Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This debate has come up on HN repeatedly; it is again worth pointing out that HFCS is "HF" relative to "CS", not to table sugar. Table sugar is ~50% fructose, HFCS 55%.

The point isn't that HFCS is good for you --- it isn't --- but that a flight to "natural" sugars isn't a good response. The problem is hyperpalatable foods and (even moreso) liquid calories, not which sugar is being used.

HFCS alarmism probably works to the advantage of junk food companies, who can simply market equally unhealthful products built on table sugar as a premium alternative.

View on HN

>> Table sugar is ~50% fructose, HFCS 55%.

Actually, table sugar is sucrose, a different compound to fructose. Fructose absorption is actually faster in 1:1 fructose:glucose mixes.

So there are differences in the metabolism of fructose in the two situations, even if minor, and as a general point of chemistry it's not really correct to say that table sugar is half sucrose any more than it's correct to say alcohol is half methane.

But in general yes, HFCS as a substance is not the problem. HFCS as a subsidized foodstuff that gets wedged into too many things, that's the issue.

Sucrose is glucose and fructose, stuck together by a single bond (hence the 50% fructose). The first thing your digestive system does is break that bond.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose

It's a distinct molecule.

It's also far from the first thing that happens during the digestive process, as it takes place in the duodenum. If you ate a 1:1 mixture of glucose/fructose they would be present higher up the digestive system. Fructose also absorbs faster in the 1:1 proportion than in other proportions.

I'm not saying Sucrose Good/HFCS Bad (could be the other ay around for all I know), just that there are differences.

Ah, so that is what you meant. Your original comment sounded like you were saying sucrose did not chemically consist of 50% fructose.

I don't think that "which sugar" is better is necessarily the debate that is going on here. It is the protectionism of the sugar industry with a huge amount of money going to waste because of it.

---

Honestly, the amount of sugar/HFCS in various products in the US is absolutely insane. Hell, I pay a premium to buy whole natural peanut butter compared to Jif or the other crap which all contain sugar.

These days I spend more time looking at labels trying to find out what crap is in my food that shouldn't be there, chemicals, sugars, all kinds of salts, and preservatives. Ugh.

It is not pronounced Jif it is pronounced Gif.

You would think it would be easier to find peanut butter with less ingredients. I'm a peanut butter fiend, I love it so much I eat it with a spoon. The first time I had peanut butter without sugar was a few months ago, and it was like a miracle. So delicious!

I'm from Europe, eating peanut butter with sugar in it was a shock to the system, and not a good one either. It tasted funny to me.

Don't try Japanese peanut butter then, I think it contains more sugar than it does peanuts... ><

[Seriously, the stuff is like candy paste. Although I grew up eating American mass-market peanut butter, I can't stomach the Japanese stuff; even in a sandwich with something sweet like jam/jelly, it just tastes wrong...]

Down-voted because this has nothing to do with the article, which is about the US sugar protectionism racket and not the health implications of HFCS.

Unfortunately, I've noticed this is quite common on HN. The top comment is quite often some long discussion about some minor point of the article. I really wish HN would implement collapsed comments so I could choose to expand the discussion or just easily skip to the next ones which address the article directly.

I think the point is why do we have a sugar protection racket.

We might, but if ending it simply routed the market from corn syrup to cane sugar, what difference does that make for consumers? It seems like the most you'd be able to say is that it might make junk food cheaper.

There are people who seek out and drink Mexican coke since it contains sugar (see also pepsi throwback). There were also jobs lost as the candy industry moved from the US to Canada and Mexico.

Sure, but far more jobs would be lost if we corrected the more serious problem, which is the country's addiction to energy-dense sweetened drinks.

> what difference does that make for consumers?

They would now have choice. Why is it the role of government to exclude entrepreneurs from competing?

Isn't this a little bit like complaining how unfair life is for tobacco companies?

How is that?

They would have a choice between two extremely unhealthy alternatives.

