Soft drink consumption and obesity: it is all about fructose.
PURPOSE OF REVIEW:
The purpose of the review is to suggest that fructose, a component of both sucrose (common sugar) and high fructose corn syrup, should be of concern to both healthcare providers and the public.
RECENT FINDINGS:
Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has increased steadily over the past century and with this increase has come more and more reports associating their use with the risk of overweight, diabetes and cardiometabolic disease.
In a meta-analysis of the relationship between soft drink consumption and cardiometabolic risk, there was a 24% overall increased risk comparing the top and bottom quantiles of consumption.
Several factors might account for this increased risk, including increased carbohydrate load and increased amounts of dietary fructose.
Fructose acutely increases thermogenesis, triglycerides and lipogenesis as well as blood pressure, but has a smaller effect on leptin and insulin release than comparable amounts of glucose.
In controlled feeding studies, changes in body weight, fat storage and triglycerides are observed as well as an increase in inflammatory markers.
SUMMARY:
The present review concludes on the basis of the data assembled here that in the amounts currently consumed, fructose is hazardous to the cardiometabolic health of many children, adolescents and adults.

Nice to read! I wonder how hard the HFCS people will push back against that piece of info....but I remember as a kid my parents and relatives all controlling how often we got to have a soda as, "all the sugar is no good for you."

I am also curious of any studies about the diet soda craze too. years back, I remember my dietitian telling me that I could drink diet pop "like water". I wonder what the chemical makeup of diet soda and the artificial sweetener does in large amounts over time...

I wish they'd realize it's not just the soft drinks, it's the fruit juice too.

I actually noticed something the other day that I thought was somewhat promising.

I was having a terrible craving for sloppy joes, so I checked out all the canned mixes at the store. Couldn't find one even remotely acceptable, but I did notice that the two Hunt's brand mixes listed sugar rather than HFCS in the ingredients. Not perfect, but a step in the right direction IMO.

Now I'm craving them! I think they'd be pretty easy to make from scratch, use some sugar sub instead!

I have a big thing of ham to use up, maybe I can grind up some ham and make sloppy joes with it.

Yes, I need to modify a recipe.

I keep thinking of PJ's post about not being able to just walk into the store and buy something to eat. As I move to eating more and more whole foods, I spend so much more time cooking. (I also spend more on the food itself!) Lord, I'd love to just brown some ground hamburger, then throw in a can of sloppy joe sauce. It's what I used to call "cooking."

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,182...-235207,00.html

You could cheat and use dehydrated onion or onion powder same for the garlic. I really like these dehydrated roasted garlic chips I've purchased when I don't have fresh garlic on hand. You could skip the green peppers. They're nice but probably don't change the basic flavor much if at all. I love dehydrated onion. I mean really love it... I shake it on my salads. I like regular onions too. Oh yes, some stores sell pre-chopped onion, but they always taste kind of bland to me.

So then you're squeezing 3/4ths cup of ketchup. Shaking on onions and garlic. Adding water or broth. Worchester sauce. Skip the flour. Sounds pretty darned easy if you take some short cuts. In fact, I pretty much have all the ingredient right now!

I think outside of the cooking time for the beef, I could probably stir that up in 10 minutes maybe even 5.

Please be aware that ketchup has a good bit of added sugars- usually in the form of HFCS these days.

Alternately, you could use the sloppy joe recipe from Linda Sue's site. Granted it has a few more ingredients, so will take a little more time for measuring and mixing, but at least you're avoiding the added sugars.

Another alternative that's definitely not the sweet sloppy joe, but is pretty good is to make sloppy jose's. There are recipes out there that require lots of chopping and simmering, but the easiest thing to do is to use a no-sugar-added chunky salsa (1 cup for a pound of browned hamburger), then melt in a cup of shredded colby jack cheese. Different flavor, but very quick and easy.

Make sandwich spread! Get some pickles and some mayo and grind er up!

One suspects that had we continued with an occasional 8 oz soft drink and and orange, banana, or apple once or twice a day fructose would not have been an issue. Or any number of other things.

Since it contains no fructose, I'm considering picking up some dextrose powder for those rare cooking applications (mainly holiday desserts we share with family) where only real sugar will do. I'm starting to think a lot of the problems we attribute to carbs in general are actually due to fructose.

A quick web search shows it's quite inexpensive at supplement shops catering to bodybuilders.

glucose (that is dextrose) and fructose harm us in different ways, but both are quite bad, especially for those who through long term abuse have aquired significant metabolic damage.

It depends on the dose. If we don't eat any glucose, our own liver will manufacture 100 grams or so per day. Without it, we die. I don't think consuming an occasional dessert containing a teaspoon (4 grams) or so of the stuff will hurt you, even if you are metabolically impaired.

but we are NOT eating just 4g it's 50.6 lb/year of added fructose = 22,951.77g=62.8815616g/d the average USA adult consumes.
It really is about time you realized how much fructose you consume daily really is.

How much I personally consume? At <20 grams total carbs per day, most of the carbs being from eggs, liver, lactose and oysters, none of that from products containing added sugar, I'd say very, very little.

On Turkey day, I had one serving of creme brulee, which had less than a teaspoon of sucrose in it (I know this because I made it), and a spoonful of home made, unsweetened cranberry orange relish. What I am considering is to replace that spoonful of sucrose with pure dextrose.