If you’re trying to eat a healthy diet, watch out: You may be eating something toxic.
New research from the University of Utah says that high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener found in most processed food products, is more toxic than table sugar, impairing the longevity and reproductive abilities of female mice.
Now researchers warn that high-fructose corn syrup could be dangerous for humans as well.
“This is the most robust study showing there is a difference between high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar at human-relevant doses,” says Wayne Potts, senior of the study and a biology professor at the University of Utah. “[This is important] because when the diabetes-obesity-metabolic syndrome epidemics started in the mid-1970s, they corresponded with both a general increase in consumption of added sugar and the switchover from sucrose being the main added sugar in the American diet to high-fructose corn syrup making up half our sugar intake.”
The findings can be found in The Journal of Nutrition’s upcoming March 2015 issue.
The Study
It’s a scary thought: The foods you eat everyday contain a potentially toxic substance.
Now even more evidence shows that high-fructose corn syrup has no place in your diet.
In the study, researchers fed mice either a healthy diet containing 25 percent fructose and glucose, a mixture found in high-fructose corn syrup, or sucrose, another type of sweetener. Then, over the course of 72 weeks, researchers observed how it affected their health–and found that it impaired female mice from having healthy reproductive systems or living a longer lifespan. It did not appear to affect the male mice, however.
These findings further confirm research from 2013, which found that female mice who consumed a high-fructose corn syrup mixture died 50 percent more often.
“Female mice that ate the fructose-glucose mixture may be more likely to die than male mice because they undergo a bigger metabolic energy crunch during such studies,” says Potts.
As a warning, James Ruff, who authored the study, says this emphasizes the need for consumers to cut out added sugars, such as high-fructose corn syrup, out of their diet. Although these studies were conducted on mice, which are physiologically similar but not identical to humans, the evidence is still compelling–and now a serious concern.
“Our previous work and plenty of other studies have shown that added sugar in general is bad for your health,” says Ruff, who is a postdoctoral fellow in biology at the University of Utah. “So first, reduce added sugar across the board. Then worry about the type of sugar, and decrease consumption of products with high-fructose corn syrup.”
So bottom line? If you’re trying to eat a better diet, cut out the added sugars first–something you can do by limiting your intake of processed foods or foods consumed outside of the home, such as in a fast food restaurant.
Readers: Do you try to limit added sugars in your diet?
Sources:
Fructose More Toxic Than Table Sugar, Mouse Study Suggests – ScienceDaily.com
Study: Fructose More Toxic Than Table Sugar in Mice – Utah.edu
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