The people arguing against high fructose corn syrup specifically are doing so under the misguided notion that sugar is somehow healthier. You see something similar in the seed oil discussions.
There are good reasons to promote excessive sugars in general, but specifically targetting high fructose corn syrup is like that old joke where someone asks if we should ban adding dihydrogen monoxide to foods.
Any chance your coming through Las Vegas any time soon, and you’d like to bet large sums of money that I can demonstrate a high fructose corn syrup allergy?
Because there’s very few things as annoying as someone making broad generalizations and calling others “misguided”.
High-fructose corn syrup is literally a 45-55 mixture of fructose and glucose.
Table sugar, sucrose, is a disaccharide composed of 1 unit of, you guessed it, glucose and one unit of fructose. Sucrose is broken down in the gut by sucrase into a 50-50 mixture of fructose and glucose. The only difference is that sucrase takes a bit of time to break sucrose down. Not a lot, but enough to smooth out the absorption curve a little.
If you are allergic to one, you are allergic to the other.
Since glucose is key to human life, it's probably not that part.
If you have fructose intolerance, you'd probably know. It causes liver and kidney damage, and you wouldn't be able to eat much food people consider ordinary. If you have fructose intolerance you cannot eat sucrose either. You'd be pretty much relegated to sugar alcohols for sweeteners like sorbitol.
> that I can demonstrate a high fructose corn syrup allergy
If you can, honestly, contact a medical researcher. (You'd want to be blindly provided tasteless pills encapsulating both HFCS, sugar, fructose and an intert substance, of course.)
What wouldn't be unprecedented is a fructose sensitivity.
> The people arguing against high fructose corn syrup specifically are doing so under the misguided notion that sugar is somehow healthier.
I am not sure how true that is. I do argue against corn syrup under the notion that sugar is bad, and more sugar is worse, and I am far from alone.
> You see something similar in the seed oil discussions.
That’s quite a leap. Are you saying that people arguing against corn syrup (which was demonstrated to be terrible from a public health perspective many times) and those arguing against seed oil (who do not have a leg to stand on and are making counter-factual points) are in any way similar?
Excessive fructose consumption is more harmful than excessive glucose consumption.
It is more prone to lead to fatty liver or obesity, because fructose is not consumed directly in the body, but the liver uses it to synthesize reserve fat.
So excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than excessive consumption of plain corn syrup or of sugar.
Nevertheless, the source of fructose does not matter much, but only the total amount that is consumed.
It is recommended to avoid a daily intake above around 25 g of fructose per day for someone of average size and having a sedentary life style. This corresponds to 50 g of sugar, but with a lesser amount of high fructose corn syrup.
Very high amounts of carbohydrates including fructose can be consumed without any risk only when a proportionally high physical activity is performed, using the high energy intake provided thus (for example by athletes during competitions or intensive training).
The harmful effect of excessive fructose consumption has been used for several millennia, for making "foie gras", by force feeding geese with fruits.
No it isn't. Sucrose and HFCS have ~the same amount of fructose (the HFCS in soda is HFCS-55, 5% higher than sucrose; the HFCS in food is HFCS-42, 8% lower). The notion that HFCS is distinctively bad for you is folklore.
What you say does not contradict in any way what I have said.
I have said that what matters is the total amount of ingested fructose, not its source. Eating large quantities of dried fruits can have the same effect as eating too much sugar or HFCS.
Besides HFCS-42 and HFCS-55, there is also HFCS-70, with an even higher amount of fructose.
I agree that saying that HFCS is bad without giving more details about what kind of HFCS is meant is ambiguous.
That does not change that at equal amounts HFCS-70 or HFCS-55 are more likely to provide excessive fructose than sugar, even if HFCS-42 is less likely to provide excessive fructose than sugar.
HFCS is also absorbed faster than sugar, which must first be split into glucose and fructose. This may be desirable during intense effort, but undesirable otherwise.
No, sucrose is split practically instantaneously into fructose and sucrose in the gut; you have an enzyme, sucrase, specifically to do it. The process is complete seconds after sucrose enters your small intestine. The process of getting the glucose into your bloodstream takes far longer. Where did you get this idea? I've heard other people say it too; there must be a source for it.
You said, "So excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than excessive consumption of plain corn syrup or of sugar." This appears to be plainly false.
We make corn that isn't even considered a food, legally. We subsidize that using a lot of tax dollars, to the absurd point that we pay farmers to NOT grow corn and leave fields empty. Everyone is paying for way more corn than is needed through taxes, while people claim this keeps costs low (it's more, you are just paying it in taxes). And then we come up with excuses to use more of it, like corn syrup and ethanol. This is absolutely absurd.
I think it is considered a strategic defense resource. Imagine we end up with a WWIII consisting of dozens of proxy wars where the nuclear powers carefully avaoid direct action on eachothers soils to avoid the war going nuclear.
International food, oil, materials and goods shipments would be severely curtailed. Corn can be used to produce, sugars, oil, and alcohol and biomass for fuel, food, and chemical feedstock for plastic manufacturing. While there are better sources for any of those not many can do all of them and be easily grown in mass in our own backyard
I don't understand your point about "legally considered food". If the corn is used to produce corn syrup, it's legally food; if it's not, it has some other purpose, and I don't know why I should care.
There are good reasons to promote excessive sugars in general, but specifically targetting high fructose corn syrup is like that old joke where someone asks if we should ban adding dihydrogen monoxide to foods.