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Is Corn Syrup Responsible for Rise in Diabetes?
For the past 35 years, food manufacturers have increasingly replaced sugar (sucrose) with high-fructose corn syrup. Researchers have observed a similar increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes in the U.S. Are the two related as some suggest?
A few studies have suggested fructose encourages overeating because it has a weaker effect on the appetite hormones that tell us we are full. Tina Akhavan and G. Harvey Anderson from the University of Toronto in Canada conducted tests of 31 young healthy men to study the effects.
They gave men sugar solutions to drink. Some had regular sugar while others had high-fructose corn syrup or some other combination of glucose and fructose. All the drinks had the same number of calories. An hour and a half later, these men were given all the pizza they wanted to eat.
The result was that it didn’t matter what kind of sugar they were given. They all reported the same level of hunger and ate the same amount of pizza each time.
The tests seem to indicate that the type of sugar consumed doesn’t alter the effect on appetite. Therefore, increasing amounts of high-fructose corn syrup in our diets are not the cause to increases in obesity and type 2 diabetes.