Experts lay to rest long-held misconceptions about high fructose corn syrup at ILSI-USD...( WASHINGTON DC A supplement to be pu...)

WASHINGTON, DC A supplement to be published in the June issue of the Journal of Nutrition encourages the scientific community and the general public to stop demonizing high fructose corn syrup as the culprit of obesity and to rethink the myths about high fructose corn syrup's impact on the American diet.

"The State of the Science on Dietary Sweeteners Containing Fructose" is the scientific summary of a joint conference held in March 2008 by the International Life Sciences Institute of North America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Several scientific papers from the supplement are currently available online.

The conference brought together several scientific leaders from varying backgrounds, including former critics of high fructose corn syrup, who found there is little evidence that high fructose corn syrup and sugar (or sucrose) have differing effects on satiety, overall energy balance, metabolic hormones or biochemical metabolites such as triglycerides and uric acid all suggesting no unique causal role for high fructose corn syrup in obesity.

According to Suzanne P. Murphy, Ph.D., R.D., research professor at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, University of Hawaii, noted in her summary of the presented papers, "[high fructose corn syrup] and sucrose are similar and one is not 'better or worse' than the other."

Dr. Murphy notes that "it does not appear to be practical to base dietary guidance on selecting or avoiding these specific types of sweeteners."

High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Not the Same as Fructose

Confusion about high fructose corn syrup has been fueled in part by erroneous links to research testing high levels of pure fructose, and then generalizing those findings to high fructose corn syrup. The conference experts concluded that studies testing pure fructose at levels not seen in the typical diet are simply misleading in terms of understandi
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