all I can tell you is that since I've made an effort to cut HFCS out of my diet, I've lost weight and felt better. I realize I can't completely eliminate it, but I try.

#1 - soda/soft drinks - I "trained" myself to drink diet.

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I've heard soda/soft drinks has a ton of HFCS in it. Luckily I never drink the stuff. I'm really just interested in why it gets such a bad reputation and whether or not it's something that should be in Energy bars in general (if it's processed slower then why put it in something that's meant to give you energy quickly?). I mean, this friend of mine put it in the same 'category' as trans fats, which I think is a bit extreme. It's not that bad for you right - it's just sugar.

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Here are a couple of links on the subject.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/76/5/911

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/4/850S?ck=nck

http://ific.org/publications/reviews/sugarsir.cfm lists lots of references for further review.

Lastly, do you know about google scholar? http://scholar.google.com/

clm

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Here's a couple of site with a bias leaning to the two sides:

http://www.hfcsfacts.com/

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/4/537

I've recently begun to study (in pursuit of a master's degree) exercise physiology and one of the issues about hfcs seems to not so much be what it does (stimulates fat production) or doesn't (stimulate insulin release) but how readily and cheapily available it is. It became one of the foremost sweetners around the early 70s making production of various foods cheaper.

In the first website they state the fact that obesity is derived only one way: consumption vs. output. Which is true however, what this fails to take in is that the density of it's calories multiplies the caloric value of any food it's put in. So while HFCS may not 'technically' be the culprit, when you can buy it cheap (and convienence in America has easily contribute to the obesity factor: it is much easier for someone on the run to stop at that local gas/convience store (at every corner) and pick up a couple of dolly madison donut cakes and a soda then it is to seek out a grocery store (I once pulled off an exit to look for a grocery store while on a trip and after 15 minutes STILL hadn't found one.)

So while physiologically HFCS eaten in certain quantities probably isn't going to kill you like transfats would, most people (obese people that is) won't stop at two donuts (and I'm talking the small dolly madison ones not a dunkin donuts or krispy kreme) because they won't even be remotely full. But the amount of calories they ingested from the massive amounts of HFCS they put in stuff to sweeten in is an accessory for sure.

Now, bottom line? It's the laziness of America that is responsible for the obesity 'epidemic' not the foods. America wants it fast and it wants results now, why do you think the diet supplement industry is a billion dollar industry? But it's a quick fix and isn't even remotely permanent. The only permanent fix - lifestyle. Until we as a culture learn that hard physical labor is good for us and as things get easier for us as technology steps in to make it easier for us our hard labor has to be replaced with hard recreation to balance out sitting on our butts for 9 hours a day the obesity epidemic will continue to go up regardless of the food.

Great links ironclm. Thanks. It more or less confirms what I thought. They keep referencing soda/soft drinks as THE major culprit. Some of the stuff is a little too detailed for me but it's still very interesting. Thanks.

tom

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Now, bottom line? It's the laziness of America that is responsible for the obesity 'epidemic' not the foods.

True, and not true. People can choose to not eat it, but hamburgers with over a 1000 calories and monster portions don't help.

So when you say "stimulate fat production" do you mean under normal day-to-day activities? One of the links ironclm listed said that during exercise HFCS is not really different from any other sugar. Is that because the body is just craving all sugars? I don't see how (keep in my I don't know anything about this really) the body would start storing fat when it's in need of glucose.

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[reply][i]Now, bottom line? It's the laziness of America that is responsible for the obesity 'epidemic' not the foods.[/i]

True, and not true. People can choose to not eat it, but hamburgers with over a 1000 calories and monster portions don't help.[/reply]

As I stated, food is definitely an ACCESSORY to the problem but since we can't control what food is marketed only what food we eat and how we live our lives (i.e. responsiblity) the bottom line comes down to either you are responsible or you aren't. Hence, laziness.

[reply]So when you say "stimulate fat production" do you mean under normal day-to-day activities? One of the links ironclm listed said that during exercise HFCS is not really different from any other sugar. Is that because the body is just craving all sugars? I don't see how (keep in my I don't know anything about this really) the body would start storing fat when it's in need of glucose.[/reply]

Simply speaking, when insulin is not stimulate to increase stores of glycogen, the excess sugar is converted and stored as adipose tissue (i.e. fat stores.)

So in a more active person who may utilize the excess glucose (there are various types of -coses that are single, double or multi sugars essentially) the HFCS won't likely accumulate as much as a sedentary person who sits around and ingests a lot of HFCS but then doesn't burn it off. However, even in an active person becuase HFCS is so loaded in most foods (if it's one of the first three ingredients on the label you'd best run, far away and even if it's further down on the list you need to be careful) you may not burn off all the excess fructose and then it has to go somewhere - and it goes into adipose tissue because insulin wasn't stimulated.

