Recently, while surfing the Internet, I discovered that"Fructose syrup" suddenly became the ingredient list assassin that everyone shouted at."This stuff is more harmful to the liver than white sugar." "It's not sugar at all, it's industrial syrup." "Drinking it is like poisoning the liver." Many people have also taught you a set of quick tips for seeing through the ruthless nature of technology: Pick up a bottle of drink, turn to the ingredient list, and when you see the words "fructose syrup", don't hesitate to put it back.
Just like that, fructose syrup changed from a normal food to a wanted criminal in the ingredient list. It was untouchable. One sip would ruin your life.
At one time, fructose syrup was a hot search topic.
As an old Internet person, I think there have been several waves of similar news in the past year or two.
In May last year, netizens discovered that in the ingredient list of regular Sprite bottles, white sugar had been replaced with fructose syrup and other ingredients. As a result, Sprite was scolded and trending.
The result was quickly slapped in the face by the official, and customer service said that the new formula would be adjusted in 2019...
Then in July, Trump posted on social media that he asked Coca-Cola to switch to "REAL Cane Sugar" in the United States.
With Trump taking the lead, the sugar parties, who had previously been suppressed by fructose syrup, began a large-scale counterattack.
The major media seemed to have found irrefutable evidence that "Americans also dislike fructose syrup". They featured it and various drinks featuring "zero sugar" and "retro cane sugar version" joined the battlefield.
So the question is, has fructose syrup really committed any heinous capital crime? Is it really scarier than white sugar?
After reviewing a lot of information and reviewing many papers, I found thatPure nonsense.
To clarify this matter, we must first talk to you about what exactly fructose syrup is.
To put it simply, the modern food industry found sugar extracted from sugar cane too expensive, so it turned its attention to corn starch, which is cheap and large.
The factory first uses amylase to cut long starch chains into free glucose molecules, and then uses glucose isomerase to transform part of the glucose into fructose.
What we finally got,It is a liquid syrup in which glucose and fructose are mixed together, also called fructose syrup..
The most common currently isHFCS-42 and HFCS-55There are two types. The number in the number represents the proportion of fructose in the syrup, and the rest is glucose. HFCS-42 is mainly used in various processed foods, with fructose accounting for 42%, while HFCS-55 is commonly used in carbonated drinks, with fructose accounting for 55%.
Many people criticize fructose syrup, but what they are criticizing is actually the fructose in it.
One thing or another, the marketing account is right, free fructose is indeed a ruthless character.
Because the human body's absorption patterns of glucose and fructose are completely different. Glucose enters the body and returns to the insulin tube. As soon as blood sugar rises, insulin sends sugar into the cells, and conveniently notifies the brain to "stop eating when you are full."
But after fructose enters the human body, it almost completely bypasses the supervision of the insulin system. As a result, it will not make you feel full, and you will drink a huge amount of calories without realizing it.
Moreover, glucose can be distributed to cells throughout the body for metabolism.Fructose is left almost entirely to the liver alone.
If you open your mouth wide and drink milk tea and Fat House Happy Reservoir, your liver will be suffering from old sins, and it will silently murmur in your body: My Bodhisattva Dropping Heaven, when will this day end?
Faced with these fructose, the liver is also struggling for its life. It will consume its own energy crazily to break down the fructose one by one.Among the decomposition products is a lot of uric acid(The culprit of gout)…
These dismantled parts are continuously stuffed into the lipogenesis assembly line, accumulating a large amount of fat in the liver, which can easily lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
When you see this, you may want to say: "Look, fructose berries are indeed poisonous!"
But please note that we have mentioned so many shortcomings.The protagonist is actually excessive intake of free fructose, not fructose syrup.
The main component of the so-called "healthier and more natural" white sugar is sucrose.
The chemical structure of sucrose is also very simple. One glucose + one fructose are bound together by chemical bonds.
After this thing is eaten in the stomach, it is processed by enzymes in the small intestine and becomes half glucose and half fructose...
When many people criticize fructose syrup, the subtext is:
Fructose syrup is industrial sugar and bad;
White sugar is natural sugar, good.
But from a physical perspective, look at these two drinks:
If you drink white sugar, the last thing absorbed is glucose + fructose;
If you drink fructose syrup, the final thing absorbed is glucose + fructose.
There is no difference at all.
Those who are trying to scare you with papers, citing so-called professional research and professional papers,People compare the effects of 100% pure fructose and 100% pure glucose on the body.
But in reality, who would drink three large cups of pure fructose?
In food processing, the commonly used high fructose glucose syrup HFCS-55 has a fructose content that is 5% higher than that of white sugar.HFCS-42 is even lower than white sugar…
Based on the toxicity of pure fructose, they singled out fructose syrup as a single crime, but completely plucked white sugar, which also contains half of fructose, and insisted that white sugar is healthier. Isn't this nonsense?
And, to everyone’s surprise,Fructose syrup is not even considered a sweetener, but a type of food.
