EvilEgg: Correlation is not causation

Nope, it means you need to establish the latter from the former with a causal link.

Which has been done.

ZipSplat: Keep f*ckin' that HFCS chicken. Eating multiple times over the amount of simple carbohydrates that you should is going to result in diabetes. This isn't because of some mystical property of HFCS that has evaded chemists - it's because if you eat too many simple carbs in general you're going to develop insulin resistance.

Treating all simple sugars like they're the same molecule is as ignorant as swapping methanol for booze -- they're both alcohols, after all. You're about 40 years behind the curve here.

vharshyde: EvilEgg: Correlation is not causation

Say it with me, everyone!

But causation does force correlation. In particular, we do not have someone saying "oh look, when the Redskins win the last game before the election, the incumbent wins, isn't that weird?" Instead we have a hypothesis: that known liver response to fructose is different than it is to sucrose, and that liver dysfunction is the prime cause of Type II Diabetes, so it is possible that one could lead to the other so that a correlation may exist. It does so, which makes their hypothesis plausible. Yes, it is not proved (although you'd be hard pressed to find anything in science that is), but now instead of simply stating the old saw, you need to advance a plausible hypothesis that explains why their hypothesis is wrong, and your hypothesis needs to agree with their data, and provide a prediction that contradicts theirs or you need to show that their data does not actually support their conclusion. Chanting a slogan does neither.

liam76: EvilEgg: Correlation is not causation

No, but it isn't like that was all they looked at.

The study reports that countries that use HFCS in their food supply had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than countries that did not use HFCS. The analysis also revealed that HFCS's association with the "significantly increased prevalence of diabetes" occurred independent of total sugar intake and obesity levels.

How many years did it take them to figure out the whole cholesterol/heart attack relationship? What, they still haven't?

The different fatty acids have different metabolic properties. So do the different amino acids, glutamine being the prime example (cancer cells can use it for damn near everything). So why would sugars be any different? I can verify today, but if fructose is metabolized by a different enzyme, or utilizes different receptors to enter the cell, or to be recognized by the pancreas, or initiates insulin signaling that in any way varies in intensity or effector kinases/transcription factors, then I think it would be safe to conclude it is metabolized differently, and could have different effects. Why sugars would be treated any differently than amino acids or fatty acids, whose structures can be quite similar but can each involve different individual metabolic enzymes, is beyond me. That's the research I'd like to see (it might even be on Pubmed right now...).

EvilEgg: Correlation is not causation

Oh hey, look! Someone said correlation is not causation. That means the two items can't possibly linked! We can all just close our browser windows and forget about this nonsense now.

Lunaville: Please, could either you or Dragonchild explain what the glycemic index is, it's relevance to health, and the easiest way to guestimate where a food falls on that scale in terms a person without a scientific background can understand?

Magorn: The Glycemic Index is an attempt to measure the speed at which a particular food causes your blood sugar to rise and the overall amount of the rise.

Pretty much, but I need to clarify something here. People somehow think that high glycemic index leads to high blood sugar leads to insulin leads to fat leads to diabetes. This is not correct. The concept of glycemic index is for the benefit of people who ALREADY have trouble with insulin -- i.e., diabetics. This comes down to the huge, huge difference between glucose and fructose. To explain this, let's go through various scenarios:

