The Hazards of SugarFollow

The notion that fruit juice is "healthy" is such a scam. Three glasses of apple juice or white grape juice (which is what almost all juices are, even the ones that say something else on the label) isn't significantly different from three glasses of Coca-Cola.

HFCS is "a" sugar. But I agree the title implies we're discussing cane sugar.

In my untrained opinion, the issue with HFCS isn't that it contains Essence of Hitler or anything, it's that HFCS is in everything packaged, thus increasing your daily sugar intake whether you're eating Oreos or making mac & cheese or having a can of soup.

High-fructose corn syrup is sweeter than sugar, and digested in a different way. It's cheaper than sugar and doesn't stimulate insulin production (allegedly), so it's in everything and doesn't trigger a sensation of fullness so you keep eating. Win-win!

One thing that made me pleased was that he didn't argue against artificial sweeteners. The only way I've been able to totally cut out sugary soft drinks is by drinking hot tea with splenda at least twice a day.

Someday, when they announce that splenda causes cancer in lab rats, I'll be screwed, but at least I won't have diabetes.

Splenda is a sucrose molecule with some of the hydroxyl groups changed to chlorides. The result is 600 times sweeter than actual sucrose, and a molecule that is completely ignored by 80% of the digestive track and dumped directly into *****. The remaining 20% is absorbed into the blood then excreted by the kidneys into urine.

It could also be the bulkers that are present in fake sugars that taste bad. Some people can detect the unsweet sugars dextrose and maltose, and they're not pleasant in large doses.

Thanks for posting this. I was surprised at some of the things they discussed and usually hear arguments against one while supporting the other.

I'm not Joph, but it's easy:

Drink water if you are thirsty.

Edited, Jan 11th 2010 7:23pm by TirithRR

Curious as to how many calories I was taking in, I looked up calories per little packet of sugar and compared with calories in "normal" drinks, such as coke.

I found that for the volume of drink I was consuming, I would have to add 10-15 little sugar packets to equal the calories, yet I was adding only about 3.

I have had some things sweetened purely with HFCS and I just can't believe it is sweeter then sugar, since if I added 10-15 packets of sugar my drink would have been insanely sweet (although I've not tried).

Perhaps what people mean is that HFCS is sweeter then sugar per unit mass - but less sweet per calorie - therefore less (mass) is added but you get fatter?

Sure. If all you care about is how much sugar your body is taking in. The juice does still retain some of the vitamins and whatnot from the original fruit. It's not like when I buy juice instead of soda, I'm thinking "I'll get less sugar and preservatives!". I'm thinking "This has some vitamins that my body could use".

But that's just me. If I'm worried about sugar, I just drink water. If I'm making a choice between juice and soda, it's pretty obvious which one is still better for me. Same deal with selling this to kids. While I agree that the volume of sugar we feed ourselves and our children is alarming, the kids do need sources of vitamins and minerals and whatever else (I'm not a nutritionist, but I did stay at a holiday inn express!). Juice is the lesser of two evils, I suppose.


Ideally, kids would drink water and eat the right proportion of the right kinds of foods. However, for all our talk about the bad effects of eating so much food with processed sugar and preservatives and fillers, the reality is that a much higher percentage of people prior to the rise of the modern food industry and FDA requirements failed to obtain sufficient quantities of key things they needed in their diets. We actually tend to forget that our bodies are actually evolved for a hunter-gatherer type diet. We're supposed to eat meat occasionally, with fruits, nuts, and tubers gathered up along the way. Humans have never had a "proper" diet since we settled down and started growing grains and vegetables 2-3 thousand years ago. At least our current FDA rules insure that it's almost impossible to fail to get sufficient quantities of key vitamins and minerals, but the downside is that we get a whole bunch of other stuff which isn't so great either.


We're still overwhelmingly better off though. And obviously, there's nothing that actually stops you from carefully calculating the correct balance of different types of all-natural foods and making your diet out of them. It's just hard to do, and most people wont do it.

Then you'd be almost entirely wrong. Vitamin C is the only vitamin commonly found in juices, and you almost certainly far, far more than your daily average of the stuff. 8 ounces of grape juice in my fridge grants 120% of my daily suggested intake, as does the orange juice. I drink more than 8 ounces in a single serving, let alone only drinking one serving a day.

I'm a bit of a heavy juice drinker, and I probably average 500%-1000% of my daily recommended intake of vitamin C. I surmise you average about 200%-300%. Fortunately unlike most vitamins, Vitamin C isn't toxic if you intake too much (within reasonable constraint). It's also cheap, so companies tend to add it to products just so they look healthier.

But that's the problem, juice isn't the lesser of two evils, it's pretty much the same. Commercial juices aren't significantly more nutritious than soda. They have the common perception of being healthy because "juice is natural and everything that is natural is good for us right?" That perception is a lie, heck both parts of that statement are wrong (the juice we buy isn't even natural).

Exactly, in fact it's nearly impossible to do if you aren't explicitly and deliberately planning and checking everything you eat and drink. That's the problem.

It's also silly because it's not even economically beneficial. Part of the reason why HFCS is used in so many products isn't because it is actually cheaper than other sugars, but because we've spent tax money to subsidize the industry and artificially lower the price for food manufacturers. This is wasteful spending. If fiscal conservatives attacked issues like this, then they'd certainly find my support.

Edited, Jan 11th 2010 7:57pm by Allegory

This is why I prefer V8.

Well, that and it tastes better than most fruit juice does.

Now if only they made gallon jugs of it - the 64oz bottle doesn't last very long when three or four people decide "ooh, I want a glass of that".

As the biochemistry in the linked lecture demonstrates, HFCS and table sugar - sucrose - are digested by the body in exactly the same way. HFCS tastes sweeter than table sugar because the fructose molecule has been split off, and it's noticeably sweeter than glucose (which, by itself, is less sweet than table sugar.)

You'd think that'd mean companies would use less of it, but nope. They use just as much or more. (The lecture accuses them of adding salt to foods, then adding in HFCS to hide the salt as well as chemical preservatives.)

The good sugar is glucose, which is much more readily used by the body, and comes from complex carbohydrates in breads and vegetables and fruit. (Some fruits do contain fructose as well, but coupled with fiber, which makes up for it.)

This makes even less sense than usual.