According to the "GB 15203 National Food Safety Standard Starch Sugar", fructose syrup is a sub-variety of starch sugar, with the same status as glucose, and starch sugar is the same as the white sugar you eat every day.
Since the effects of the two on the human body are almost the same, how did fructose syrup end up in the position where it is today?
We took a closer look and found that the feud between the two has been going on for decades in the United States, the birthplace of its business.
The enzymatic industrialization of fructose syrup was first developed by Japan in 1965, and by the end of the 1960s, the United States took the lead in large-scale commercialization.
Compared with sucrose, fructose syrup is not only cheaper, but also liquid, making it easier to store, prepare and transport through pipelines.
What’s even more ruthless is that it also has an extremely invincible physical characteristic——"Cold sweetness", the lower the temperature of this thing, the sweeter it tastes. It is simply an artifact tailor-made for iced carbonated drinks.
In addition, it can also prevent ice cream from freezing and cakes from drying out and becoming hard...
These advantages make modern food processing plants put it down.
What really pushed it to the throne was the agricultural policy of the United States. At that time, the United States imposed steep tariffs on imported cane sugar while frantically subsidizing corn.
Over time, the cost of fructose syrup was reduced to only half that of sucrose., Food factories certainly vote with their feet.
In the 1980s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi replaced all sucrose in their formulas with fructose syrup.
The cane sugar industry saw the market being robbed. It became anxious and went to court with the Corn Refining Association, accusing each other of false propaganda and rumors. The lawsuit lasted for several years, and finally ended with a confidential settlement.
To put fructose syrup on the pillar of shame, the sucrose industry's cash-making ability is only the first layer.
The academic starting point of today's demonization movement is a paper published in the authoritative journal "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" (AJCN) in 2004.
The author simply and crudely draws the "curve of rising obesity rates in the United States" and the "curve of increasing fructose syrup consumption" together, implying that there is a causal relationship between the two.
But the embarrassing thing is that at the same time,Mexico and Europe, which do not use fructose syrup at all and mainly consume sucrose, still have skyrocketing obesity rates.
But after being unable to stand it, some experts added a few more words, such as "fructose is poison" and other statements, which directly brainwashed the American people.
We looked over and over, and the more we looked, the more we felt,The biggest injustice of fructose syrup in this life may not be in these studies and speeches, but that the name is wrong.
Its literal translation in English is "high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)". When ordinary people see the three words "high fructose", their first reaction is technology and hard work.
This is like "monosodium glutamate" and "monosodium glutamate", which sound like chemical poisons. If you call it "chicken essence", "light soy sauce", "oyster sauce" and "matsutake fresh", it will immediately become high-end, healthy and taste like mom.
The fructose corn syrup industry was also aware of this. In 2010, the American Corn Refiners Association went to apply for a name change, wanting to change "high fructose corn syrup" to a more user-friendly "corn sugar". The result was ruthlessly rejected by the FDA (but the reason for rejection was more due to the seriousness of the naming regulations and had nothing to do with health).
But in the eyes of the public, this is tantamount to the official confirmation that it is a "harmful chemical"...
But the actual situation is that after decades of hard work by the Sucrose Association, until today, the scientific community has still not found any strong evidence to prove that sucrose is healthier than fructose syrup.
Therefore, looking at this wave of public opinion in China, it is difficult to simply understand it as a food safety science popularization.
The remaining business routines played on the other side of the ocean decades ago seem to be playing out again in China, and this wave in China always feels a bit "either stupid or bad".
What's stupid is that they are copying the old American narrative from decades ago without even understanding other people's research, and just trying to scare Chinese consumers.
The bad ones are more interesting.
The front foot is all kinds of marginal marketing of "0 sugar" and "0 sucrose". For example, Yuanqi Forest milk tea has "0 sucrose" written in big letters on the package. However, it was found out and secretly added crystallized fructose. In the end, it could only issue an apology "A Belated Upgrade".
The back foot is the "reverse cut" of the milk tea shop,HeyTea and BawangCha Ji announced in a high profile that they would eliminate fructose syrup and switch to "real white sugar".
Anyway, merchants depend on public opinion. Whether they dislike sucrose or fructose syrup, their tactics are pretty much the same. They use the kind of candy you don’t like as a target, blame all the “unhealthy” ones on the other side, and emphasize that home-made sugar is healthy. In the end, they justifiably sell you a higher price, and you win.
But in fact, these operations are of little use to your fatty liver.
So, having said that.
Fructose syrup is not an innocent white rabbit. Drinking too much can still harm your health, but it is by no means the "only super villain."
The real source of all evil is never a certain kind of sugar, but excessive intake of any form of "added sugar" and "free sugar". White sugar, rock sugar, ancient brown sugar, honey, fructose syrup, none of them can escape.
You think you are healthy just because you are fighting an item on the ingredients list and avoiding high fructose syrup. But as long as you drink that cup of milk tea and that bottle of Coke, the result will still be the same.
Let me tell you, instead of looking at the ingredient list every day and worrying about this and that, it is better to pay more attention to your mouth, which is more effective than anything else.