I don't see how this is a problem ... or something to be worried about.

I'm not sure 'essential but over-consumed' nutrient is comparable to 'cancer causing addictive drug'.

Obesity is also correlated with cancer. Metabolic syndrome includes elements of physical dependence.

More comparable than you'd think...

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/survival-strat...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/

Evidence that sugar is addictive in the same way as are narcotics and cancer cells in blood with elevated sugar grow much faster.

I'm a little rusty on this subject (I might come back later and link some sources/videos), but my main issue is not with HFCS vs table sugar, but just the fact that HFCS is in everything nowadays. This is partially because of corn subsidies by the government (which makes HFCS cheaper than its "actual" price). However, this is also because at one point in this country we decided that fat was bad (with a bad study), and we thus took it upon ourselves to remove fat from our diets, and in fact largely succeeded. Yet all the things we were trying to prevent (like heart disease), went UP. What happened was manufacturers replaced the fat in many products with HFCS. Its to the point now where you go to the store and many brands of bread contain HFCS, its almost inescapable. I certainly don't want that replaced with normal sugar, I just want the price of HFCS to be accurate, and for the government to stop making drastic declarations in nutrition that can lead to these really strange and unexpected consequences.

>>> This is partially because of corn subsidies by the government (which makes HFCS cheaper than its "actual" price).

Both sugar and corn are heavily subsidized, but sugar AFAIK is subsidized by tariffs (i.e. higher prices for the consumer) and corn by transfers. I have no idea why - probably "biofuels" fiasco has a lot to do with it, but not sure if it is the main cause.

>>> for the government to stop making drastic declarations in nutrition that can lead to these really strange and unexpected consequences.

You mean, the government to stop regulating what we eat and trying to protect us from ourselves? Fat chance.

Dude, let me quote something:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

People have a fsckin' right to eat unhealthy and who the hell are you to fix prices of their food so that they can't?

That's one thing. Another one is that such schemes are really, pragmatically bad as they make people involved in them make political decisions which protect their unfair advantage at the cost of goals important to the general public. Do you really want people to vote for whomever promises to pass bills giving them most benefits at the cost of others? Well, I know that people sometimes do that anyway, but IMO it shouldn't be encouraged with successful examples lasting for two centuries.

And at last - people are pretty capable of getting what they want. If you make it slightly more expensive, they'll simply pay. More expensive - they'll switch to worse alternatives (HFCS, anyone?). Even more - illegal production. Outright ban - sugar mafia. I mean, the US already tried to "fight alcoholism" some time ago and it almost worked.

The Declaration of Independence is not a governing document of the United States.

"If you make it slightly more expensive, they'll simply pay" does not seem like a statement that comports with economics.

The Declaration of Independence is a statement of people who successfully fought a world power and founded country which became a world power. I think this counts more than a majority vote in parliament, not less.

In the frictionless vacuum of a message board debate, you can imagine there being several portions of the US Constitution that could be placed into conflict with the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps we don't have to pay income tax after all!

I may move to the US if that can be established :)

Message boards are fertile grounds for thought experiments.

> People have a fsckin' right to eat unhealthy

They do not. Obesity, most especially childhood obesity, puts the sufferer at risk to all kinds of nastiness that doesn't kill you outright but is very expensive to treat. I have the right to keep the morbidly obese out of my wallet.

So just to clarify your point of view, would you also agree that smoking should be completely banned, and to varying degrees, any unhealthy activity should be actively prohibited?

To add to grannyg00se's comment: Should we also force people to exercise?

I don't think it would make that much difference. The corn industry is subsidized by the govt anyway, so i am pretty sure corn syrup would still be cheaper.

When I worked at USDA, it was noted that it likely would have led to cheaper biofuels in the United States to the extent that such extensive legislation and tax breaks wouldn't have been needed to jumpstart ethanol in the US.

