Fast Running Blog

I know, not exactly about running, but it pertains to what we put in our bodies. Basic premise: high-fructose corn syrup meets the requirements of being a poison. We eat a lot of this stuff in every year. Like, A LOT. Watch if you have time. I found it fascinating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

very interesting. thanks for posting.

about bread - a perfect example of HFCS permeating products that we would never even consider to have excess sweeteners in them.  purchasing "wheat" bread is considered a healthy option for most shoppers. ever read the label? it is insane how many ingredients most of these products contain, HFCS in particular.

i teach introductory nutrition courses and the HFCS debate always comes up. it really is in everything. the first day of class i show a presentation entitled "name that food"...i show a listing of ingredients and they have to guess what product it is. the final slide is the "bonus product" that nobody can ever guess:

Water, corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil (coconut palm kernel), high fructose corn syrup, less than 2% of: sodium caseinate (from milk), natural and artificial flavors, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, beta carotene (color).

students guess things like gummy bears, red licorice, jello, etc.

the product is cool whip. yum.  ;) 

Paul and Allie, here is an interesting piece of trivia about high fructose corn syrup. It turns out it was my grandfather (on mother's side, his name was David Langlois) who invented and developed the enzymatic processes by which HFCS is made in the 1930s. He was an organic chemist/research scientist at Staley's in Decatur Illinois. Staleys was the major corn processing company at the time, I think they have now assimilated with Cargill or something. Anyway, his "sweetose" process, patented by Staleys is essentially the same process used today to make HFCS from corn. At the time it was a revolutionary way to get a cheap new source of sweet sugar from an abundant foodstock. Probably turned out to be too good, I agree the stuff is a major health hazard today, especially for those who don't exercise. But of course at the time the idea was just to get a new cheaper source of sugar than from sugar cane or beets. I believe my grandfather never earned much in the way of patent royalties,as Staleys owned his patent, but they took very good care of him, since the patent generated HUGE revenues for Staleys, allowing him to retire early and spend twenty years teaching chemistry part time in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh.

My Kirkland whole wheat bread has no HFCS, it has brown sugar and cane sugar.  And it has 140 cal/slice (I am counting my cals).

I actually never buy food without reading the labels unless it is fruit or vegetables. For a good reason, as illustrated in Allie's post.

Another tidbit on "Sasha Ruins US Economy". If I could replicate myself sufficiently, the job of the marketing departments of food companies would be reduced to printing a list of ingredients in large letters resulting in massive lay-offs.

That's a cool bit of trivia Scott.  Too bad you're grandfather didn't work out of his own lab or you and your family would be the SugarKings!

Even our Italian salad dressing has HFCS in it (along with a bunch of other garbage). I need to get back in the habit of just mixing some balsamic vinegar and olive oil in a jar, and calling it good. At least then I know where the ingredients came from. Ketchup and BBQ sauce can be equally bad. If you don't read labels, you'll get nickeled and dimed on condiments alone. Organic products generally has more "pure" ingredients (but not always), so that can be a good way to go as well, if you don't have time to make your own.

By the way, here's my favorite sports drink (since Gatorade is stock full of trash). 3 parts water, 1 part orange juice, and 1 packet of Emergen-C. The orange juice gives a little sugar, the Emergen-C has electrolytes and a big dose of vitamin C, which reduces chance of infection after a hard workout (when the immune system is down), and also may help muscle repair after a hard workout. It's cheap and easy (doesn't even require mixing, since Emergen-C just dissolves on its own).

There have been some interesting articles published today about the new AHA guidelines on sugar intake: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016198979?Heart%20Association%20Releases%20New%20Sugar%20Guidelines

Paul,

Are you able to drink that mix during races? I've read that fruit juices are great to drink during races but that they can be hard to stomach.

I haven't tried this in races, and have only used it for post-workout recovery. I generally don't take fluids other than water during long runs or shorter (less than marathon) races, unless it's very hot. But it seems that the acidity of orange juice could be a potential problem for some, so not recommended without "practice".

That said, in the past I've taken orange slices during marathons without problem, so I imagine that taking very diluted orange juice would be even more mild.

