We thought that the high fructose in corn syrup made us fat, so we traded it for chemical-free calories. However, we are more overweight than ever … Why?
QUESTION QUESTION: WHAT DO BACKSTREET BOYS ALBUM MILLENIUM HAVE IN COMMON WITH HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP (HFCS)? Millenium was the best-selling album of 1999 and the same year HFCS consumption increased a lot, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). You could assume that obesity also increased because of HFCS, the devil’s sweet, causing the proliferation of excess weight and the health problems associated with it: diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease and sleep disorders.
Or maybe not. Since 1999, the population has acquired kilos; Now 67 percent of adults are overweight, according to the World Health Organization. The theory that HFCS bulged our stomachs – the so-called “HFCS hypothesis”? It emerged in 2002 and grew for years with great influence, but is currently under fire. The new trends suggest that it is not so true that this sweetener is making us fat. Many culprits contribute to obesity, including all types of sugar and perhaps even artificial sweeteners. “People are still alert about HFCS,” explains sports nutritionist Chris Mohr. “That’s good, but to lose weight, you have to watch your sugar intake.” It is easier if you understand your sweet tooth and the way your body reacts when you no longer consume it. Look at the following pages, you will like the results. This is the easiest way to lose pounds that you can try in your life.
YOU MAY BELIEVE THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. You may never touch a sugar bowl or open an envelope of artificial sweetener. Never mind. Eating and drinking on a Western diet involves eating around 23 tablespoons of added sugar daily (found in what we consume). They are 367 calories, including 183 from sugar cane and sugar beets, and 136 from HFCS. The weekly total: 2,569 calories, or the equivalent of a full day of food. Consuming those amounts is not a smart weight loss strategy.
In fact, if you count the different sweeteners that an average person consumes a year, they add 60 kilos, up to 10 more than in 1955. The American Heart Association recommends that men limit their daily intake of added sugar to nine tablespoons or 144 calories. We eat sugar without thinking, so it’s best to change that with a quick and painless lesson. This is chemistry, but don’t panic, both fructose and glucose are simple sugars and both are found naturally in fruits in equal amounts. “Sucrose is a combo of glucose and fructose, but it behaves differently in the body,” according to Manal Abdelmalek, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University.
Glucose
It is absorbed through the intestines and thereby reaches the bloodstream. There the insulin transports it through the cells, where it uses it as fuel. The surplus is stored as glycogen within the liver and muscles.
Fructose
“After consuming it, it goes directly to the liver and almost all of it turns into fat,” explains Abdelmalek. Its excessive consumption increases visceral fat, blood lipid levels and insulin resistance. Plus, it doesn’t make satiety hormones, like glucose does.
Saccharose
It is a combination of glucose and fructose in similar proportions. Table sugar, for example, is sucrose.
WE ARE PROGRAMMED TO ENJOY SUGAR. For our ancestors, sweetness spoke of ripeness in fruits, as well as very valuable calories. “One of the main things we crave is sugar,” says Nicole Avena, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida. “It activates brain pathways that reinforce our desire to eat.”
Oatmeal belongs to a group of researchers who published an analysis in the Journal of Nutrition that suggests sugar could be addictive. Scientists discovered that, after being fed sweetener, the rats showed signs of a withdrawal syndrome when removed. Human study reveals similar trends. In 2011, work done at Yale University showed that when participants who showed symptoms of food dependency and saw the image of a chocolate milkshake, experienced increased brain activity, in the same regions involved in drug addiction. When trying the drink, the response decreased and this could cause them to have to eat more to repeat the pleasant experience.
Fighting our evolutionary desire for sugar is difficult, especially if we are bombarded with ice cream or chocolate commercials. Avena thinks you will experience craving when you try to decrease your intake but ensure that it will decrease after a few days.
The fruit will help get rid of added sugar. Most contain fructose and glucose in similar amounts, but they also have fiber and nutrients. Furthermore, it can self-regulate. You will have to eat more than four small apples to eat 65 grams of sugar, which is what you would take in a soft drink.
Artificial sweeteners may seem like the perfect solution, but it’s better to see them as a temporary bridge: a person who swaps regular sodas for diet sodas eventually loses weight. A study at the University of North Carolina found that when overweight people traded, they lost 2.2 kilos in six months. However, research from the San Antonio UT Health Science Center suggests that drinking diet soda may increase waist size.
Another factor: substitutes become sweeter than sugar. Experts believe that eating them can spoil your appetite and lead to cravings for sweet products. Susan Swithers, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at Purdue University, discovered in 2008 that rats that ate artificially sweetened consumed more calories and acquired much more fat than rodents that fed on food sweetened with sucrose.
“Animals, including humans, finish eating long before they have digested the nutrients,” says Swithers. “That means they use signals to predict what they have actually eaten and when they should stop.” One of those alerts is the sweet taste in the mouth; it is usually a tasty sign that calories will follow.
Artificial sweeteners interfere with the indicators that tell us to stop eating. “If you want to cut calories, diet sodas are likely to help,” says Avena. “But if what you want is to reduce the desire to eat something sweet, they are as great a remedy as a bandaid.”
And where in the row of suspects does HFCS fit? Any biochemist can confirm that this is virtually the same as sucrose. It comes in two formulas, according
with the concentration of fructose: the first with 42 percent and the second, 55. “For your body, they are practically the same as table sugar,” according to Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. “HFCS and sucrose are made from fructose and glucose, so there is no reason to believe that they are metabolized differently.”
The HFCS hypothesis made sense when, in 2002, it was proposed by George Bray, a professor studying obesity at the Pennington Center for Biomedical Research. In 1970, years after it was introduced to the food supply in the United States, HFCS accounted for less than one percent of all calorie sweeteners consumed in that country. Food producers were fascinated by the product: it was stable and cost almost half. By 2000, HFCS was present in 42 percent of all caloric sweeteners on the market.
The obesity rate increased from 13 percent in 1960 to 31 percent in 2000; however, some scientists questioned the link between HFCS and obesity. A 2009 review by the American Medical Association? S Council on Science and Public Health concluded that HFCS was unlikely to contribute more to obesity than sucrose. Soon after, Dr. Bray changed his position: “It is clear that fructose, present in sucrose and HFCS, is responsible for increasing the number of calories.”
IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU STOP EATING THEM, although after reading the above you surely lost your appetite. This is the way to reduce your consumption:
Beware of “healthy” sweeteners
Most of the caloric sweeteners we consume (HFCS, brown and refined sugar, and honey) contain fructose, glucose and three or four calories per gram. “We think molasses and brown sugar are healthier than refined, but no,” says nutritionist Mike Roussell. “What’s more, table sugar has been quite demonized.”
Stop drinking sweetened beverages
The main source of sugars are soft drinks, they only add centimeters to the waist. French research says we don’t make up for sweet drinks by eating fewer calories in food.
Scan the labels and cook more
According to an analysis published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 75 percent of packaged foods contain caloric sweeteners. Look at the grams of sugar: your quota is nine teaspoons (each with four grams on average), so try not to exceed 36 grams of added sugar per day. If you ignore this, we will see you in five kilos…