Diet experts have said that high fructose corn syrup is as healthy as honey.
Dr. Jen Gunter, a Canadian gynecologist who has a column in the New York Times about women’s health, responded to a “troubling” claim made by Mindy Pelz, a chiropractor with more than half a million followers on Instagram.
Ms. Pelz claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is “the deadliest carbohydrate” on the planet.
This is because it “passes through the bloodstream and goes directly to the liver,” he said.
Pelz’s theory, as he explains in a video posted on his YouTube channel, is that the sweetener is particularly harmful as it is converted to fat in the liver, which supposedly damages the organ and leads to obesity.
High-fructose corn syrup is as healthy as honey, Dr. Jen Gunter, a Canadian gynecologist, said on her blog.
High fructose corn syrup is extremely common in popular foods because a small amount is incredibly sweet, making it profitable for food manufacturers.
High-fructose corn syrup, also known as HFCS, is a sugar or sweetener and technically a form of carbohydrate, Dr. Gunter explained in her Blog.
The product is primarily made from a form of sugar called glucose. However, to make it sweeter and more similar in flavor to regular table sugar, some of that glucose is converted to fructose (or fruit sugars) by enzymes.
Different types of high fructose corn syrup provide different proportions of fructose.
However, studies show that this process only produces very small differences in the proportions of different types of sugar.
For example, when added to soft drinks, it contains about 55 percent fructose.
In jams, the fructose content is 42 percent. By contrast, table sugar contains 50 percent fructose and honey 49 percent, so it’s not a big difference.
But why is HFCS demonized when it contains similar amounts of fructose to honey? Dr. Gunter asks.
Scientists have previously refuted the theory that fructose damages the liver.
In 2019, Catherine Collins, a hospital dietician working for the UK’s NHS, told DailyMail.com’s British contingent, The Mail on Sunday, that fructose only converts to fat if excess calories are consumed, such as any food.
“Too much of any food would eventually turn into fat,” he said.
A major review of 155 studies, published in 2018 in the British Medical Journal, showed that fructose had no harmful effect on blood sugar and therefore did not increase the risk of diabetes.
The topic of how healthy high fructose corn syrup is has been debated for a long time.
The idea that HFCS is exceptionally bad comes from a 2004 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article that alluded to a connection between HFCS in beverages and obesity.
A 2023 paper explored the hypothesis that HFCS causes biological changes in the human body that make it physically easier to gain weight and harder to lose weight.
But there are numerous credible sources that say HFCS is no worse than any other type of sugar.
The FDA website says: “We are not aware of any evidence, including the studies mentioned above, that there is a difference in safety between foods containing HFCS 42 or HFCS 55 and foods containing similar amounts of other nutritional sweeteners with glucose and fructose approximately equal.” content, such as sucrose, honey or other traditional sweeteners.
‘The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that everyone limit consumption of all added sugars, including HFCS and sucrose. The FDA participated in the development of the Dietary Guidelines and fully supports this recommendation.
Toronto-based dietitian Abby Langer said: ‘…although your body may process some sugars differently, in the end, it’s all the same to you.
‘For example, when a product advertises that it is made with maple syrup instead of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), that is nothing more than a cheap marketing strategy. “Nothing about maple syrup is healthier than any other sugar,” he said.
‘There is no convincing evidence that one sugar is worse than others for our health. That said, as a population, it is well known that we eat too much added sugar and no one questions it,” Langer added.
Meanwhile, Daniel Feldman, a registered dietitian with a Master of Science in Human Nutrition, told Dr. Gunter: “If other aspects of your nutrition are correct (total calories, macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, fiber and water), then there is no we should worry about HFCS.
“That said, since HFCS is a sweetener found in processed foods, and processed foods tend to be less nutrient dense and more caloric than unprocessed foods, foods with HFCS should generally make up a small part of your diet (especially if your goal is weight loss).
“But there’s nothing inherently bad about HFCS,” he added.
A research article published in 2008 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition said that HFCS “is not significantly different in composition or metabolism from other fructose and glucose sweeteners such as sucrose, honey, and fruit juice concentrates.”