High Fructose Corn Syrup
According to the USDA, HFCS consists of 24% water, and the rest sugars. The most widely used varieties of high-fructose corn syrup are: HFCS 55 (mostly used in soft drinks), approximately 55% fructose and 42% glucose; and HFCS 42 (used in beverages, processed foods, cereals and baked goods), approximately 42% fructose and 53% glucose. HFCS-90, approximately 90% fructose and 10% glucose, is used in small quantities for specialty applications, but primarily is used to blend with HFCS 42 to make HFCS 55. In the U.S., HFCS is among the sweeteners that have primarily replaced sucrose (table sugar) in the food industry. Factors for this include governmental production quotas of domestic sugar, subsidies of U.S. corn, and an import tariff on foreign sugar; all of which combine to raise the price of sucrose to levels above those of the rest of the world, making HFCS less costly for many sweetener applications. Critics of the extensive use of HFCS in food sweetening argue that the highly processed substance is more harmful to humans than regular sugar, contributing to weight gain by affecting normal appetite functions, and that in some foods HFCS may be a source of mercury, a known neurotoxin. The Corn Refiners Association disputes these claims and maintains that HFCS is comparable to table sugar. Studies by the American Medical Association suggest "it appears unlikely that HFCS contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose", but welcome further independent research on the subject. Further reviews in the clinical literature have disputed the links between HFCS and obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, and concluded that HFCS is no different from any other sugar in relationship to these diseases. HFCS has been classified generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 1976. Yet further study showed that with dietary zinc (Zn) loss and copper (Cu) gain from the consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), metabolic processes required to eliminate heavy metals are impaired in children with autism.
Finally mainstream medicine is coming around to the idea that eating foods high in fructose can wreak havoc on your body. A new study I just read in the Journal of the American Medical Association says eating a high-fructose diet makes you crave more food... but not in the way you already know about. It’s one more piece of evidence that tells us corn producers are plain wrong when they tell you their “corn sugar” is perfectly healthy. We already knew that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) messes with your hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin. HFCS makes you pump out too much of these appetite hormones to the point that they don’t work any longer. Your body thinks it needs to keep eating because it thinks you’re out of energy. But the new JAMA study talks about a completely different way HFCS wreaks havoc on your body’s eating signals. Eating glucose causes blood flow to the appetite and reward pathways in your brain to decrease. Your brain signals the rest of your body you’re happy and satiated. But concentrated fructose has the opposite effect. After you eat it, blood flow to the reward center of your brain increases1. And you get hungrier instead, leading to unwanted fat gain without you even realizing it. New evidence like this is why I insist on writing to you about this lab-created sweetener. And that’s besides all the other effects HFCS can have on you, like: HFCS raises uric acid, which can give you gout and kidney stones. Chemically produced corn syrup made from genetically modified corn is one of the best arguments I can think of for eating fresh whole foods – or as close as you can get these days. Anything with cane sugar is going to be better than something with HFCS, but stay away from processed sugar whenever you can. If you like to add sweetener to your food, try something I learned of while traveling in the mountains of Peru. It’s a very interesting fruit-like vegetable called yacon. In Peru it’s called the “jewel of the Andes.” Ancient Incas used to eat the roots for endurance and to keep from getting thirsty. Modern investigations of this traditional use have found that yacon is good for diabetics because it has fructooligosaccharides, a particular natural combination of sugar rings that human beings can’t digest. So it doesn’t affect blood sugar. Another thing I like about yacon is that it has inulin, a prebiotic-like compound that helps you digest other foods and enhances immunity because it promotes beneficial bacteria in your intestines. 