Sorry folks. Something is just inherently creepy about HFCS. And I avoid it as much as possible.

People need to learn to listen to their bodies, and stop eating when they`re satisfied.

And learn to do real things. Concentrate on doing things you can tell people about later. Ex.: You can tell people about a cool bike ride, but you there`s nothing to report about 2hrs on a video game.

“What’s one important carbohydrate? Sugar.”

Just drink water and eat uncooked broccoli for the rest of your life (cooking broccoli tastes better, but it loses nutrients in being cooked!

Some vegetables release nutrients in a more use-able state (for humans) when cooked. Broccoli is one of them. Also, carrots.

As an active person, I can tell you it’d be hard as hell to do active things without the boost a gatorade or coke gives you.

You’re not eating (or drinking) properly if you need to have one of those drinks to function.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q86hQOlLac

Maybe I’ve heard a bit too much…

Two things… one: only an amazingly talented and skilled dentist can successfully drill your teeth without anesthetic, because no strength of will can prevent your screaming and flailing if the dentist touches a nerve. The quality of the man’s work is legendary. two: getting fillings without anesthetic will make you stop liking food that rots your teeth.

That is all.

Seems to me that the obesity problem started when corn became the standard sweetener.

The worst health risk posed by real sugar is tooth decay.

In other words: It’s addictive. Eating sugar automatically conditions kids to want to eat more sugar, in the strictest Pavloian sense of the term. So how are they supposed to maintain that “balanced diet in moderation”?

I hope some of you that are referencing that Princeton study actually take some time to look at the actual paper. Aside from the fact that you have psychology students doing nutritional science (which is a bit of a WTF on its own), there appears to be some highly questionable ”science“ going on in it.

In Experiment 1 (short-term), having access to HFCS for 24 hours resulted in no difference in weight gain vs 12 hours of sucrose or ad libidum chow. The only group that was an outlier was the 12 hour HFCS group. This could be interpreted as HFCS is bad for you (as the authors have chosen to do)—or it could be interpreted as “more access to HFCS is better than less access”, since there was apparently a statistically significant difference between 12 hrs of HFCS and 24 hrs of HFCS.

Conversely, in Experiment 2 (long-term), for females, the only group which was statistically different was the 24 hour HFCS group; the 12 hr HFCS group was OK, and of course they did not include 24 hour sucrose control groups at all in the second study, nor did they include even a 12-hour sucrose control group for the male group.

How can you draw a conclusion that HFCS (as opposed to sugar in general) is causing obesity when you don’t include a control group for sucrose?

Overall, the study basically says that if you are a male eating for short periods, unlimited access to HFCS is OK but half-time access is bad. But if you are a female on a long-term diet, unlimited access to HFCS is bad but limited access is OK, and if you are a male on a long-term diet, any access is bad. Contradictory results like this usually mean poor study design or bad statistics, and the fact that they completely neglected to include sucrose control groups should concern you if you care about good science.

Regards,

Part of me thinks it would, but another part of me thinks there has to be something more to this obesity epidemic than a single ingredient.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/09/pro-new-hfcs-commercials-high-fructose-corn-syrup.html

When this ad was published, there weren’t all the fat kids you see today. I grew up eating tons of sugar and I’ve never been overweight. I burned off all those calories.

Today kids play video games 24/7 and surf the internet and can’t go outside for fear of the bogeyman. And don’t even bring up walking to and from school.

The more active you are, the more sugar you need. It’s the best fuel for active people. The problem is inactivity, not sugar. If you’re inactive, fructose converts easily into fat.

I have not seen any well-designed studies (i.e. ones done by scientists with nutrition/biology backgrounds, good controls, and no ex post facto research) that show a significant difference in the metabolism or uptake of HFCS versus sucrose. It is critically important to note that HFCS is not pure fructose. It is a glucose-fructose mix, just like sugar*. Any time you read a news article about a study that says HFCS is bad, check to make sure that the study is not actually about 100% pure fructose or an abnormally high fructose mix, because there is a significant difference, and journalists fucking suck at understanding and reporting on complex scientific/medical issues.

What HFCS (and the surrounding hysteria) does do is give unhealthy people a great excuse to continue their unhealthy habits. Why take responsibility for the fact that you eat 5000 calories of shitty food every day and then spend all your waking hours sitting on your ass in front of a desk or a TV when you can instead blame the horrible evil food manufacturers for poisoning you? Blame deflected, cognitive dissonance solved, possibility of needing to make lifestyle changes averted. Yay!

I’m certainly not saying that food manufacturers have no part to play in this—they do a lot of evil shit, but we really need to take our collective heads out of our asses and stop pretending HFCS on its own (as opposed to the increase of sugar in all foodstuffs) has something to do with the obesity crisis.

* The exact proportion of fructose vs glucose and the chemical bonds between the two are different in HFCS vs sucrose, so they’re not exactly the same. But close enough.

And “Mexicoke” (aka: Coke with Sugar from Mexico) really does taste better and doesn’t give you a “rush.” Something is definitely up.