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Comment by bcatanzaro | Hacker News Reader

The summary was irritating because it mentioned HFCS over and over as if it is the cause of excessive fructose consumption. But most HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose, while ordinary table sugar (sucrose) is 50% fructose.

It seems to me that overconsumption of sucrose is just as bad for you as HFCS, in which case focusing attention on HFCS is harmful. People will drink Mexican Coca-Cola made from sucrose and think it is better for them because of this article.

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They ran the experiment with HFCS, so that's what they used in the conclusion.

In practice I wouldn't expect different results with a bolus of table sugar. However, they didn't test that so they didn't make any claims about it. Mostly just being scientifically accurate.

Yeah I think so too. But it’s unfortunate because people demonize HFCS for cultural reasons and this article just makes it worse. Like I said, drinking a Mexican coke isn’t going to result in significantly less fructose in your intestine. Even if I do agree that it tastes better. :)

HFCS gets demonized because it's very cheap due to government subsidy. The obesity epidemic was already underway when (for example) Coke switched, but the switch helped keep prices of sweets low and fueled it further than it otherwise may have gone.

Maybe it's demonized because in the US it's added to almost every possible food? Bread, milk, cereal, you name it.

Not only table sugar: as I understand it, these results should be replicable with honey (and maybe agave syrup?) too. It really seems to me that a lot of health articles are systematically deceptive about the relative issues with HFCS vs. other sweeteners.

Honey does have slightly less fructose in it (IIRC ~40%). And it does contain beneficial micronutrients. But mostly it's just as "bad" for you as cane sugar or HFCS.

Yea but sucrose is different molecularly; the Glucose and Fructose are bonded whereas HFCS it’s a mixture of the two… so the former the body has to metabolize it while the latter it does not. So calorie intake is higher and fructose and glucose are absorbed faster and at higher amounts.

In addition to overall fructose levels, its suggested that the ratio between glucose and fructose levels may be important for determining the changes to the nutrient absorption pattern.

Figure 1 of the linked article illustrates a model by the study authors concerning the effects of glucose vs fructose on gut morphology and nutrient absorption pattern. As described in the caption, fructose up-regulates (ie stimulates) a biochemical pathway that leads to changes in the gut which cause increased nutrient absorption and lipid (ie fat) synthesis, but glucose down-regulates that same pathway.

Put simply, fructose and glucose compete antagonistically to either promote higher nutrient absorption or lower it, respectively. One pushes the lever, the other pulls it, and the ratio will determine who wins. The linked summary article does not, however, state what the relationship between ratio and degree of effect is.

Table sugar does not "contain" fructose, just like consuming table salt isn't like throwing a chunk of sodium down your throat.

More directly, sucrose consumption isn't likely to result in a buffer overflow of fructose because your body regulates the breakdown of sucrose via sucrase production.

If sucrase production was limited people would be able to easily poison themselves by eating too much sucrose. Sucrose intolerance from sucrase deficiency seems pretty rare though and I’ve never heard that your body regulates the breakdown of sucrose. Seems rather that the body makes how ever much sucrase is necessary to make sure the enzyme is not the limiting factor.

I think to a first order, sucrose really is 50% fructose to the human body.

It's hard to parse out what you're trying to say here. Are you really equating anything less than infinite sucrase to a sucrase deficiency? Not-unlimited does not equal deficient.

>6. Could the real culprit in fatty liver disease be high-fructose corn syrup, not regular table sugar? After all, it says "high-fructose" right on the label.

>Regular table sugar is made up of about 50% fructose, and a common formulation of high-fructose corn syrup (called "HFCS-55") contains 55% fructose. These products are similar enough that there is no evidence of differences in their impact on metabolic health. However, some commercially available formulations of high-fructose corn syrup contain higher proportions of fructose, such as 65% or even higher.21 We do not know whether the health consequences of these products differ from products containing lower concentrations of fructose.

UCSF researchers seem to suggest that this isn't actually relevant

https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/alternate-views-toxic-truth.ht...

Since both sucrose and HFCS are quickly degraded to fructose and glucose, I think the result would be the same as eating a mixture of straight fructose and glucose. TFA speaks to eating straight fructose.

Undigested sucrose in the large intestine causes bloating, flatulence, diarrhea etc. Doesn't happen in normal circumstances. It's all rapidly broken down into glucose/fructose.

It's remarkable how different pure dextrose/glucose/grape sugar lozenges make you feel than fructose candies.

I wonder why l-glucose has never been used as an artificial zero calorie sweetener.

Edit: expensive is a lame reason. Sugar isn’t the dominant factor in pricing and hasn’t been for quite a while. There’s a huge population of affluent consumers who would gladly pay a large premium for an authentic zero calorie sugar taste.

Because it’s expensive to make since it’s incompatible with normal biological production.

Tagatose can be produced relatively easily and has 38% of the caloric content.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagatose

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