| The straight skinny on high fructose corn syrup |
By: Bob Berry
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Posted: Saturday, April 3, 2010 12:58 pm
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High fructose corn syrup is not a naturally occurring substance. It's made in a chemical plant. Fructose is a naturally occurring sugar but when it is artificially made the shape of the molecule is different than the naturally occurring fructose. The problem with this is that our bodies are set up to utilize the naturally occurring shape and the artificial shape cannot be properly metabolized. It tends to be stored as fat, especially around the waist.
When I was a teen high fructose corn syrup was either not available or not hardly used and the teen girls did not have the rolls of fat around their middles like they do now. Research shows that high fructose corn syrup does cause fat to be stored on the waist in monkeys. Humans are not that different from monkeys in the way they metabolize sugars. It is reasonable to assume that something that deposits fat on monkeys waists also does that on Humans. The increase in waist size since high fructose corn syrup started being used tends to support this.
There is also a connection with diabetes here too. It is also on the increase. Studies show that belly fat helps promote diabetes partly by reducing our cell's sensitivity to insulin. When this happens our bodies then produce more insulin to compensate for this. This puts strain on our pancreases. This strain will, in time, cause the pancrease to slow the production of insulin and diabetes develops.
So, for the sake of your health and waistline, the wise thing to do is avoid high fructose corn syrup. |
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