So on the consumer end, as far as consumers are taxpayers, it would have meant paying for zero support programs instead of two. If you want to go out on a limb, cheaper ethanol leads to cheaper petrol due to a substitution effect, so potentially it would have made all food products marginally cheaper thanks to lower shipping costs.

The linked article is a good one though. It is a funny subject to bring up in the bureaucracy because as economists, we all knew the harm it did, but as bureaucrats, we also knew that the policy wasn't going anywhere.

It may not be a big change in the scheme of things, but if less government involvement in an industry can be accomplished without any noticeable effects to that industry, then isn't it almost true by definition that the government involvement should be decreased?

> might make junk food cheaper.

You mean might improve profits for junk food companies?

It's since become a corn product protection racket, I believe. And probably due to pork barrel politics in the Midwest

Understanding that correlation != causation, the trend lines for obesity, diabetes and the use of HFCS is pretty alarming anyhow and should be investigated further.

Why do I have a particular distaste for HFCS? I remember a time when Americans would come to Canada and say, "where are all your fat people?" Our local newspapers would run stories about how Americans perceive our "indulgent" culture. You don't see those stories anymore. Now we're toe-to-toe in (childhood) obesity, diabetes. Data shows that the US started to use HFCS in liquids and baked goods as early as the 1970s. Canada on the other hand, HFCS has only recently become a regular ingredient in food. I know this is anecdotal and not in anyway scientific, but I have to wonder what other trend could have caused increases in caloric consumption at this magnitude. My understanding is that cane sugar is processed by every cell in your body and HFCS is processed by only your liver. The liver allegedly becomes overworked. If true, this domino effect has grave consequences.

How does that trendline coincide with the market adoption of, for instance, sweetened energy-dense liquids as a hydration replacement for water?

I couldn't say for certain, but I do see that as a threat as well. I will say, among the people I know who have diabetes, only 1 is known for having a taste for sweetened beverages. I think what you're saying plays a role, but how do we explain the many who don't drink sugar water on a regular basis? For me, it seems like there's only a few ingredients in our food that make it through a broad spectrum of Western diet/culture, and of those ingredients only 1 seems to be eligible.

Americans consume, per capita, just a hair under 2 eight ounce servings of soda (presumably not including juice, which is morally the same as soda, energy drinks, and other energy-dense drinks) per day. But obviously, the distribution of that consumption is much lumpier than that, and is presumably biased towards people with metabolic syndrome.

It's the same molecules. Like everyone else has noted, 1 sucrose molecule = 1 glucose + 1 sucrose. The proportion of glucose to fructos is just slightly different in HFCS vs table sugar (55/42 or 42/53, versus 50/50).

To your correlation/causation point, why don't you think that this is the result of having massive, inexpensive, and domestic sources of a molecule that makes the human brain want to eat more? Rather than some minor distinction in the ratio of the monosaccharides its composed of?

Sugar is basically a drug with immediate gratification with only longer-term side effects to the health. Unless there are laws, companies that put the most of it in their products will 1) make more money because it's cheap and 2) sell more product. I don't know what happened in Canada, but I would guess either those interested in profiting even at the expense of public health either out-competed more ethical competitors or were able to weaken public health laws. Who knows, maybe the US public was the first target, and they went to the north only after our pancreases/adipose tissues were completely saturated...

> It's the same molecules.

No, its not. Sucrose is a molecule. Fructose is a different molecule. Glucose is another different molecule.

> Like everyone else has noted, 1 sucrose molecule = 1 glucose + 1 sucrose.

You mean 1 sucrose molecule is broken down at the first stage of its metabolism into 1 glucose and 1 fructose, rather than sucrose being an infinitely recursive combination of 1 glucose + 1 sucrose.

> The proportion of glucose to fructos is just slightly different in HFCS vs table sugar (55/42 or 42/53, versus 50/50).