Now, bottom line? It's the laziness of America that is responsible for the obesity 'epidemic' not the foods.

Trying to pin obesity on laziness is like trying to pin the relatively low economic status of a line worker with being lazy relative to a CEO who makes 500X the line worker's wages.

McDonald's and other campanies have literally hundreds of very bright MBA's working like crazy to get the average person to eat things that are not good for them. From clever marketing, mombardments in schools and cool "image" associations, the average person - much less average child - doesn't stand a chance to easily understand what is and is not good for them. NYC schools sold the "beverage rights" to Snapple, McDonalds is associated with the world's greatest athletes. Etc.

Don't think for a minute that the guys who sell the stuff - or the CEO - eat as much of that crap as the people who they are selling to, or want their workers to really be as healthy - or as wealthy - as they are.

Yeah, you really do have to watch what you're eating as it's in everything.

But, when we're talking about energy bar/gels etc.. there isn't much difference between normal sugar (as far as I can see). It just takes longer to break down. If you are an athlete the chances are pretty good that whatever you eat will be burnt off in an hour or so (typical energy bar is 230kcal) - it won't get a chance to be converted to adipose tissue as it is required ASAP.

In general, if you sitting around doing nothing, it's best to cut you sugar intake right down. Doesn't matter if it's HFCS or any other -cose.

Thanks for the explanation btw.

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Reggie,

I agree with your description but resepectively have to still disagree. Laziness is the issue. Most americans are too lazy to take responsbility for their own decisions. When it comes down to it, today, fresh fruit and healthy food is way more affordable (though I will admit not as cheap as cheap fast food) then it used to be and yet people still take the 'convienent' way. And then try to blame it on a companies marketing technique or some other outside source.

Bottom line, again, is that we have full control over what we put in our mouths. No one forces it on us no matter HOW good marketing is. We also have full control on whether we get out and walk 20 or 30 minutes a day. No one glues our asses to the couch.

Laziness. Take back your responsiblity. Be proactive about your life. Farily simple concept, though admitedly not necessarily easy to execute. But then again, if it WAS easy, America would be the leanest country on the planet because we love the easy way.

You obviously don't know much about the average elementary school, children's TV programs, or inner city food choices, nor the structure of food marketing and the food business. It is a LOT of smart people's job's to get people to eat bad things. Again, the NYC schools sold their kids' health to Snapple for $8 million. That wasn't done because NYC thought it was best for the kids; but because some sales-marketing organization came up with a deal. I'll agree with you that the administrators (and the gov't that funds them) were "lazy" in allowing this....and that those admins are reflections of people's willingness to be cowed.

Yes, certainly there are alternatives that some one with higher than average education, wealth and motivation (which categorizes most everyone in this sport), but for the "average" person (I am not saying you have to like the average person or feel compassion for them) the path is pretty much determined by marketing and business, not health (again for the average person).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1/23/03 NY Times Book Review

FAT LAND
How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
By Greg Critser
232 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $24.


''More die in the United States of too much food than of too little,'' wrote John Kenneth Galbraith in ''The Affluent Society.''



That was back in 1958, and since then Americans have just gotten fatter and fatter, to the point where obesity-related health services are costing the nation an estimated $100 billion a year. We've become a country that wears ''easy fit'' and ''baggy fit'' jeans, that devours super-sized tubs of popcorn and huge vats of soda at the movies, that buys pizza by the foot at Little Caesar's and ''neverending pasta'' at the Olive Garden.

No wonder, as Greg Critser points out in his new book, ''Fat Land,'' that 61 percent of Americans are ''overweight enough to begin experiencing health problems as a direct result of that weight.'' No wonder that ''25 percent of all Americans under age 19 are overweight or obese,'' a figure that has doubled in the last 30 years. No wonder that Type 2 diabetes is on the rise, along with associated liver, eye and coronary artery problems.

Although many of the findings in ''Fat Land'' have appeared in newspapers and magazines in the last few years, Mr. Critser has done a nimble job of pulling this information together and assembling it into a fluent if sometimes cursory narrative.

As he sees it, several developments in the last few decades are to blame for our thickening waistlines and widening butts. To begin with, Mr. Critser argues, two developments that occurred under the 1970's aegis of President Richard Nixon's secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, helped alter the American diet for the worse: corn surpluses led to the production of an inexpensive sweetener called high-fructose corn syrup -- which both Coke and Pepsi and dozens of other companies were quick to adopt -- and cheap imports of palm oil, combined with new technologies, led to the embrace by convenience-food makers of this highly saturated fat.

