You may already be aware of a new published study led by Princeton University researchers suggesting that high fructose corn syrup may play a more important role in the obesity epidemic than table sugar.
Bart Hoebel, who specialize in the neuroscience of appetite, found that of rats that drank the same amount of sugar and high fructose corn syrup (or HFCS), those that consumed the HFCS gained significantly more body weight than those drinking table sugar.
Furthermore, they found that drinking a HFCS solution for a long term, (which is the case of rats is six months), the rats experienced some signs of metabolic syndrome, such as abnormal increases in body fat and circulating blood fats called triglycerides.
This is an animal study. The results may not apply to humans; animals do not have the critical thinking skills to help them monitor their intake of sweeteners.
The Center for Consumer Freedom, the non-profit organization that often attacks research findings that may potentially hurt the food industry or the food service industry, issued a statement on March 26 claiming that “Every day, more people are pointing out flaws in last month’s Princeton University study finding that rats fed high fructose corn syrup gained more weight than rats fed sucrose.”
The Corn Refiners Association maintains that high fructose corn syrup is the same as table sugar nutritionally, and it launched a national TV campaign to educate consumers and extol the sweetener’s virtues, fooducate.com reported last year.
Some major food companies like PepsiCo have already decided to stop using high fructose corn syrup in their foods and beverages, due to the demand from food consumers for alternative sweeteners.
In 2007, Rutgers University researchers reported that high fructose corn syrup contains astonishingly high levels of reactive carbonyls, which can lead to oxidative damage of retinal proteins, according to Pennathur S and colleagues who published a study in the June 17, 2005 issue of Journal of Biological Chemistry addressing the potentially damaging effect of reactive carbonyls and polyunsaturated fattyacids on retinal proteins.
