High Fructose Corn Syrup: What It Means to You and Your Diabetes

High Fructose Corn Syrup: What It Means to You and Your Diabetes

As a person with diabetes, you know how important it is to control your blood glucose and insulin levels to avoid complications. So, it would seem that a lack of glucose and insulin secretion from fructose consumption would be a good thing.

However, insulin also controls another hormone, leptin, so its release is necessary.

Leptin tells your body to stop eating when it’s full by signaling the brain to stop sending hunger signals. Since fructose doesn’t stimulate glucose levels and insulin release, there’s no increase in leptin levels or feeling of satiety. This can leave you ripe for unhealthy weight gain.
High Fructose Corn Syrup

Problems Caused by Too Much High Fructose Corn Syrup

Problems Caused by Too Much High Fructose Corn Syrup

It can lead to higher caloric intake
It can lead to an increase in bodyweight
It fools your body into thinking it’s hungry
It increases the amount of processed foods you eat, thereby decreasing your intake of nutrient-dense foods
It may increase insulin resistance and triglycerides
High Fructose Corn Syrup...
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Common Foods High in High Fructose Corn Syrup / HFCS

Common Foods High in High Fructose Corn Syrup / HFCS
Some common foods high in High Fructose Corn Syrup are as follow :

• Regular soft drinks
• Fruit juice and fruit drinks that are not 100 percent juice
• Pancake syrups
• Popsicles
• Fruit-flavored yogurts
• Frozen yogurts
• Ketchup and BBQ sauces
• Jarred and canned pasta sauces
• Canned soups
• Canned fruits (if not in its own juice)
• Breakfast cereals
• Highly sweetened breakfast cereals

High Fructose Corn Syrup

High Fructose Corn Syrup:What Does It All Mean?

High Fructose Corn Syrup:What Does It All Mean?

If High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS is one of the first ingredients listed on a food label, don’t eat it. Make a mental list of the worst culprits, such as regular soft drinks and many highly sweetened breakfast cereals. High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS alone won’t make you fat, but when HFCS is high on the ingredient list, the food is not the best choice. As part of a lifestyle that has many of us eating too much and moving too little, we’re putting our health at risk if we don’t choose our foods carefully.

So what’s the answer? It’s easy. Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS by reading food labels and shopping the grocery store’s perimeter: Produce is on one side, seafood, meat and poultry on another, and dairy products, eggs and bread on the third. Avoid the center aisles, which are mostly stocked with highly processed foods.

The more you stick to fresh whole foods and avoid commercial and highly processed foods, the less HFCS you will consume.
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Understanding Glucose and Fructose

Understanding Glucose and Fructose

Since High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS is a blend of glucose and fructose, it’s important to understand the role each plays in your body. All sugars, indeed all carbohydrates, have four calories per gram.

But that is just part of the story.

Glucose (dextrose) is a monosaccharide (basically, a simple sugar), which is the form of sugar that is transported in the blood and is used by the body for energy. This is what you measure when testing your blood glucose or blood “sugar.”

Fructose is also a monosaccharide and is often referred to as “fruit sugar,” because it is the primary carbohydrate in most fruits. It’s also the primary sugar in honey and half the carbohydrate in sucrose (table sugar). However, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or require insulin to be transported into cells, as do other carbohydrates.
High Fructose Corn Syrup
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HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP HFCS—It’s Here to Stay

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP HFCS—It’s Here to Stay

Today, food companies use High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS—a mixture of fructose and glucose—because it’s inexpensive, easy to transport and keeps foods moist. And because High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS is so sweet, it’s cost effective for companies to use small quantities of HCFS in place of other more expensive sweeteners or flavorings.

For these reasons and others, High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS isn’t going away any time soon.

That is why, to best manage diabetes, you need to know what HFCS is and how to identify it in products.
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The Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup

The Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup

This article was originally published in Diabetes Health in May, 2005.

You know how important it is to control the sugar and carbohydrates in your diet. So you read food labels and listen to your body cues to make sure you’re getting what you need to stay healthy.

But what happens when a manufacturer disguises sugar as something you don’t recognize?

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. In fact, one of the more popular aliases for sugar today is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—a corn-based sweetener that has been on the market since approximately 1970.

According to a commentary in the April 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, between 1970 and 1990, the consumption of high fructose corn syrup HFCS increased over 1,000 percent.

“high fructose corn syrup HFCS now represents more than 40 percent of caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages and is the sole caloric sweetener in soft drinks in the United States,” write George A. Bray, Samara Joy Nielsen and Barry M. Popkin, the authors of the commentary.