In the midst of the public debate about high fructose corn syrup (a.k.a. hfcs, but soon to be rebranded as corn sugar), many researchers have offered evidence to support the claim that sugar is sugar. That is, eat five hundred calories worth of beet sugar, honey or hfcs, and you’re eating five hundred calories. Your body will metabolize them all the same way.
A group of Princeton researchers has just released the results of a study that challenges that claim. These researchers found that “Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
“In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.”
Perhaps we’ll hear from our panelists most involved in issues about human nutrition–including Marion Nestle and Jeffrey Friedman–about this study, its significance, and its relationship to other studies that have shown no significant difference between hfcs and other sweeteners.
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