A new study published in the journal Obesity reports soft drinks sweetened with corn may have a bigger impact on weight gain and other health issues than previously thought. The study from researchers at the University of Southern California found "the sugar found in soft drinks may contain as much as 65 percent fructose," Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports on the Green Fields blog. "The corn sweetener level used in sodas is supposed to contained a nearly equal mixture of fructose and glucose, a similar ratio to that found in table sugar."
Researchers said fructose may be a larger contributor to weight gain than glucose because of the way the body metabolizes it. "Fructose consumption also may be linked to high blood pressure and other health problems," Brasher writes. "The highest levels of fructose were found in Coca-Cola, Sprite and Pepsi products, both those sold in bottles and as fountain drinks." Maureen Storey, a senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, countered it is implausible for soft drinks to have more than 55 percent fructose, the level in the high fructose corn syrup used to sweeten them.
"Why would we ship more fructose than we would need to, given the fact that we now have a good scientific consensus that HFCS-55 is equivalent to sugar in terms of its nutrition? To do that just doesn’t make reasonable sense," industry consultant John White told Brasher. "It is more reasonable that somebody who has never before measured HFCS in anything is using a procedure that is getting erroneous results." Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University and authority on the food industry, "has argued the corn sweetener couldn’t be worse than table sugar because both sweeteners were roughly equal parts fructose and glucose," Brasher writes. But Tuesday, Nestle wrote on her blog "A percentage of 55 is not much different biologically than 50, which is why the assumption has been that there is no biologically meaningful difference between HFCS and table sugar." (Read more)
"Why would we ship more fructose than we would need to, given the fact that we now have a good scientific consensus that HFCS-55 is equivalent to sugar in terms of its nutrition? To do that just doesn’t make reasonable sense," industry consultant John White told...
ReplyDeleteHFCS, whether it is HFCS-42, 55, or 90 is equivalent to sucrose in terms of its caloric content. They all have 4 cal/g. Therefore they are all nutritively equal. (I refrain from using the words "nutritionally equal".) This has nothing to do with scientific consensus. If they are referring to the sweetness level of HFCS-55 in comparison to sucrose, that's a different story.