1) Healthy person consumes sucrose (table sugar) or HFCS -- a can of cola, for example.
In this case the fructose and glucose are broken down separately. Glucose is a basic molecule of life -- it's one of the few things your brain can consume for energy, and if you starve yourself of glucose your liver will make the stuff from whatever you have stored. One assumption is that insulin leads to fat -- this is, again, not correct. Insulin, by itself, is benign and frankly rather necessary -- just ask a Type I diabetic. They'd love to be able to make their own insulin. What insulin does, among other things, is it tells the body to process the glucose and stop eating. Yes, insulin leads you to STOP eating. The glucose largely gets stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen, which is 100% non-toxic. Now here's where the fructose comes in. Your liver has to process it, leading to all sorts of toxic by-products. This has several effects.
A) Fructose does not trigger insulin. You could eat a truck of it and your brain won't think you ate anything. This is why "a calorie is a calorie" is bunk that needs to die.
B) Fructose by-products render insulin inactive. You're making the stuff but it's not triggering glucose storage, which leads to high blood sugar. THERE is your blood sugar spike.
C) Insulin resistance. The rest of your body adapts to the runaway insulin production triggered by (B) above, and you're now on your way to Type II diabetes.
D) Fructose triggers fat production. Fructose can't be converted to glycogen. It's stored as fat.
E) The toxic by-products also trigger low-level inflammation, cause hypertension, and create the plaques that lead to atherosclerosis.
Notice this is a nasty combination. Your body has no limit to how much fructose it can want to consume, it's packaged with glucose (in HFCS or table sugar) that the fructose prevents safe storage of, and has no benign storage option itself.
Now, this is just my hypothesis, but if there's any difference between HFCS and sugar, it's that the process of hydrolysis is not perfect. Your intestine uses sucrase to break down what's left of table sugar. The good news is your body can regulate sucrase based on its existing blood sugar levels, which means the spike is dampened somewhat. HFCS has nothing to break down -- it's pre-digested -- so there's nothing stopping your blood sugar from blasting through the sucrase roof. HFCS is worse for diabetics, but if you're already diabetic it's basically the difference between being hit by a car or a truck. For everyone else it may feel and taste better, but the long-term damage to your body is EXACTLY the same.

2) Healthy person consumes glucose -- a dish of pasta, a potato, or a bowl of white rice.
In this case it's all glucose hitting the body, which is something the body is very good at processing. Yes, your blood sugar will go up. Way up, even. And then it'll go right back down before any damage is done, because you're healthy. It's quickly broken down; insulin works the way it's supposed to. Some of the glucose used immediately, much is largely converted to non-toxic glycogen, the rest to fat if your body is saturated with glycogen. For a marathon runner, nothing beats building up energy like carb loading. The downside here is that the body is adapted to consuming glucose with a large quantity of fiber and water (bulk). If there's no fiber, your body processes the glucose in minutes and the insulin (which, again, tells you to STOP eating) disappears with the glucose. You get hungry again. So it's easy to over-eat and gain weight, but with a drastic difference in by-products you're not nearly as likely to be diabetic. You are more likely to be sedentary if you get too heavy, and the body will make its own toxic products if you don't get off your ass and move around. But no, "carbs" are NOT the problem.

3) Diabetic consumes either sucrose or glucose.
In this case, the fructose has already done its damage; the short-term concerns for a diabetic consuming fructose are next to nil. The only issue here is that if someone developed type II diabetes by consuming fructose, continued consumption extends the disease. Now it's the glucose that's the problem. Diabetics either can't create (type I) or can't respond to (type II) insulin, so the otherwise benign glucose just sits in the bloodstream and rises to toxic levels. Which, mind you, glucose is so benign that the levels can get VERY high, but with diabetics it gets there. That's why it's diagnosed as a disease. Diabetics can't consume glucose not because glucose is the problem, but because of the damage to their bodies.

4) Person consumes an energetic but low GI food, like a carrot.
Whether someone is diabetic or not, a "low GI food" means the glucose isn't released into the body quickly. This is typically because it's physically locked in fiber that's slowly released by chewing and digestion. The glucose is made available to the body slowly over the course of several hours, and much of it isn't digested at all. This is why the fructose in fruit is generally harmless. There's no blood sugar spike, and when fiber's involved, the listed caloric content of a food is a high estimate.

TL;DR: Just knowing what glycemic index is incomplete information.

dragonchild: EvilEgg: Correlation is not causation

Nope, it means you need to establish the latter from the former with a causal link.

Which has been done.

