Tag Archives: fructose

Natural Fructose in Fruit is Fine; It’s the High Fructose Corn Syrup That Gets Us in Trouble

Remember a time when you were eating, but never felt full and ended up eating more food? This could be caused by the consumption of fructose. As reported by Medical News Study, researchers found glucose and fructose have an influence on parts of the brain that control appetite.

The study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Assocation (JAMA), found that fructose produces hormones in the brain that will leave you feeling hungry. However, the study did find that glucose will leave you filling fuller and satisfied. Glucose is a type of sugar you get from food, which your body takes and turns into energy.

Since fructose makes your brain think you are still hungry and causes you to eat more, could there be a link between fructose and obesity?

Our resident dietitian, Mary Hartley RD, comments on the study’s new findings, saying, “Excessive fructose intake may have a link to obesity, but it is too early to tell. It is very difficult to single out a particular nutrient to blame. In addition, obesity is a multifactorial problem and contributing factors are not the same for all people.” (more…)

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Samantha

Fructose Research Does Not Change Perception of HFCS

A couple of weeks ago Medpage Today published an article titled Fructose May Not Be Culprit in Weight Gain which seems to contradict the Princeton research that found considerable more weight gain from ingesting high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Even when caloric intake was the same, rats gained more weight when eating HFCS than table sugar. Diets in Review has consistently spoken out against high fructose corn syrup as an unhealthy genetically modified food. Fructose and HFCS are not exactly the same as Tanvir Hussain, physician and adjunct professor of bioethics at Pepperdine University School of Law, points out, “[the study] did not include high fructose corn syrup in their analysis, but only simple fructose. Thus it would be difficult to make conclusions about high fructose corn syrup and weight gain based on this particular study. Nonetheless, the results do call into question the hypothesis that fructose disproportionately contributes to weight gain over other carbohydrates.”

Those are exactly the questions that have been posed to me – does this mean that HFCS is not bad for you?

Ann A. Rosenstein clearly explains the difference between sugar and HFCS, saying, “HFCS is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist Michael Pollan to observe it for his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.”

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Posted on March 9, 2024 by Brooke Randolph