Start reading the labels of processed foods and you may be surprised at the number of itemsfrom spaghetti sauce to English muffinsthat contain high-fructose corn syrup(HFCS) a combination of fructose and dextrose. There was a time when these types of foods were sweetened with good old-fashioned sugar. But in the 30-plus years since it was introduced, HFCS has gone from accounting for less than 1 percent of caloric sweeteners used in processed food, to representing 42 percent of added caloric sweetenersmainly because it is cheaper and sweeter.
Theres something else that has risen dramatically in the past three decades: the obesity rate, and Type 2 diabetes. Current estimates are that 60 million American adults (age 20 or older) are obese. Thats 30 percent of the population. Childhood obesity has tripled in that time. Could there be a link?
Blame the Big Gulps?
In July, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) called on the FDA to require health warnings on sodas. According to Peter J. Havel, an endocrinologist at UC Davis, researchers and epidemiologists suspect that increased HFCS, particularly in sodas, is a contributing factor to the rise in obesity, though certainly not the only one, and, to date, no direct causal link has been proved. Sodas are the focus of inquiry for several reasons: the prevalent use of HFCS in non-diet soft drinks, the increasingly large serving sizes and the possibility that certain properties of HFCS may interact with hormones involved in body weight modulation.
Dr. George Bray is a professor of medicine at Louisiana State University, and has looked at whether HFCS in beverages has played a role in the increase in obesity in the U.S. He says that two-thirds of the high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume is in soft drinks. If you add a single soft drink to an otherwise balanced energy level [meaning you are burning as many calories and you are taking in] for one year you will accumulate an additional 15 pounds, says Bray.
And many are drinking more than one pop a day. According to CSPI, "Carbonated soft drinks are the single biggest source of calories in the American diet, providing about 7 percent of calories; adding in noncarbonated drinks brings the figure to 9 percent. Teenagers get 13 percent of their calories from carbonated and noncarbonated soft drinks."