There was an article recently that the blue dye in gatorade (and blue m&ms) seemed to have an effect on nerve cell regeneration in rats. Not to start a whole other debate, but I didn't realize that people considered Gatorade to contain problematic ingredients.

Fructose, which is the sweet sugar in fruits is typically a little harder on the stomach, but reactions vary and problably vary with the amount.

Here's a summary of a study that just came out on this topic. Very interesting. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

By the way, I think the soda that people drink so much without thinking is the biggest culprit in making them gain weight. As mentioned, HFCS is also often a main ingredient in sports drinks.

Good study, thanks. I've pretty much sworn off soda, and am coming to the same conclusion for sports drinks. These days I make my own sports drink, composed of orange juice + water + Emergen-C + Ultima. The only sugar is from the orange juice, and it's diluted in half by water. The other powders add Vit-C, Vit-B, and electrolytes, but no additional sugar.

Interesting article, thanks.  I wonder if there is any serious downside (running-wise) to HFCS if you're not concerned about becoming obese, which is the focus of the study.  I'm a 4-a-day habit coke drinker (good stuff, not diet crap) but I couldn't gain weight if I made it my mission in life.  I guess if we eliminated everything from our diets that had a negative study written about it, there would be nothing left.

Paul, I find your own personal sports drink interesting as I have done something similar during the last 2 marathons that I have run.  My concoction looks nasty, but seems to work well for me.  It is: spinach + bananas + water + Emergen-C + evaporated cane juice (or turbinado sugar).  I add the sugar because at least personally I feel like I need a little something extra above and beyond what I get from the other ingredients to help fuel me adequately so that I can avoid a crash.

For me, the key observation from this study is that even though sugar and HFCS have a very similar "nutrient" makeup (e.g., about the same # of carboyhydrates per ounce), they appear to have a different effect on rats (and thus, quite possibly on humans). Or to borrow a phrase from a great book I read recently (http://run.hammerpig.com/runner-read-book-eating.html (http://run.hammerpig.com/runner-read-book-eating.html)), food is more than the sum of its nutrient parts. This difference in effect may be because one is a "natural" food (sugar) whereas the other is manufactured unnaturally by the food industry (because it is cheap and convenient to transport). The fact that HFCS doesn't spoil easily may be a clue--even bacteria and other germs don't want to consume it!

The rats in the study also had other health problems (in addition to obesity), suggesting that "unnatural" foods may affect more than our wastelines. So in my opinion, drinking 4 sodas a day is probably not a great idea. Running may help soda drinkers overcome the risks for obesity, but there may be other unwanted effects.

Twenty years ago runners used to swear off drinking soda because of its carbonation. But now it appears the real danger is the HFCS.

Three other tidbits. 1) This doesn't necessarily mean that sugar is particularly good for you. 2) If we follow the logic of this study, we could also (tentatively) conclude the naturally occurring fructose (such as that in fruit) does not pose the same risks as HFCS. 3) Another example of the natural vs artificial debate is margarine vs butter...for a long time it was thought that margarine was better than butter because it doesn't have saturated fat, but later we learned that margarine is actually quite bad because of the hydrogenation process.

This topic is a controversial one, so I think it's important not to make statements that are too strong, but the study was very interesting to me, and I plan to take it to heart with my eating habits, as well as observe what comes out future studies.

Something else that helps deal with the fructose in fruit is the high amount of fiber present as well.

Excerpt from an interview with Robert Lustig, MD professor of UCSF Children's Hospital:

MN: And fiber's role in all this?

RL: Fiber is the one item in the diet that reduces the rate of sugar absorption from the gut into the bloodstream, thereby keeping your insulin down. We humans used to eat between 100-300 grams of fiber per day. Now we eat 12 grams. That's just in the last 30 years, and it has had major effects. The reason we've been defibertized is processed food. And the reason the food industry processes fiber out is because they can't freeze fiber. If the fiber is processed out, the food lasts forever.

MN: Is the fructose in fruit bad?

RL: No, as long as it stays as whole fruit, because fruit has fiber and fiber is the antidote to carbohydrate. Whatever bad fructose does, fiber undoes. [Food writer] Michael Pollan says, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" I totally agree with that. It comes out of the ground. It's got fiber. Here's another way of looking at it: What do the Atkins diet [high fat, low carb] and Dean Ornish's diet [high carb, extremely low fat] have in common?

