Jimmu's blog

In today’s NY Times, an article about the infamous High Fructose Corn Syrup. HFCS is what many people have been pointing the finger at for quite some times. It is often how people differentiate Europe from America. The drastic increase of this substance’s intake is in direct correlation with America’s weight.

Most of the carbohydrates we eat are made up of chains of glucose. When glucose enters the bloodstream, the body releases insulin to help regulate it. Fructose, on the other hand, is processed in the liver. To greatly simplify the situation: When too much fructose enters the liver, the liver can’t process it all fast enough for the body to use as sugar. Instead, it starts making fats from the fructose and sending them off into the bloodstream as triglycerides. (From Fructose, Sweet but Dangerous)

From the article

In humans, triglycerides, which are a type of fat in the blood, are mostly formed in the liver. Dr. Parks said the liver acts like “a traffic cop” who coordinates how the body uses dietary sugars. When the liver encounters glucose, it decides whether the body needs to store it, burn it for energy or turn it into triglycerides.

But when fructose enters the body, it bypasses the process and ends up being quickly converted to body fat.

“It’s basically sneaking into the rock concert through the fence,” Dr. Parks said. “It’s a less-controlled movement of fructose through these pathways that causes it to contribute to greater triglyceride synthesis. The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body.”

Fructose is not bad by itself, what has changed over the years is that the increase in consumption is in astronomical proportion. High Fructose Corn Syrup is in everything and mostly in soda, and drinks like gatorade, which kids drinks some many in a single day.