The World Health Organization (WHO) recently recommended limiting intake of added sugars found in food and drink to no more than 10 percent of daily calories, a step the WHO said could help stop the worldwide rise in obesity that is fueling the growth of such chronic diseases as type 2 diabetes. The WHO recommendation is far stricter than any that U.S. groups have produced.But increasingly, it's not just the growing consumption of foods with added sugars that concerns some nutrition experts. What has also changed during the past four decades, the USDA figures show, is the type of sweeteners consumed -- a trend that some studies suggest may help to undermine appetite control and possibly play a role in weight gain.
In 1966, refined sugar, also known as sucrose, held the No. 1 slot, accounting for 86 percent of sweeteners used, according to the USDA. Today, sweeteners made from corn are the leader, racking up $4.5 billion in annual sales and accounting for 55 percent of the sweetener market. That switch largely reflects the steady growth of high-fructose corn syrup, which climbed from zero consumption in 1966 to 62.6 pounds per person in 2001.
From fruit-flavored drinks to energy bars, a huge array of sweetened foods and beverages that crowds grocery shelves, vending machines, restaurant menus, school lunches and kitchens have high fructose corn syrup. Recently there has been world wide discussion about the use of this product and have created such a negative picture about it!! Yesterday I had discussion with my friends and Guess what I discovered!! Just because consumption of HCFS is so controversial my friend actually doesn't eat any food item which contains this ingredient .. I couldn't help wonder is HFCS really that harmful for your health??
First we need to understand the difference between table sugar and high fructose corn syrup.Made from corn starch, high-fructose corn syrup is a thick liquid that contains two basic sugar building blocks, fructose and glucose, in roughly equal amounts. Sucrose, most familiar to consumers as table sugar, is a larger sugar molecule that breaks down into glucose and fructose in the intestine during metabolism.
Fructose is a naturally occurring simple sugar that's produced by many plants. It's very sweet, and it's more soluble in water than glucose, another simple sugar that's also made readily available by nature and is the body's main source of energy. Fructose and glucose have the same type of atoms but are put together differently. When you combine fructose with glucose, you wind up with sucrose, which is your basic table sugar.
Corn syrup is a glucose-heavy syrup made from corn starch. There's no fructose in corn syrup -- not naturally, at least. In 1957, researchers discovered an enzyme that could turn the glucose in corn syrup into fructose. This process was modified and improved upon in the 1970s, making it possible to mass-produce HFCS. The entire process involves several steps and three different enzymes, but eventually a syrup with around 90 percent fructose content is created, and this is blended down with untreated syrup (containing only glucose) into a mix of either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose. The rest is glucose.
An advantage of high-fructose corn syrup is that it "tastes sweeter than refined sugar," making it a popular ingredient for food manufacturers because it enables them to use less, says George A. Bray, former director of Louisiana State University's Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. As a liquid, the syrup is easier to blend into beverages than refined sugar, according to the National Soft Drink Association (NSDA). Industry taste tests suggested that consumers liked food and drink with high-fructose corn syrup as much as refined beet or cane sugar.
Despite its name, HFCS doesn't contain much more fructose than table sugar—the product refined from beets or sugar cane. The stuff we put in our coffee, called sucrose, is a compound of equal parts fructose and glucose, while the corn syrup used in soft drinks is a mixture of 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. (The sugar ratio in HFCS is about the same as in honey.) The ingredient is a favorite of food makers for practical reasons. Compared with sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t mask flavors, has a lower freezing point and retains moisture better, which is useful in making foods like chewy granola bars. And because the corn crop in the United States is heavily subsidized, high-fructose corn syrup is also cheap. As a result, it’s now used in so many foods, from crackers to soft drinks, that it has become one of the biggest sources of calories in the American diet.
So one can't say table sugar better than high fructose corn syrup. Both are equally responsible for obesity & type 2 diabetes. It's prudent to consume any added sugar only in moderation.
Source : http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/a-new-name-for-high-fructose-corn-syrup/
mayoclinic.com
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