Corn syrup is everywhere

Some nutrition experts are questioning its role in the nation's obesity problems. So reporter Kelly Bothum tried to eliminate it from her diet for a week.

By KELLY BOTHUM, The News Journal
April 17, 2007  

One week without corn syrup.  Pardon the pun, but I thought it'd be a piece of cake.

Although I'm far from being a health nut, I figured I knew the how to sidestep the corn sweetener landmines. Stay away from the office candy bowl.
Don't guzzle 2-liter bottles of sodas or sweetened fruit juices. Keep the ice cream in the frozen food aisle and out of my shopping cart. If I did that, I figured, I'd be well on my way to success.  

Boy was I wrong. Corn syrup is everywhere, I discovered. In my salad dressing. In my veggie burgers. In my coffee creamer. In my vitamins.  Before the end of the week, corn syrup was even in my nightmares. I guess I was a little obsessed about avoiding it in my waking hours.

I did this little experiment because more attention is being paid to corn syrup and its possible role in the country's obesity epidemic. There's been no definitive proof of a link, but that hasn't stopped some nutrition experts from focusing on the added sugars in our diets, particularly high fructose corn syrup, which they think is among the worst of the bunch.

I'm not drawing any conclusions from my own test, but I did make some interesting observations as I tried -- let me emphasize the word "tried" -- to rid my diet of corn syrup.

Observation No. 1: I should have paid more attention in chemistry class.
Corn syrup is made from corn starch and mostly is made up of glucose, a carbohydrate we use as a source of energy. To really understand what's going on with high fructose corn syrup it helps to have a chemistry book nearby. Or a really smart friend.

High fructose corn syrup is a chemical variant of glucose. It's made as a result of a multistep chemical process called hydrolysis that rearranges the molecular structure of corn starch to convert it into a sweetener.

That product is combined with corn syrup to make a sweet-as-sugar syrup that has varying percentages of fructose and glucose. Different types of high fructose corn syrup are used for different foods. By comparison, table sugar -- also called sucrose -- is half fructose and half glucose.

High fructose corn syrup is a popular sweetener because it's cheaper than sugar and makes foods taste sweet. It also helps them stay on the shelves longer. Processed foods are a prime place to find it. Sodas, which used to be sweetened with sugar, now get their sweetness from high fructose corn syrup. It's not surprising to find it in cookies, doughnuts, candy and some juice drinks.

But you can also find it in bread, rolls, cough medicines, packaged rice and low-fat yogurt.
Knowing that, it's no wonder the average American consumed 42 pounds of high fructose corn syrup in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. That works out to 200 calories a day -- about the amount of calories in a can of soda -- just in high-fructose corn syrup.

Over the course of an average day, we eat about 12.5 teaspoons of high fructose corn syrup alone. That's quite a sum, considering the USDA recommends we limit our intake of all added sugars -- from corn syrup to plain processed sugar -- to 10 to 12 teaspoons a day.

Americans blow that recommendation by eating almost 32 teaspoons of added sugars a day.
Clearly, we're not intentionally adding all this extra corn syrup -- high fructose or not -- to our diets on purpose. We're not pouring heaping teaspoons of it on our morning cereal or mixing it in our spaghetti sauce at dinner.

Instead, food manufacturers do it for us. They're the ones who sneak it into our cereal to give it a sweeter taste. They infuse it in our bread to keep it brown, even the 100 percent whole wheat variety. They even add it to our vitamins to make them more palatable. Each serving might not have a ton of corn syrup, but bite by bite it adds up.

At least it did for me.

Observation No. 2: Reading the nutrition label is about more than seeing calories, fats and fiber.

I started this little experiment on a Tuesday. That morning, I poured my regular breakfast in the bowl -- one cup of Honey Bunches of Oats. I filled my coffee mug and added a teaspoon of fat-free creamer and a Sweet'N Low.

And just like that, I hit my first corn sweetener landmine. Turns out, there's corn syrup in both my cereal and my creamer. I was a wee disappointed that I blew my eating plan so early, but I wasn't about to let it ruin my day.

At lunch, I opted for a ready-made package of rice noodles, frozen peas and an apple for dessert. A good choice, right? Wrong. The seasoning packet for the rice noodles contained maltodextrin. I didn't think twice about what that was. I just ate it.

Then I Googled "maltodextrin." I discovered it was a refined sweetener produced from corn starch. It's often used as a thickening agent and is not as sweet as high fructose corn syrup.

Strike two.

I could feel my corn syrup frustration building, like the slow ascent you make up to the top of a rollercoaster. But the only drop I would be feeling was my enthusiasm for this weeklong experiment.  I ate a veggie burger for dinner that night. Like earlier in the day, I forgot to check the ingredients before I ate it. When I did, I found one of the ingredients in my black-bean burger was dextrose, which I learned is glucose sugar refined from corn starch.

Strike three. I was out.

Out of patience, I grabbed a Girl Scout Thin Mint from the freezer. I didn't even look to see what was in it.

Observation No. 3: Romance writers aren't the only ones with pseudonyms.

One of the things I learned early on was that corn syrup and its variations have different names, like maltodextrin, dextrose and glucose-fructose syrup. So label-readers have to know what to look for.

"I think sometimes manufacturers are a little manipulative. You have to have a biochemistry degree to understand some of the ingredients on the list," said Martha Henley, a registered dietitian with Christiana Care Health System.  And while you're on the hunt for variations of corn syrup, she said, you also may want to look out for any form of added sugar. A good way to check that is to look at the number of carbohydrates and sugar grams in a serving size.  If the product gets more than one-third of its carbohydrates from sugar, it's a safe bet to assume it's a high-sugar food, Henley said.

