Hacker News Reader

Comment by amanaplanacanal | Hacker News Reader

Ok, you might not know this, but sucrose (white sugar) is a di-saccharide consisting of a molecule of glucose and one of fructose, which your body splits during digestion. So the amount of fructose you get from HFCS is almost identical to the amount you get from white sugar. Your body can't tell the difference.

View on HN

That's why I don't get the US hype about Coke with actual sugar. It's still 50% fructose, what do you think will happen if you drink several cans every day?

People say they prefer the taste. I don't know that I could tell the difference though.

Some people definitely can, but at least in the informal sample for this article, they preferred regular coke.

https://www.seriouseats.com/coke-vs-mexican-coke

I'd be wary of what people say they prefer in tests. People also prefer Pepsi to Coke in blind taste tests but they don't prefer it to drink an entire can.

Pepsi tastes much sweeter than Coke and I wouldn't be surprised if corn syrup Coke was sweeter than sugar Coke.

I can tell the difference, but I couldn't tell you which is which.

This usually pops up around Passover, when Coke switches to an all sugar formulation for reasons I'm unqualified to explain. It's an "oh hey, this Coke tastes different", I'll check the label, and see that it's sweetened with sucrose instead of HFCS.

I'll handwavingly claim that this is close enough to a blind study/anecdote as I'm not Jewish and haven't a clue when Passover falls. As I buy cans, not bottles, it's not the yellow caps giving it away either.

> Your body can't tell the difference.

That's not metabolically true. Fructose by definition doesn't have glucose which is present in sucrose. Metabolically, your body absolutely reacts differently.

A core issue is that isolated fructose and its derivatives, e.g. HFCS, don't sufficiently trigger satiety. In contrast, regular sugar and glucose trigger satiety. This has been known for over a decade:

- Dissociable Behavioral, Physiological and Neural Effects of Acute Glucose and Fructose Ingestion: A Pilot Study (2015) (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130280)

- Attenuated hypothalamic response to fructose via a dedicated gut-brain pathway (2026) (DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2026.05.013)

Your body can't certainly tell the difference between glucose and fructose, but that's not what we are talking about. HFCS is typically either 42% or 55% fructose, which is very similar to sucrose (50% fructose).

If HFCS is problematic, white sugar is problematic in exactly the same way.

It is problematic that the ingredient label doesn't list which types of HFCS are used in the product. It could be HFCS-90 for all I know. The manufacturer could also keep shifting the formula. 90% fructose would be disastrous to one's health.

In fact a 2014 study found 60% fructose, not 55% as is expected with HFCS-55. This suggests a blending of HFCS-55 and HFCS-90 in a ratio that yields 60% fructose. This thuggery by hiding it from the label is bad for health. As a consumer, I am within reason to make the pessimistic assumption of HFCS being up to 90% fructose via HFCS-90, which for all practical intents and purposes is fructose. In any event, your claim of the product containing up to merely 55% fructose is falsified.

Fructose content in popular beverages made with and without high-fructose corn syrup (2014) doi: 10.1016/j.nut.2014.04.003.

Yeah I was working from Wikipedia. They say that 55 is typically used in soft drinks, and 42 in sweet snacks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com