Because the body processes fructose differently from sucrose or dextrose, Mr. Critser suggests, its overuse may skew ''the national metabolism toward fat storage.'' As for palm oil and palm kernel oil, he says, ''both are implicated in insulin resistance,'' and ''both tend to raise total and LDL, or 'bad,' cholesterol, thereby contributing to atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.''

As sugar- and fat-rich snack foods became easier and more affordable to manufacture, there was a proliferation of high-calorie products: ''Where all through the 1960's and 1970's the number of yearly new candy and snack products remained stable -- at about 250 a year -- that number jumped to about 1,000 by the mid-1980's and to about 2,000 by the late 1980's.''

At the same time, fast-food portions were starting to inflate: the Del Taco Macho Meal weighed in at four pounds, while 7-Eleven's Double Gulp was five times larger than a standard can of soda. A serving of McDonald's French fries, Mr. Critser reports, ''ballooned from 200 calories (1960) to 320 calories (late 1970's) to 450 calories (mid-1990's) to 540 calories (late 1990's) to the present 610 calories.'' By the end of the 20th century supersizing had become the norm; between 1977 and 1995, the Department of Agriculture reported, average individual caloric intake increased by almost 200 calories a day.

What freed Americans to stuff their faces with ever bigger servings of ever more fattening foods, says Mr. Critser, was the emergence of what he calls a ''new boundary-free culture.'' Busy, stressed-out parents became increasingly pragmatic about eating out and ordering in. Religious leaders -- on the right, worried about more flagrant sins like alcohol, tobacco and sex; on the left, concerned with promoting an attitude of tolerance and self-esteem -- de-emphasized the sins of gluttony and overconsumption. And budget-strained schools began ''outsourcing'' their cafeteria orders, enabling fast-food makers to gain a foothold in public schools, a foothold only increased with so-called ''pouring contracts,'' by which schools received commissions in exchange for making a company's carbonated beverages available to students.

Low-carb and low-fat diets, promising users they could eat as much as they wanted of permitted foods, gained new popularity, while studies that ''had shown that adults, like children, reacted badly to high expectations'' promoted new exercise guidelines, which suggested that moderate intensity activity -- like walking upstairs, gardening, raking leaves or walking to work -- was an acceptable substitute for vigorous workouts. Many people did not exercise at all: physical-education classes were dropped or cut back in many cash-pressed schools, while television took over as a favorite leisure activity at home.

What about the fitness and gym boom? What about the new popularity of soccer leagues? What about worries about anorexia and bulimia? Mr. Critser argues that these are basically upper- and middle-class concerns, that it is ''the poor, the underserved and the underrepresented'' who are ''most at risk from excess fat.''

Some of Mr. Critser's observations are more dubious, like his citation of a survey associating obesity with higher levels of religiosity, or his worry that ''assortative mating'' (''fat attracting fat'') will lead to fat parents producing more fat children. Such bizarre notions, combined with a perfunctory assessment of the ways in which America can combat obesity, distract attention from the very real and alarming problems, discussed in this otherwise absorbing volume, of living large.

[reply]You obviously don't know much about the average elementary school, children's TV programs, or inner city food choices, nor the structure of food marketing and the food business.[/reply]

Well, thanks for making this personal. I disagree with you so you take jabs. I actually do know alot about this sort of thing. I've worked in the advertising industry as well as the food industry. And let me retireate from what I stated in the above post, I do not DISAGREE with what you are saying at all. I never said it was easy or not a complicated issue. But I DO believe that the ultimate responsiblity lies with us, the individual. And that goes for parents teaching their children instead of blaming tv programs, inner city food choices and the average elementary school.

Is it hard? Absolutely.

Are the odds tough? Sure.

But who makes the final choice.

There are two questions in this thread. I'm not sure if you want to know HFCS in regards to how it acts under workload or how it acts in general.

Without getting into a huge post, here is a very rough outline. Corn producers can pretty easily make dextrose (glucose) out of corn by processing it. Glucose tastes different, and has different mouthfeel than does (cane or beet) sugar, because sugar is glucose+fructose.

Well they figured that if they could get fructose out of the corn they could then mix that with the glucose that they can already make, and voila they have in essence sugar that they can sell. So they found that they could make fructose by using enzymes in the corn refining process which isomerize dextrose to produce a 42 percent fructose syrup. Noe they have their fructose+glucose that is in essence the same as cane or beet sugar.