Yes, the proportion of fructose to glucose in HFCS is higher than than the fixed 1:1 ratio that sucrose is broken down into (the exact amount varies, because HFCS isn't a fixed ratio). Since fructose and glucose have different effects (one notable difference is that there is at least some indication that fructose doesn't trigger the body's mechanisms for satiety while glucose does), this can be significant.

Dear god, how pedantic would you prefer that I be? It's a pain to type out monosaccharide and disaccharide all the time. Also, chemists will typically not use the term, "infinitely recursive".

Outside of that, your point is totally valid. The location in the body where the enzymes that break the glycosidic linkage means that the absorbtion curve is different. But I was not addressing that point. Just that the body doesn't break them down differently, after they sucrose molecule is split in the small intestines.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not always 55% fructose. HFCS can vary greatly in that ratio according to [this USC study](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20948525) that analyzed the fructose ratio of a variety of HFCS only sweetened soft drinks.

They found the actual ratio varied from 47-65%, with the mean amount being 59%, and the amount in several major brands was 65%.

The fructose ratio in HFCS is not regulated or reported, so you could be drinking anything. With a mean of 59% a 9% difference to table sugar is a big difference, and many popular brands have a 15% difference.

According to the study, the difference between HFCS and sugar is not a myth.

The other advantage that sugar has over HFCS has nothing to do with the chemical composition. It's more expensive.

Rebuttal to that article:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2011.4/full

Agreed that the most important point is that liquid carbohydrates and plain sugars are generally bad, and that that's 90% of what people should take away from discussion like this.

But it appears that there's still some particularly negative effects of HFCS relative to more typical sugars, too: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

That rat study came up 900 days ago in the last HFCS debate I saw here, and indicates mostly that rats seem to modulate their eating better with sucrose than with HFCS; it's also controversial. Is there a single human study we can now cite that attributes harm to HFCS that is specific to HFCS and not simply to consumption of sugars?

They controlled for caloric intake according to the article. The HFCS rats still got fatter than the sugar rats.

There were a lot of problems with that study. You can read about them here: http://examine.com/faq/is-hfcs-high-fructose-corn-syrup-wors...

Wow, that's an amazing resource. Thanks for pointing out, and I stand corrected.

This debate has come up on HN repeatedly; it is again worth pointing out that HFCS is "HF" relative to "CS", not to table sugar. Table sugar is ~50% fructose, HFCS 55%.

You can't look at the percentage difference of fructose and conclude that HFCS is not much different than regular sugar.

The reason HFCS is so terrible is because it is chemically different. As opposed to table sugar, where the sucrose, glucose and fructose are chemically bound, in HFCS the gluctose and fructose are unbound. What this means is that HFCS is digested much more quickly, often before the body can signal the brain that it is full.

Do you have a human study that establishes that? Because as I understand it, this isn't true, and that human studies have shown insignificant differences between the two. The chemical bond you're referring to is one we have evolved to break extremely quickly.

Here's some anecdata from my experience.

When I drink a soda made with cane sugar, I am satisfied: I've had a nice little sugar rush, I'm happy, now I want to get on with whatever else I want to do.

When I drink a soda made with HFCS, I am teased: my body has been reminded how tasty something made with cane sugar is, and I'd really like to have something. Oh hey here's that half-drunk 2-litre of Coke, guess I'll have some more of that. Repeat.

Now that I've realized this difference, I buy and drink a hell of a less soda. And am much more happier when I drink what I do.

(This is of course in the middle of various other changes - it's after switching to diet soda for a while, and completely kicking the habit for a few years.)

On the rare occasions when I drink soda these days I just think, I would have been happier with water. Also if I'm gonna consume 300 calories I'd rather have a taco or something.

He's not debating the cause of obesity. The linked article is about the economics of sweeteners in the US. It's about money not health.

Hey, no fair you actually read the article. The rest of us are just hypothesizing and adding our opinions based on the title.

HFCS alarmism probably works to the advantage of junk food companies, who can simply market equally unhealthful products built on table sugar as a premium alternative.