ZipSplat: Keep f*ckin' that HFCS chicken. Eating multiple times over the amount of simple carbohydrates that you should is going to result in diabetes. This isn't because of some mystical property of HFCS that has evaded chemists - it's because if you eat too many simple carbs in general you're going to develop insulin resistance.

Treating all simple sugars like they're the same molecule is as ignorant as swapping methanol for booze -- they're both alcohols, after all. You're about 40 years behind the curve here.

High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristics of obesity in rats: increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels.
Bocarsly ME, Powell ES, Avena NM, Hoebel BG.
Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2010 Nov;97(1):101-6. Epub 2010 Feb 26.

J Nutr. 2009 Jun;139(6):1242S-1245S. Epub 2009 Apr 29.
The effect of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on triglycerides and uric acid.
Angelopoulos TJ, Lowndes J, Zukley L, Melanson KJ, Nguyen V, Huffman A, Rippe JM.

The second one is a review, with a glaring comment in the abstract: "Evidence shows that fructose bypasses many of the body's satiating signals, thus potentially promoting overconsumption of energy, weight gain, and the development on insulin resistance." I'm curious what the evidence is, but it's probably better than some random dudes on FARK saying "sugar is sugar".

And to show that I'm not heartless, that it's not just all dollars and cents:

Misconceptions about high-fructose corn syrup: is it uniquely responsible for obesity, reactive dicarbonyl compounds, and advanced glycation endproducts?

White JS.

J Nutr. 2009 Jun;139(6):1219S-1227S. Epub 2009 Apr 22.

Here's one for the "sugar is sugar" people. I can spot some glaring errors in his [lack of] methodogy, and his refusal to address specific methodological errors in the work he criticizes, as well as some logical holes in the points he addresses, but if you're going to take a stand on this issue, at least have a peer-reviewed review to cite.

Ehcks: HFCS is glucose and fructose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose. They ARE the same molecules.

HFCS is not a molecule; it's a blend. Nutritionally there's no distinction between it and sucrose, yes, but it helps if you get the basic facts right.

The negative health effects of HFCS and sucrose have been isolated to the fructose. Monosaccharides also include glucose, galactose, and lactose, among others. They should NOT be considered equivalent. Fructose is nothing like glucose (which is benign to the point that your body makes the stuff) and a lot of people can't even digest lactose.

If it was as simple as "sugar" then the Japanese diet, which is very glucose-heavy, shouldn't result in one of the highest life expectancies in the world. And no, quantity isn't the whole story. If you swapped all the glucose they consume with pure fructose, keeping the portions and everything else exactly the same, the country's number of diabetics would skyrocket.

Shyla: But.... "Sugar is sugar!"

Ask anyone who homebrews if "sugar is sugar" and see what they tell you. Especially someone who does an all-grain process.

Well, the rich need to kill off the surplus population somehow.

NOW (OFFICIALLY) FREE ON YOUTUBE

Worth a watch. I was pleasantly surprised to see this favorite of mine for free there when I was browsing YouTube for a free movie to watch. It's worth a look to see just how ubiquitous corn (and HFCS) are.

I suspect the problem is too much over-sweetened junk food and too many calories, not HFCS specifically. Granted, corn syrup may be the worst offender, but good old-fashioned sugar or honey can cause just as much trouble if you eat it by the tub-full, and just about any source of excess calories will cause health problems eventually. Fruit also has fructose, but no-one is concerned about fruit intake because it is much harder to eat too much fruit than it is too drink too much soda or eat too many Twinkies.

Bill_Wick's_Friend: TFA notes that Canada's HFCS use is "up there" but gives no actual figure for comparison. I can't see how it could be too high since I don't see HFCS listed as an ingredient in any products. It's not in ketchup, soda, candy bars, prepared sauces etc etc the way it seems to be in the USA.

Maybe I just don't buy crappy enough food.

