In Australia around four per cent of the population have diabetes, that’s around 900,000 people and is up from just 1.5 per cent of the population in 1989. Every year approximately one billion dollars is spent on treating diabetes. No wonder diabetes has been identified as a National Health Priority Area by the federal government. There are many factors underlying the diabetes epidemic and one of them is diet and chief among the dietary culprits according to a new study is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
HFCS is used extensively as a sweetener in soft drinks and other manufactured foods. Table sugar is made of sucrose and comes from either sugar cane or sugar beet. Sucrose itself is made of equal parts fructose and glucose. HFCS contains more fructose which makes it much sweeter and also helps extend the shelf life of the processed foods in which it is used. The use of fructose as a sweetener however, is a big problem. It is not an issue when the fructose comes from fruit since in that form there is fibre and other nutrients present that buffer the fructose impact. As an isolated sweetener however, fructose is bad news.
Fructose is not absorbed straight into all of your cells the way that glucose is. Instead, fructose must be dealt with by your liver. This puts stress on your liver and the result is elevated uric acid, cholesterol, and blood pressure. Fructose also causes inflammation and decreases sensitivity to insulin. The action of fructose in your liver also reduces the levels of an appetite control hormone called leptin. This combined effect of fructose (and its independence of insulin) may interfere with your ability to control your appetite. This may explain why some soft drinks, for instance, fail to make you feel full even though you are consuming lots of extra kilojoules. Now new research has concluded that HFCS is driving the diabetes epidemic.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Southern California combined to analyse data on the use of HFCS in 42 countries. Their analysis showed that in countries where HFCS is widely used there is a 20 per cent greater chance of developing type 2 diabetes compared to countries that do not use it. This relationship was independent of total sugar use and of obesity.
The United States is the single largest consumer of HFCS with consumption at 25 kilograms per person per year. Hungary comes next at 16kg per head. This does not mean other countries can rest easy though. In a global market HFCS-containing processed foods are everywhere. As diabetes is a central element of spiralling health costs, societies everywhere would do well to look at limiting HFCS intake where possible.
