The fructose doc
One of the summit’s very impressive presentations was given by Dr. Rick Johnson of the University of Colorado at Denver. He’s a friendly, very passionate guy who has studied the liver and has now found himself a growing authority on a cause of obesity.
First, let’s get this straight: He isn’t talking (only) about high fructose corn syrup, which is a particular target of many obesity foes — because the obesity epidemic seemed to hit just as soft drink manufacturers were switching from sucrose (table sugar) to HFCS, because of its ubiquity in the US food industry, and because it benefits from government corn subsidies and promotes corn monoculture, among other reasons. Though his research is wicked bad news for the HFCS peddlers — and you can expect them to fight it ferociously — he’s talking about all fructose.
Second, let’s get this straight: As its name implies, fructose is the sugar derived from fruit. Fructose is a 50-50 contributor, along with glucose, in sucrose, the white sugar you put in your coffee.
Fructose, Johnson said, is not only a contributor to obesity, but elevates uric acid in the body, which can have several ill effects. He said uric acid induces metabolic syndrome in rats, and is found to deplete energy stores. It also heightens the risk of high blood pressure. And, he added, fructose is implicated in arterial inflammation, which is strongly linked to heart attacks. Johnson said that even if you starve a rat but give it fructose, it doesn’t gain weight but does gain fat.
What this all could mean is that if the amount of fructose in the human diet could be broadly reduced, it might reduce obesity, reduce hypertension, and reduce heart attacks. That’s quite a nice trifecta.
Dr. Johnson’s book, “The Sugar Fix,” is just coming out in paperback.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:25 am
I frequently have tea at a little shop in the center of town owned by Greek immigrants. Both mother and daughter are fairly heavy, with weight I expect they put on since emigrating. I see the daughter with a very large soft drink nearly every day as she leaves work. She told me she wants to start walking; she knows she needs to lose weight.
The other night I watched King Corn, which humorously demonstrates the ubiquity of corn in the American diet, and the devastating effects of HFCS. I mentioned this to the daughter, and bet her that we’d find high fructose corn syrup listed as an ingredient on every bottle of non-diet soda in the case. Sure enough, I pulled out bottle after bottle and every drink had it. I don’t think she had ever read the ingredients on any food she’d purchased before. “How about that?” This demonstration apparently had a strong effect, for within a few minutes she was on the phone to her cousin, who owns a pizza joint, and among the Greek conversation, otherwise unintelligible to me, I heard the words “corn syrup”– she was telling her cousin to look on the bottles of soda in her shop.
“Is the corn syrup in anything else?” she asked. It’s in nearly everything, I told her. Just start reading the labels. I told her about the study that showed rats would starve on fructose but still put on weight. Tomorrow I’m going to bring in King Corn for her to watch.
Surely an important part of the food revolution will come from millions of conversations like this. Thanks so much for the crucial and live-saving information found on this blog.