6 You can get yacon syrup at specialty health food stores, and it’s also available online from places like navitasnaturals.com, essentiallivingfoods.com, and sunfood.com. It has an apple/caramel/honey flavor. I like to use it the same way you would honey or maple syrup. It tastes great in coffee or tea. But you can also try it as a salad dressing, or add it to your morning coffee or fresh juice. 1.Page K, et. al. "Effects of Fructose vs Glucose on Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in Brain Regions Involved With Appetite and Reward Pathways." JAMA. 2013;309(1):63-70. 2. Ringsdorf, W., Cheraskin, E. and Ramsay R. “Sucrose, Neutrophilic Phagocytosis and Resistance to Disease.” Dental Survey. 1976;52(12):46_48. 3. Stanhope K, et. al. "Consumption of fructose and high fructose corn syrup increase postprandial triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol, and apolipoprotein-B in young men and women." J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Oct;96(10):E1596-605. 4. Vickers M, Clayton Z, Yap C, Sloboda D. "Maternal fructose intake during pregnancy and lactation alters placental growth and leads to sex-specific changes in fetal and neonatal endocrine function." Endocrinology. 2011 Apr;152(4):1378-87. 5.Lestan B, Walden K, Schmaltz S, Spychala J, Fox IH. “Beta-Hydroxybutyrate decreases adenosine triphosphate degradation products in human subjects.” J Lab Clin Med. 1994 Aug;124(2):199-209. 6.Stoyanova
S, Geuns J, Hideg E, Van Den Ende W. “The food
additives inulin and stevioside counteract oxidative
stress.” Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2011
May;62(3):207-14.
HFCS replaces sugar in various processed foods in the United States. The main reasons for this switch are:
Cane sugar and beet sugar are both relatively pure sucrose. While glucose and fructose, which are the two components of HFCS, are monosaccharides, sucrose is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose linked together with a relatively weak glycosidic bond. The fact that sucrose, glucose and fructose are unique, distinct molecules complicates the comparison between cane sugar, beet sugar and HFCS. A molecule of sucrose (with a chemical formula of C12H22O11) can be broken down into a molecule of glucose (C6H12O6) plus a molecule of fructose (also C6H12O6 — an isomer of glucose) in a weakly acidic environment by a process called inversion.[26] Sucrose is broken down during digestion into a mixture of 50% fructose and 50% glucose through hydrolysis by the enzyme sucrase. People with sucrase deficiency cannot digest (break down) sucrose and thus exhibit sucrose intolerance. Fructose is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract by a different mechanism than that for glucose. Glucose stimulates insulin release from the isolated pancreas, but fructose does not. Fructose is metabolized primarily in the liver. Once inside the liver cell, fructose can enter the pathways that provide glycerol, the backbone for triacylglycerol. The growing dietary amount of fructose that is derived from sucrose or HFCS has raised questions about how children and adults respond to fructose alone versus when it is accompanied by glucose.
Honey is a mixture of different types of sugars, water, and small amounts of other compounds. Honey typically has a fructose/glucose ratio similar to HFCS 55, as well as containing some sucrose and other sugars. Like HFCS, honey contains water and has approximately 3 kcal per gram. Because of its similar sugar profile and lower price, HFCS has been used illegally to "stretch" honey. As a result, checks for adulteration of honey no longer test for higher-than-normal levels of sucrose, which HFCS does not contain, but instead test for small quantities of proteins that can be used to differentiate between HFCS and honey. Consumers should be aware, however, that some honey available in supermarkets contain HFCS or utilized HFCS in its production. Consumer awareness through label-reading is important for those aiming to avoid high-fructose corn syrup.