MN: I give up.

RL: Both diets eschew fructose.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/173486298.html

Personally, I find all this fascinating. Certainly is controversial (esp low-carb vs. low fat, cholesterol theory, etc). But I think if you get rid of all the processed stuff, whether you're low-carb or low fat, you've won half the battle already. BTW - aside from the weight gain/blood sugar issues to drinking lots of soft drinks, it is can also cause tooth decay and bone loss.  Lots of different reasons to quit ;)

I never posted here before; hope it works!  I viewed the you-tube video "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" a couple months ago, and it was an eye opener!  The first 20-30 minutes are pretty standard about how society takes in a whole lot more calories than we used to.  Then Dr. Lustig starts talking about how our pancreas doesn’t recognize HFCS and how the liver processes HFCS, which is where I thought it got really interesting.  It sounds like excessive HFCS can be harmful to the liver, and this might help contribute to the non obesity problems the rats and mice developed in the studies.

So, this is a comment for Joe, who likes his 3-4 cokes a day.  You might be able to find coke products that are not made with HFCS.  I've heard that Coke products sold in other countries are made with all sugar and not HFCS, whereas Coke products sold in the United States contain a fair amount of HFCS. (Interesting!?!)  Perhaps you can buy non-HFCS coke at an ethnic type food market? Or perhaps the more "yuppie" soda makers like Blue Skybuy offer colas without HFCS?  PS: You're lucky you don't easily gain weight!! 

Joe:

I think the approach of looking for one isolated culprit ingredient is wrong. When a piece of music sounds bad, it is not because let's say the note C occurs in it too many times. In fact, I suppose you could find pieces that are considered classic that would have the exact same frequency of the same note. You could probably find a classic piece that would have every single note with the exact same frequency as the bad one. What makes it bad is not the mix of notes per say, but the lack of harmony.  How you mix those notes is what makes all the difference.

Applying this principle to food, if you seek nutritional harmony you are very unlikely to find it in heavily processed foods. Especially the ones that were made by people who are not in harmony with their own bodies. More particularly when the purpose of the mix was to maximize the profit from the sales. You will find most harmony in natural foods.

Good info everyone, sounds like an intervention!  I'm slowly moving toward better nutrition (this is all new to me).  This time last year, the cokes were beers so I'm moving in the right direction anyway!

So, what about honey?  It's essentially the same thing as some concentrations of HFCS, (with small amounts of other simple sugars and bee spit on the side), yet a lot of people who are concerned about things like this swear by honey.  What gives?

I don't worry about HFCS much, because I cook most of my food from scratch anyway.  I figure what little I do eat is pretty much negligible, but I guess if one eats a lot of processed foods and sweets then it becomes something to worry about.  Incidentally, the "Farm Bread" from Macey's (in Utah) is pretty cheap and has no HFCS.  I don't buy it because of that, but I just looked to see.

Joe - yes, honey is very high in fructose. People that avoid fructose also avoid honey. I've seen in come up in discussion before. See:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/honey-more-fructose-than-high-fructose.html

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/goodbye-fructose.html

I think calling putting lumping honey with unnatural sweeteners is going too far. Probably a classic example of calling a piece of music bad based solely on the note frequency analysis that I mentioned in my earlier post. Something is just not quite right about putting honey in the unhealthy food group. My mind has a hard time imagining a fat honey lover that stays away from processed sugars.

Perhaps the explanation is simple - honey taste is so sweet that you cannot eat more than what is healthy for you.

For the record, I think honey is fine as long you're not eating tons of it. I eat it about once a month, so I don't really care. But if you're eating it every day, thinking that it's some sort of "health food", you're probably wrong. I mean, think about it, it's pure sugar, no fiber. At least fruit has fiber. But it's definitely a nice treat.

Yeah, I'd tend to agree.  I don't see honey as a bad thing any more than any other simple sugar.  Eat too much and it's a bad thing, but if you're just eating it here and there I don't see any problem.  I just try to limit my "sweets" as much as possible anyway.  Interestingly, I find that avoiding lots of sugar, and eating well in general, is a lot easier when I'm getting a lot of exercise (running).