They also can vary the concentration of fructose to be used in different applications, for example soft drinks are 55-HFCS. But we are still talking glucose+fructose. So HFCS is glucose+fructose in essence the same as sugar.

Now there are a lot of people that somehow have it in their brain that due to corn vs. beet/cane sugar processes there is a huge difference between sugar and HFCS, and there may be, but nobodys yet found them clinically.

The second issue is having the fructose in stuff you use racing and training. This is known as the " evil simple sugars". While glucose is actively taken from the gut, fructose has to pass passively. It's this passive absorbing that is hard for some people as the fructose can sit in the gut. For others it's a non-issue.

So while I like the Ecaps products I don't like their rationale. It's not inaccurate, but it can be confusing (as witnessed by you).

So for example ecaps uses maltodextrin in its gel, which is long chain but very weak long chain corn syrup and complex meaning it has many bonds. But it's not complex as in a sweet potato complex with lots of strong bonds and fiber with low GI, but complex as in it has a lot of bonds which are on the weak side. The bonds are so weak that maltodextrin earns a 100 points on the GI scale.

So when you mix maltodextrin with fructose what do you eventually get? A form of sugar, HFCS, or glucose and fructose, at some glucose and fructose concentration.

So I guess what I'm saying is that it really makes little difference, just find what works with your body and then use it. That may be hammer gel, which I think works great, but it may be something else. But don't think you are comprimising your performance because you only work well with Coke. Many cyclists on the Tour do just fine drinking a Coke (55-HFCS) along with other food and gels during the stages.

<EDIT> Note: This is a very low detail outline, so if you want more info respond, but narrow the question because above there's talk of obesity etc. which is a totally different subject.

I bascially disagree with the general holier-than-thou attitude that "Americans are lazy and all problems would be solved if people were just as smart and motivated as me". Likewise the implication that other countries have some moral, ethical, motivation or cultural superiority to America. We are all "gods children" (without being religious) and there are all sorts of people out there and all sorts of factors that run their lives. And I doubt you would really find one country superior to another in terms of morals, ethics or motivations....or even culture.

The one thing you can say, however, is that most every business' goal is to get an advantage on the consumer. You can debate the ulimate responibility of taking bad or unneccessary and sometimes even unhealthy medicine being the fault of the consumer. But you certainly would be naive to think that a drug manufacturer is in business less to make a profit than to make people get better. Likewise the job of the energy company execs isn't to light schools, nor are the managers at Wonder Bread spending 1/10th as much time worrying about "building strong bodies 12 ways" as they are about the financial performance of the company.

Certainly nothing against you personally, legion, but time and again the demographic that is in this sport thinks a lot more of themselves (in not a very charitable way) than on how the world works. They are self-congratulatory on their motivation and largely should be congreatulated on that. But nothing is more "holier than thou" than saying that other people's problems are because America is lazy.

This isn't a "liberal" rant, just an empirical obesrvation.

Wow adam12, thanks for taking the time to break it down. You are right though, there are two questions - I am really interested in how it acts under workload. All the info I've found describe it under normal conditions, which I'm pretty sure I understand now (thanks to everyones input).

If you wouldn't mind could you please explain how HFCS is broken down and processed in the liver under load and what happens after it's 'done' in the liver i.e is it really stored as fat, or does the glucose hit the bloodstream, or is it stored as glycogen in the liver? I think that's the part I don't get.

Thanks again.

tom

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Searching for the bliss of ultimate exertion.

There's a lot of different physiology in that question. Different things happen under different circumstances. The short answer is that it acts like sucrose, but there's more.

Since there’s too much required to completely answer each of these few questions in a short form, if I limit the answer to just one part I think it will give you insight to the others, and hopefully answer your questions. I can address the issue of partitioning in regards to fat storage (first issue), and I hope that will clear things up on the others. It sounds to me like you are really asking about partitioning.

Simply put, partitioning is where calories go (in to fat cells, or muscles, or organs, used for fuel etc.) when you take them in. So what determines calorie partitioning? Many things, including hormones, exercise level, genetics, etc.

First off, hormones are very important. For example testosterone tends to push calories toward muscle and away from fat, while cortisol does the opposite. So if you supplement with testosterone (not legal btw), you would expect to see an increase in muscle size. Simple enough, and it usually happens that way.

Another very important hormone (and more to your quesiton) is insulin. Insulin affects nutrient storage in the liver, muscle and fat cells. When you eat CHO you release a certain amount of insulin which in turn pushes nutrients into the cells. So what affects insulin sensitivity? Again, many, many things. For example cardio work affects insulin sensitivity. High insulin sensitivity means that a small amount of insulin creates a large response, and insulin resistance indicates that it takes more insulin to make the same effects occur.

