The Devastating Effects of High Fructose Corn Syrup to Your Weight Loss Goals

On the surface, this warning may seem as if I’m an alarmist. But I assure you I’m not. I’m concerned, though, about the ever-present role high-fructose corn syrup plays in the average diet. Could it really have an effect on your current struggle to lose weight?

What I'm talking about isn't really news. Everyone knows that high-fructose corn syrup isn't the healthiest food on the grocery store shelves. Never mind that it's part and parcel of just about every processed and packaged food you buy.

But even I didn't realize the devastating potential this one seemingly trivial addition can have on your long-term weight loss plans. Can't get to square one losing weight? Could it be because of high-fructose syrup? At a plateau in your attempts to lose weight? Consider the cause just might be high-fructose corn syrup.

Here are two more studies, each of which comes down hard on this additive. Each study, additionally, links it with the current obesity epidemic quickly spreading throughout the globe.

Let's face it in recent years you can pick up just about any processed food, any packaged food -- especially those aimed at children -- as well as soda only to discover that one of its ingredients is high-fructose corn syrup.

The two studies come to us from Princeton University and were funded by the U.S. Public Health Service. The results of this research discovered that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than the rats who ate table sugar. This held true even when their overall caloric intakes were identical. Interesting.

But that's just a portion of the results. The consumption of this syrup also caused an abnormally large increase in body fat. And this is especially noticeable in the abdomen. Sound familiar? And the consumption of the high-fructose syrup also caused a rise in the rats' triglyceride levels. Boy, it's really beginning to ring a bell now!

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is not different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity," said Bart Hoebel, a psychology professor with Princeton, "but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests."

Part of the research team, Hoebel specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this, they don't gain extra weight."

Specifically, the first study took two groups of male rates. The researchers gave the rats identical diets, except for one thing. One group was given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. The other received water sweetened with ordinary table sugar -- sucrose, if you will.

Here's the interesting part of this research. The sucrose solution equaled that found in some commercial soft drinks. The high-fructose corn syrup solution was only half as concentrated as most sodas. Telling, isn't it?

And the rats who drank the corn syrup where those who gained the weight.

The second experiment, monitored weight gain, and body fat, as well as the triglyceride levels in rats who had access to high-fructose corn syrup for only six months.

The researchers then compared these results to those animals who ate only rat chow. Those on the corn-syrup diet displayed all of those dangerous signs of Metabolic X Syndrome -- the syndrome of symptoms which are a harbinger of diabetes. These signals included abnormal weight gain, an increase in the circulating triglyceride levels and an increase in the deposit of fat around the belly.

Bottom line: The rates with access to the high-fructose corn syrup gained nearly 50 percent more weight than those eating only a normal diet!

Now, about your problems with your weight loss program? Maybe you should be double checking those labels on your processed and packaged foods. Or better yet, cut back on those entirely!

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