If you do a quick study you will frind that countries with socialized healthcare and an interest in keeping their citizens healthy do not allow most of the bullsh*t that is in the products for the US.
Weird coincidences - Fewer carcinogens = fewer health issues and less time in a doctor's office.
Non profit medicne vs. socialized medicne.
Do the maths yourselves.

Magorn: Interesting, purely ancedotal story:



I once went backpacking through Southeast Asia for 9 months with my girlfriend of the time. Did nothing but consume huge quanities of sugar (beer, rice, noodles, sweets). Lived like a sedentary beach bum laying out in the sun all day long like a beached walrus. Melted off weight like I've never experienced before in my life. My girlfriend at the time lived the same exact lifestyle had the exact opposite reaction ... put on lots of weight quickly.

Came back home with a renewed lease on life and vowed to life a healthier lifestyle. Gave up drinking. Started eating super healthy and in smaller quantities. Walked and took public transportation everywhere. Went to the gym 4-5 times a week and hired a trainer. Still gained all the weight back. My girlfriend once again lived the same exact lifestyle and lost all the weight gained in Asia.

That was a pretty significant eye opening event for me that the human metabolism is amazingly complex equation of hormones, enzymes and metabolic processes. Yeah, there are some basic common sense guidelines you can follow in regards to calories in vs. calories out, but I'm pretty well convinced that we'll look back in these times 70 to 80 years from now as the dark ages of understanding the human metabolic process. The funny thing on weight loss is everyone believes themselves to be an expert. Most people will readily admit they're not an astrophysicist or theoretical mathematician, but people who don't know a pentose phosphate pathway from a penthouse playmate believes themselves to be a amateur PhD in biochem because they read the South Beach Diet.

Leeds: And to top it all off, you don't even force your own kid to eat properly, you let your little he-she dictate a no veggie policy and you sit back and accept this.
You really are a terrible parent.

My kid ate pretty much nothing except milk, juice, and little smokies sausages for the first three years of his life and he turned out fine. Over six feet tall, still doesn't like to eat vegetables, but he eats a more or less balanced diet now, just like I do. And neither one of us is overweight.

So what do you do when your kids won't eat--hold them down and pour it down their throats? Make them sit at the table for six hours until they eat something they hate? Yup, that sounds like much better parenting.

Lunaville, let your kid eat sweet potatoes and peanut butter sandwiches. The little he/she will be fine. Make it eat two sandwiches next time.

So, having type-2 diabetes causes people to consume more HFCS?

Oh wait, we're assuming causation the other way, aren't we?

Magorn: I'm a he, rather than a she, I'm 6'2, currently about 250lbs or so , and for breakfast this morning I've had a Sugar free greek yougurt, for lunch I will be eating a protien bar, and dinner's going to be a salad with roasted chicken. I may also eat about 1/4 cup of almonds and peanuts before bed. If your sanctimonious ass thinks you could match me calorie for calorie, activity for activty, for a day, much less a week, I'd dare you to try.

There are lots of sanctimonious jerks around here, just ignore them. From that brief description it looks to me like you actually might be under-eating.

ZipSplat: Keep f*ckin' that HFCS chicken. Eating multiple times over the amount of simple carbohydrates that you should is going to result in diabetes. This isn't because of some mystical property of HFCS that has evaded chemists - it's because if you eat too many simple carbs in general you're going to develop insulin resistance. And yes, having a diet flooded with cheap simple carbs (which we have, thanks to HFCS) will have an increased rate of diabetes.

Get it right.

The government subsidy of of corn production in this country makes HFCS cheaper than sugar, making the incorporation of evil carby badness more abundant and widespread. This makes HFCS a problem in its own right beyond that of sugar.

When will the government stop subsidies for HFCS? I know it will not solve the problem, but it would help.

 

He's coming for us!!!

Spend some time in the Fark cooking threads and learn how to make real food out of real ingredients that instead of eating processed foods full of chemical crap.

Between crock pots and pressure cookers, you can work full time, cook healthy meals and still have plenty of time to sit on your ass in front of your television, Murica.

