If you are diabetic you should already know the importance of controlling sugar and carbs in your diet. But what if you don’t know what you are eating?

These days food manufactures are getting tricky. Many ‘ready to eat’ foods will contain small amounts of several different types of sugars in an effort to keep ’sugar’ out of the top 5 or so ingredients. Some of the different sugars you will find are honey, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, crystalline fructose, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, sorbitol, fruit juice concentrate, galactose, lactose, polydextrose, polydextrose, mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, maltodextrin and turbinado sugar.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these sugars are completely natural and in reasonable doses are perfectly fine. Honey, and sugar(sucrose) are both

Sorbitol, the current darling of the diet and sugar free industry, in large amounts can cause irritable bowel syndrome.

The one we are most concerned about is High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both for it’s frivolous usage in virtually any ready to eat foods and the underhanded tobacco lobby style marketing being done. (Read any online newspaper article that mentions HFCS and look at the comments. You will find a response from someone at the Corn Refiners Association spouting about recent research findings - sponsored by them - that say it’s no different than sugar….

Right.

So lets break them down shall we?

Sugar(sucrose) is a disaccharide. It’s 50% fructose and 50% glucose. When both of these are present in a tight molecule the body burns both efficiently and other than consuming in a excessive amount, has relatively few health concerns.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is also made from both fructose and glucose, but depending on it’s usage the mix can vary from 58% glucose/ 42% fructose mix, to a 90/10% mix. You can even go one step further to crystalline fructose which is a minimum of 98% fructose. The more traditional mix is 45% glucose to 55% fructose. This is the classic HFCS that you will find in your processed foods.

So why is more fructose a bad thing?

Glucose is what your body reads as ’sugar’. It’s what you measure when you test your blood sugar levels and your body responds buy releasing of insulin.

Fructose is either found naturally in fruits and vegetables or is chemically manufactured through a genetically modified enzymatic process. (see production section on Wikipedia). It is not read by the body as ’sugar’ and thus does not stimulate insulin secretion.

This is where it gets all funky. Insulin controls a hormone called leptin, which is what tells your body you are full. Researchers at the University of Georgia have shown that “rats fed a high-fructose diet quickly become leptin-resistant—they have plenty of the hormone, but they cannot put it to use” (“Discovering the Skinny on Fat,” University of Georgia Research Magazine, Fall 2007).

If HFCS was 50/50 just like sugar there would be little to no issues. But it doesn’t have equal amounts of fructose and glucose. Commonly used HFCS contains 10% free or unbound fructose, which must be metabolized in the liver. Translation: It can contribute to fatty deposits in the liver if you are consuming to much of the stuff. The unbound fructose found in HFCS (the percentage of fructose that is greater than glucose - see paragraph 4 above) contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals, and it leeches micro-nutrients from your body. It can also interfere with your heart’s use of minerals such as magnesium, copper and chromium. (I will do a future post on why deficiencies in these minerals are a bad bad thing)

There is a known increase in uric acid after consumption of unbound fructose. High levels of uric acid can lead to gout and heart disease. (J. Hallfrisch et al., “The Effects of Fructose on Blood Lipid Levels,” AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION 37, no, 3 (1983): 740-748)

It can also increase the blood lactic acid levels in diabetic patients leading to metabolic acidosis.

So no sugar and HFCS are not the same thing. I don’t care if the government considers it ‘Generally Safe for Consumption’. They said the same thing about Aspartame back in the 70’s even though it was killing lab animals and look what is now coming out about that.

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