HFCS was first introduced by Richard O. Marshall and Earl R. Kooi in 1957. They were, however, unsuccessful in making it viable for mass production.[30] The industrial production process and creation was made by Dr. Yoshiyuki Takasaki at the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Japan in 1965–1970. HFCS was rapidly introduced to many processed foods and soft drinks in the U.S. from about 1975 to 1985. High-fructose corn syrup is produced by milling corn to produce corn starch, then processing that starch to yield corn syrup, which is almost entirely glucose, and then adding enzymes that change some of the glucose into fructose. The resulting syrup (after enzyme conversion) contains approximately 42% fructose and is HFCS 42. Some of the 42% fructose is then purified to 90% fructose, HFCS 90. To make HFCS 55, the HFCS 90 is mixed with HFCS 42 in the appropriate ratios to form the desired HFCS 55. The enzyme process that changes the 100% glucose corn syrup into HFCS 42 is as follows:
While inexpensive alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are added directly to the slurry and used only once, the more costly xylose-isomerase is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is then passed over it, allowing it to be used repeatedly until it loses its activity. This 42–43% fructose glucose mixture is then subjected to a liquid chromatography step, where the fructose is enriched to about 90%. The 90% fructose is then back-blended with 42% fructose to achieve a 55% fructose final product. Most manufacturers use carbon adsorption for impurity removal. Numerous filtration, ion-exchange and evaporation steps are also part of the overall process. The units of measurement for sucrose is degrees Brix (symbol °Bx). Brix is a measurement of the mass ratio of dissolved sucrose to water in a liquid. A 25 °Bx solution has 25 grams of sucrose per 100 grams of solution (25% w/w). Or, to put it another way, there are 25 grams of sucrose and 75 grams of water in the 100 grams of solution. The Brix measurement was introduced by Antoine Brix. A more universal measurement of sugars, including HFCS, is called dry solids. Dry solids is defined as the mass ratio of dry sugars to the total weight of the sugar solution. Since Brix is based on the refractive index of light against a sucrose molecule it is not accurate when measuring other sugars such as glucose, maltose, and fructose. When an infrared Brix sensor is used, it measures the vibrational frequency of the sucrose molecules, giving a Brix degrees measurement. This will not be the same measurement as Brix degrees using a density or refractive index measurement, because it will specifically measure dissolved sugar concentration instead of all dissolved solids. When a refractometer is used, it is correct to report the result as "refractometric dried substance" (RDS). One might speak of a liquid as being 20 °Bx RDS. This is a measure of percent by weight of total dried solids and, although not technically the same as Brix degrees determined through an infrared method, renders an accurate measurement of sucrose content, since the majority of dried solids are in fact sucrose. Recently, an isotopic method for quantifying sweeteners derived from corn and sugar cane was developed which permits measurement of corn syrup- and cane sugar-derived sweeteners in humans, thus allowing dietary assessment of the intake of these substances relative to total intake.
Historical
Health concerns have been raised about high fructose corn syrup, which allege contribution to obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. A peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by John S White, who is a Consultant in sweeteners, HFCS, and sucrose for the Food and Beverage Industry and also has a professional association with the Corn Refiners Association, rejects the HFCS-obesity hypothesis and finds that "[a]lthough examples of pure fructose causing metabolic upset at high concentrations abound, especially when fed as the sole carbohydrate source, there is no evidence that the common fructose-glucose sweeteners do the same."
In the United States, high-fructose corn syrup has become a sucrose replacement for honey bees. In 2009, a study by Leblanc et al. found that at temperatures above 45 °C (113 °F) HFCS rapidly forms hydroxymethylfurfural, which is toxic to the honey bees being fed HFCS.
 There are various
public relations issues with high-fructose corn syrup,
including its labeling as "natural", its advertising,
companies that have moved back to sugar, and a proposed name
change to 'corn sugar'. In 2010 the Corn Refiners
Association applied to allow HFCS to be renamed 'corn
sugar', but was rejected by the US Food and Drug
Administration in 2012. |
High-fructose
corn syrup (HFCS)—also called glucose-fructose
syrup in the UK, glucose/fructose in Canada, and
high-fructose maize syrup in other countries—comprises
any of a group of corn syrups that has undergone enzymatic
processing to convert some of its glucose into fructose to
produce a desired sweetness. In the United States, consumer
foods and products typically use high-fructose corn syrup as
a sweetener. It has become very common in processed foods
and beverages in the U.S., including breads, cereals,
breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups, and
condiments.