Although there is mounting evidence that HFCS is worse for you than sucrose, some of which was already posted, arguing about it is a bit like arguing about whether you should ingest Ricin instead of Polonium-120. Their both poison and even if one is worse you should stay well clear of both.

The American food supply is hopelessly poisoned with billions of advertising dollars have gone into covering that up. Most "food" is pure crap, yet everything in a box proclaims all sorts of misleading nonsense on it. I dread the coming (here already?) "HFCS FREE!!!" label that is inevitable. As if trading out one toxic substance for another makes something healthy. But screw me in the behind, it really does WORK. Baffle people so much that out of confusion they stop trying and just buy your worthless non-food. It is a pandemic in slow motion.

/Seriously though, don't eat either. Stick to food without an ingredients label as much as possible. Grass-fed meat, veggies, and some fruit. If you must each bread make your own. Also make your own condiments (mayo, mustard, ketchup). Don't drink ANY Calories aside from whole milk, that is seriously the #1 reason people get fat. Juice = Soda.
//It is hard and it pisses people off (for some reason), but eventually you kind of lose your taste for really sweet things. Even when I do indulge I can't eat nearly as much as I used to, a couple of squares of sweet chocolate and I don't want any more.

Lunaville: Like Dragonchild, I do think that HFCS is metabolized differently.

It's not metabolized differently. The reason why I got grumpy is because ZipSplat went on a Taubes-ian derp-spree about "simple carbs" which equates glucose and fructose when the Japanese diet blows open a HUGE hole in that idiocy. Sucrose and HFCS are both basically half fructose, and it's that fructose that does the damage. Nutritionally, metabolically, they're the same for all intents and purposes.

It's not being pedantic because the failure to distinguish between various molecules of the same type is what led to all this nutritional misinformation in the first place. There are HUGE differences between molecules of the same type. Hell, prions and black widow venom are "proteins" but they'll kill you FFS.

CheatCommando: Someone is going to have to do a real study that contradicts it, not post snark to a non-peer reviewed web site.

Again, there's a huge misunderstanding of the purpose of correlations here. Correlations are not the result of study; they are the trigger for study. It's just the first step. You first find a correlation, then find the cause, and it's the latter part that's a million times more important. But in this case, we're going backwards. We already know what fructose does. The increasing rates of obesity and diabetes in developed countries justified the research, but it's now well-understood at a biochemical level. We do not need to toss around more correlation studies; people need to know what fructose does to the body. Another correlation study just throws a few more papers into a shouting match.

Ehcks: bmongar: Fructose may cause fatty liver disease thought that is still being researched. Fiber reduces the impact of fructose on your liver.

But that doesn't change anything as far as "Real Sugar" drinks go. Or anything else with "Real Sugar" instead of corn sugar. Sucrose is still 50% fructose. What you're saying is that sugar is bad.

It actually makes a big difference. Liver biochemistry is effectively different than brain and muscle biochemistry. The brain is a pig for glucose. The liver doesn't treat fructose like it does glucose even if there exist nice biochemical pathways to interconvert. They just aren't active in the liver and that's where the action is. You can have solid university level knowledge of biochemistry and not understand this. I was a huge skeptic about the dangers of fructose and then read about 40 papers and coupled that to some metabolomics studies I was involved in. I hated admitting it, but HFCS is actually really bad stuff.

How will the corn industry survive if we continue to criticize;
- Ethanol
- HFCS
- Subsidies

Metalithic: I suspect the problem is too much over-sweetened junk food and too many calories, not HFCS specifically. Granted, corn syrup may be the worst offender, but good old-fashioned sugar or honey can cause just as much trouble if you eat it by the tub-full, and just about any source of excess calories will cause health problems eventually. Fruit also has fructose, but no-one is concerned about fruit intake because it is much harder to eat too much fruit than it is too drink too much soda or eat too many Twinkies.

