High Fructose Corn Syrup
It isn't on
their website yet (they run one month behind) but there was an interesting report published that doesn't bring anything new to light but serves to emphasize the over-use of High Fructose Corn Syrup in the US diet.
I ran into this from a
Yahoo/Reuters news item:
bq. Corn syrup and other refined foods may be much to blame for the huge increase in type-2 diabetes in the United States over the past few decades, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
bq. A study of nearly 100 years of data on what Americans eat show a huge increase in processed carbohydrates, especially corn syrup, and a large drop in the amount of fiber from whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
bq. It parallels a spike in the number of cases of type-2 diabetes, caused by the body's increasing inability to properly metabolize sugars.
And more:
bq. Gross said he was not "picking on the corn syrup industry," but added, "It is hard to ignore the fact that 20 percent of our carbohydrates are coming from corn syrup -- 10 percent of our total calories."
bq. An estimated 16 million Americans have type-2 diabetes, the sixth leading cause of death overall. And many studies have linked a high intake of refined carbohydrates and other foods with a high "glycemic index" with the development of diabetes.
And more:
bq. Writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Gross and colleagues said they used data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to show that people have eaten about the same amount of carbohydrates a day on average -- 500 grams -- since 1909.
bq. But instead of whole grains and vegetables, people are getting more and more of those carbs in the form of processed grains and sugars -- most of all, in corn syrup, they said.
And more:
bq. "During the same period, the prevalence of type-2 diabetes increased by 47 percent and the prevalence of obesity increased by 80 percent," they wrote.
Posted by DaveH at April 26, 2004 10:24 AM