People who are looking to eradicate added sugars from their diet also should avoid ingredients that end in "ose." Henley said if you spot that, there's some type of added sugar in the food.  When it comes to milk and fruit, however, sugar is OK. They have natural sugars instead of the processed kind.

Observation No. 4: There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to the debate over high fructose corn syrup.

Some health experts blame high fructose corn syrup for our society's ever-growing waistlines. They argue the liver more easily converts fructose to fat than it does sucrose (which we usually call table sugar). As a result, there are higher levels of fat in the bloodstream.

Henley said there's some scientific evidence that foods high in high fructose corn syrup can increase appetite and body weight. In particular, some experts believe fructose can negatively affect hormones that play a role in affecting appetite.  The problem is that fructose doesn't stimulate the pancreas to make insulin the way other carbohydrates made of glucose do. It also doesn't increase the body's production of leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells. Insulin and leptin help the brain know the body is full and shut off our appetites, helping to limit what we eat. Without that, some researchers theorize, we may consume more calories, leading to weight gain.

But even the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has made a name for itself by criticizing our overconsumption of junk food, fast food and super-size sodas, isn't saying high fructose corn syrup is any worse for us. The nonprofit organization believes all added and refined sugars can have negative health effects.

Henley said: "The jury is out on high fructose corn syrup being worse than sugar. I think of it as a type of sugar. It has calories but no nutrients."

Observation No. 5: If at first you don't succeed ...

My goal was seven days without any type of corn syrup, but I only wound up doing it right for three days. The other four had some kind of snafu that prevented me from going cold turkey on corn syrup for more than two days in a row.  But each time I discovered another food I ate had the no-no additive, I made a change to my diet. Instead of sweetened cereal, I ate oatmeal. I skipped the flavor packet in rice noodles and saved on dextrose and sodium.

I read labels. Lots of labels. I picked brown rice over boxed, processed rice. I ate more salad and less dressing. I passed over the croutons. Instead of being so dependent on calcium chews -- which also have corn syrup -- I opted for an extra glass of skim milk.

Yeah, I cheated here and there. I ate ice cream one night. I had a margarita when I went out to dinner. And when filling my kids' Easter baskets, I had to sample a few jelly beans to make sure they tasted good.

During one of my particularly low moments during the corn syrup strike, however, I got some much-needed encouragement from Dr. Bettina Herbert at the Thomas Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine in Philadelphia.

You see, I had gotten the idea for this little experiment after speaking with her about some of the health issues she saw on the horizon. She expects people will soon react to high fructose corn syrup the way they're raising a fuss about trans fats, the partially hydrogenated oils that wreak havoc on the body's cholesterol levels and are being banned by fast food eateries, restaurants and even some cities nationwide.

"Your own experiment illustrates how very difficult it is to avoid HFCS [high fructose corn syrup]," she wrote in an email. She recommends consumers search out foods as close to their natural state as possible, like skin-on potatoes and cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.

Looking back, I think I actually felt better when I ate fewer foods with corn syrup in them. That -- and the two pounds I surprisingly lost last week -- may be all the incentive I need.

But in case it wasn't, I found some pleasure in Herbert's parting thoughts. "I admire you for your weeklong experiment," she wrote. "During medical training we had to try a diet of a patient for a few days. I chose the renal [kidney] failure one. What an eye opener that was."

See, nobody's perfect. Not even the doctors.

Contact Kelly Bothum at 324-2962 or kbothum@delawareonline.com <mailto:kbothum@delawareonline.com>.

WHAT IS HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP?
Made by changing the sugar in corn starch to fructose, high fructose corn syrup is a sweetener and preservative used in many processed foods. High fructose corn syrup makes foods such as bread and breakfast cereal "brown" better when baked. It also gives cookies and snack bars a soft texture. It extends the shelf life of foods and is cheaper than sugar.

Some nutrition experts blame increased consumption of high fructose corn syrup and other forms of corn syrup for the nation's growing obesity problem. Others believe high fructose corn syrup is no worse than sugar.

Foods with high quantities of high fructose corn syrup are usually processed, high in calories and low in nutritional value.

Source: Mayo Clinic, Corn Refiners Association
 
For people avoiding added sugars in their diet, there's plenty to look for among the ingredients:
Corn syrup -- Made from corn starch and mostly made up of glucose. The term "corn syrup" is somewhat of a misnomer because it identifies a group of sweeteners. Used in salad dressings, tomato sauces and powdered drink mixes, among other things. Corn syrups also can depress freezing to prevent crystal formation in ice cream.

Dextrose -- Also known as corn sugar or crystalline glucose. It's a naturally occurring form of glucose. The pharmaceutical industry is the largest user of dextrose. It is used in manufacturing vitamin C and in fermentation to produce antibiotics.

Glucose -- A carbohydrate we use as an energy source.
High fructose corn syrup -- Made from a multistep chemical process that rearranges the molecular structure of corn starch. The fructose-enriched syrups are then blended with dextrose syrups. Commercial fructose corn syrups contain either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose by weight.

Sucrose -- Also known as table sugar. It's made up of half fructose and half glucose.
Maltodextrin -- A refined sweetener made from corn starch. Not as sweet as high fructose corn syrup. Used in an array of foods, from canned fruits to snacks.

Corn syrup solids -- Concentration of corn syrup that is less than 10 percent water.
Crystalline fructose -- Produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup. Comes from corn starch, not fruit.

Source: The Sugar Association, Corn Refiners Association