contains outrageous ingredients like"organic-maltodextrin". I am obviously biased because of my allergy, but I say, leave corn alone as corn, and leave sugar beets and sugar cane to making sugar! — Anonymous	10/15/2010 - 10:54pm