[conspire] Sugar in foodstuffs

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Margaret Wendall (mwendall at gmail.com):

> I doubt this would stand up as scientific evidence, but it would be
> interesting to know if the real problem is generic sugar or the chemically
> modified corn syrup.

Odd that you should mention that, because that's really been the key
question for a long time -- and it turns out that that question has just
finally been addressed:

http://www.grist.org/article/researchers-yes.-hfcs-is-much-worse-than-table-sugar/

SWEETNESS AND BLIGHT
Researchers: HFCS is much worse than table sugar

BY Tom Laskawy
22 MAR 2010 12:00 PM

The long-running, contentious debate over the dangers of high fructose
corn syrup (HFCS) may be approaching a conclusive end -- one not likely
to please those sensitive souls over at the Corn Refiners Association.

While there has been extensive evidence that fructose is harmful to
human health and associated with metabolic diseases like diabetes and
liver problems, the fact is that plain old table sugar is itself 50
percent fructose. HFCS does have a higher concentration of fructose at
55 percent but it's close enough to table sugar that most experts
continue to dismiss claims that HFCS is on its own more dangerous. And
certainly the claim that the introduction of HFCS in the '80s directly
led to the current obesity epidemic continues to be a highly
controversial view.

A massive missing piece in this debate has been an absence of research
directly comparing the effects of HFCS and table sugar (as opposed to
pure fructose and glucose sugars, which is typically how the research
has been conducted). Thanks to a group of researchers at Princeton,
however, that missing piece may just have been found (via Science
Daily):

  A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all
  sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access
  to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those
  with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was
  the same.

  In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term
  consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases
  in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood
  fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on
  the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.
  [...]