That's fine, let them try. It would equalize the market among these players and those who are already not using HFCS.

... resulting in no net gain for consumers, who would still be prey for the multibillion dollar junk food industry.

That's a separate problem.

The customers would benefit by spending less money on their unhealthy junk food. And on their healthy, reasonably-sugared food as well.

Or, the customers would suffer by purchasing more unhealthy junk food, which is what economics suggests will happen when you reduce the cost of something, especially when its demand is spurred by physical dependence.

Yeah HFCS is just fine... except for the heavy metal contamination[1].

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

You [and everyone else] should watch this if you haven't. Amazing lecture and aligns with what you've said.

The Lustig video is also controversial but is indeed fascinating.

Sucrose is exactly half-and-half fructose and glucose; it is composed of one of each, bound together. This is important because it means that it can't be immediately absorbed into the bloodstream. It has to be broken apart first, and the enzyme that does so is in the intestine. This means that its absorption rates and effect on the glycemic index are different from HFCS. Diabetics care about this.

While I can't really argue against you, partially because you're tptacek and partially because you're not wrong here, it's quite irritating to see somebody have a good conclusion and faulty premises.

Also, stop with the scare quotes.

Do you have a human study you can cite regarding the glycemic impact of HFCS vs. table sugar? My understanding is that the body is very adept at breaking that sucrose bond.

Also: what scare quotes?

The quotes around 'natural' presumably.

I think s/he means "HF", "CS" and "natural" since you're not actually quoting anyone

I guess "natural", although it wasn't my intention to suggest that table sugar is unnatural. "HF" and "CS" were for clarity, not subtext.

While sucrose absorption is certainly slower than pure glucose absorption, the amount of sugar that eventually goes into your bloodstream is equivalent, and the energy yield is also roughly the same (splitting that one glycosidic link isn't really that energy-intensive).

I guess an argument could be made that fast-acting monosaccharides are more problematic for diabetics since their bodies can't deal with spikes easily, but for the rest of us there is really no (scientifically accessible) difference at all. Our food just contains too much readily accessible energy.

wasn't there a yale study that tied fructose to appetite regulation recently? I never actually found and read the main study, but i think there have been prior studies suggesting similar things

http://news.yale.edu/2013/01/04/study-suggests-effect-fructo...

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/6/1738S.full

The first article concerns fructose in general, not HFCS in particular. Cane sugar contains comparable amounts of fructose.

The second article says, in its abstract, "However, when HFCS is compared with sucrose, the more commonly consumed sweetener, such differences are not apparent, and appetite and energy intake do not differ in the short-term. Longer-term studies on connections between HFCS, potential mechanisms, and body weight have not been conducted".

yup, i read that. that older study doesn't really argue for or against, though.

one thing that really bothers me though is that having grown up in germany i have big problems swallowing hfcs. mostly because it tastes dull, and feels very acidic in my throat. i've asked other people from overseas and they reported similar things.

the only thing I could find though is the addition of sulfuric acid. if you have some information on that, i'd be grateful.

The time dimension is important for diabetics, and perhaps also arguably important for non-diabetics and/or pre-diabetics.

If you're diabetic, having fruit juice handy during an insulin reaction is preferable to having a sucrose-based product, IIRC. (I had a family member who was diabetic, although it's been many years since they passed.)

> This means that its absorption rates and effect on the glycemic index are different from HFCS.

They aren't. The enzyme sucrase is needed to break it down but it cuts through sucrose like a hot knife through butter.

Scientists have already studied this and found sucrose and HFCS have basically equivalent responses in "blood glucose, insulin, leptin, ghrelin, and appetite."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17234503

There currently is no good evidence to suggest that one is worse than the other; either they are both inert or they are both evil. The difference between them is too small to matter in moderate consumption, and in excess both are harmful to health:

http://examine.com/faq/is-hfcs-high-fructose-corn-syrup-wors...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com