In turn being insulin resistent means you can take in very high GI sources and instead of storing these in the form of glycogen in the muscles and liver, you tend to use the glucose for fuel in the muscles and in the brain. So if you are in a state of cardio exercise among other things that change like increased breathing, sweat for cooling, etc you become very insulin resistant. This is good if we are not interested in storing fat. Endurance exercise also encourages muscles use of fatty acids for fuel among many other things that we consider “good”.

There’s a spillover effect with a lot of endurance exercise so that even after a workout, for a period of time your insulin sensitivity will be reduced. Under chronic endurance exercise 5-8 hours/day your insulin sensitivity tends to remain depressed instead of rebound to any great degree. This is why cyclists use insulin to dope. They are so insulin resistant (genetic, exercise induced, or a combination), they can’t get replacement glycogen fast enough for their next race or workout no matter the type or amount of CHO they ingest. They just burn the glucose up. So they supra physiologically introduce insulin in the form of a needle in the butt, take on a ton of glucose and recover better. Oh yeah there’s that thing about if you screw it up (dosage or CHO load) you will die, but we try not to think about that too much in the name of sport.

There are many other factors to insulin sensitivity. Genetics is a big one. You always hear stories about stick men that only eat donuts and French fries. It’s safe to say, that they are probably very, very, insulin resistant. Your diet over the long run can change your insulin sensitivity and you see this in Type II diabetics. Exercise too over the long run changes things. The list goes on. How does this relate to HFCS? So like any other simple sugar, your circumstance going into ingesting it will determine how your body will deal with it one in there. Your genetics, how you have been eating, what your exercise level etc., all make a difference.

The biggest issue with HFCS is that it is really cheap, whereas cane sugar was not. Today, beet sugar too is really cheap, so the argument is somewhat moot. The chances that you have cane sugar on your table today are pretty remote. The cheap form of sucrose is here to stay. HFCS brought the price and hence the availability of simple sugar to new levels. The debate over obesity and increased weight comes from this fact. Tasty, high fat, high sugar food, that is cheap are the ingredients that cause large amounts of fat and hence wieght gain. That’s very different than a drink or bar that has HFCS in it.

So if you are insulin sensitive (small amount makes a big difference) and you eat French fries and a Coke, you have just caused a huge spike in your insulin (storage ability) and the fatty acids floating around are going to be readily absorbed in your fat cells (along with everything else in the meal), barring some other circumstance (genetic or otherwise). It’s the combination of the insulin spike with huge amounts of available fat and not much else that makes you fat. Donuts are another good example of a big insulin spike with mucho fat (I don’t think it’s too big of a stretch for me to try to convince you that donuts tend to make you fat).

Incidentally, that’s why low fat (5-10% fat) high CHO diets work, because even though you run around with high insulin sensitivity, there isn’t enough fat in the system to be absorbed, and your body is just too inefficient to produce significant amounts of fat from glucose. It’s also why the low carb diets work, they simply don’t generate much of an insulin response. Now since your brain needs glucose, you might say you will die without any CHO. Well your body (liver) creates things called ketones which are a substitute that your brain uses for fuel. So now you have a lot of fat floating around, but not much to push it in your cells. This is very oversimplified but I hope you get the point. They are two different ways to create a similar result.

So you see ultimately it comes down to what your body is doing, and how you personally deal with the substance. It’s much less important the type of glucose+fructose mix. Glucose and fructose will always be glucose and fructose. Now if you say you want to use Kosher hot dogs for fuel in your next IM, well that’s a different conversation all together.

callidus I put my response in the edit, see above.

A

Thanks for your time on that post. I will probably have to read it more than once to get it all but very informative.

Adam,

That was a terrific breakdown of it. Thanks! Great reading, informative and clear. I appreciate the time you put into it.

And so as not to highjack the thread anymore than I did (to which I owe callidus a HUGE apology) I will respectively let the other 'discussion' die an irrelevant death.

Adam,

Thanks for the great information, that has really helped. I really appreciate you taking the time to break it down and explain it to me.

I'm gonna have to bookmark this response as I'm sure I'll forget the details at some point :).



Thanks again.

tom

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Adam12

Thanks very much for the tremendous lecture ! And I mean that genuinely . Very informative and educational .Not to mention put in layman terms that helped me to understand.

What do you think of chromium picolinate supplementation for endurance athletes and it's effect on insulin please ? If you would be so kind.

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"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream" - Les Brown
"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment" - Jim Rohn

Glad I cleared some things up for you. I have no idea about supplements. I work with drugs and drug delivery for pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Sorry.

-A