Fructose may cause fatty liver disease thought that is still being researched. Fiber reduces the impact of fructose on your liver. So consuming fructose in fruit that is conveniently packaged with fiber doesn't cause the trouble that drinking a can of fructose soda does. And as you pointed out it is hard to eat enough fruit do do yourself much harm (because of the fiber bulk).

Whoops wrong chart and I can't edit that:

Ehcks: dragonchild: Treating all simple sugars like they're the same molecule is as ignorant as swapping methanol for booze

HFCS is glucose and fructose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose. They ARE the same molecules.

But different proportions

That's like saying ..... oh never mind, people like you are hopeless, I'm tired of splaning.

born_yesterday: Why sugars would be treated any differently than amino acids or fatty acids, whose structures can be quite similar but can each involve different individual metabolic enzymes, is beyond me.

This. I mentioned home brewing in my last post above, but this is a great example. When doing your grain conversion, you have to target very specific temperatures for certain targeted results. Different sugars are created at different temperatures by different enzymes. In turn, these sugars are processed differently by the yeast. Some are metabolized by them and others cannot be. When you carbonate you have to take into account what TYPE of sugar you're using to prime. Some have only a 50% conversion rate while others are 100% fermentable. Sugars are different. It's the same in the body I have no doubt.

ArcadianRefugee: Wait.... A difference of 1.3%? This is news-worthy?

No, a difference of 1.3 percent points. But to just go with it, if we take the US population and round it down to 314 million, that would mean that you'd have a difference of (314 * 0.08 - 314 * 0.067) = (roughly) 4 million people with diabetes. Just think about those 4 million people who suddenly cost less in healthcare, cost less in benefits (some people with extreme diabetes get all kinds of funky side effects and secondary issues) etc. And at what cost? Putting less HFCS in the food. People would need to grow up and stop going for the sweetest crap out there.

Bill_Wick's_Friend: TFA notes that Canada's HFCS use is "up there" but gives no actual figure for comparison. I can't see how it could be too high since I don't see HFCS listed as an ingredient in any products. It's not in ketchup, soda, candy bars, prepared sauces etc etc the way it seems to be in the USA.

Maybe I just don't buy crappy enough food.

We don't list it as HFCS on our labels.

Look for glucose/fructose or glucose-fructose. That's HFCS.

The obvious solution to this problem is to switch to Low Fructose Corn Syrup.

EvilEgg: Correlation is not causation

No, but it isn't like that was all they looked at.

The study reports that countries that use HFCS in their food supply had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than countries that did not use HFCS. The analysis also revealed that HFCS's association with the "significantly increased prevalence of diabetes" occurred independent of total sugar intake and obesity levels.

Keep f*ckin' that HFCS chicken. Eating multiple times over the amount of simple carbohydrates that you should is going to result in diabetes. This isn't because of some mystical property of HFCS that has evaded chemists - it's because if you eat too many simple carbs in general you're going to develop insulin resistance. And yes, having a diet flooded with cheap simple carbs (which we have, thanks to HFCS) will have an increased rate of diabetes.

Get it right.

Countries that use a lot of HFCS are countries where people eat a lot of processed food. People who eat processed food have little control over the nutritional value of the foods they eat. They are at the mercy of processed food industries which add sweeteners to increase market share. Whether that sweetener is HFCS, cane sugar or something else is mostly dictated by economics as well.

who says you cannot eat money?

Added Sugar is bad for you. ALL of it. That means cane sugar and HFC. The difference between the two is practically nil compared to what they BOTH will do to you when you are talking about the quantities most people consume.

Countries with higher use of HFCS had an average prevalence of type 2 diabetes of 8 percent compared to 6.7 percent in countries not using HFCS.

"This research suggests that HFCS can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes

It doesn't suggest that at all.

said study co-author Professor Stanley Ulijaszek

Well that explains it then.

The rest of the article contains the same debunked crap about fructose that shows up in every "HFCS is evil" faux health article over the last 10 years.