Yoli Truth: Falsely Sweet Pledges From Trash Food Companies

April 7, 2010

WHEN SODA companies applaud the latest campaign to fight obesity, you know there is much more to the story.

In launching a new White House initiative against obesity called “Let’s Move,’’ First Lady Michelle Obama this week said, “Our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids don’t decide what’s served to them at school or whether there’s time for gym or recess. Our kids don’t choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then to have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn.’’ Instead of taking these comments as fighting words, the obesity industry feigned being an amen choir.

PepsiCo and the American Beverage Association both applauded Obama. The Association promised more clear calorie information on bottles and cans. Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent said, “We are honored to play a role in this important action. We are going to be seen as part of the solution.’’

A key source of the obesity problem now claims to be part of the solution, in the spirit of beer companies and cigarette companies claiming marquee roles in solving underage drinking and smoking.

But the laudable intentions of one of the fittest First Families in the nation’s history are in danger of being drowned out by the laughter of trash food companies. The reason they can applaud the Obamas is because they have purchased so much silence everywhere else.

The American Beverage Association and Coke entities spent $31 million in lobbying last year, much of it to shoot down taxes on sugary beverages at federal and state levels. The association had a $2 million ad campaign against taxes, which public health experts calculate would cut consumption and contribute revenues to public health programs to repair the damage done to the nation’s health by soda.

A UCLA study last year found that 43 percent of the additional calories Americans have been consuming since the 1970s come from soda, making it the top source of added sugar in the national diet. Whereas the recommended amount of sugar per person is 5-to-9 teaspoons a day, one 20-ounce soda contains 17 teaspoons. Last fall, President Obama said soda taxes are “an idea we should be exploring. There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda.’’

But the soda companies’ cash and clout ended the talk about federal taxes. The Los Angeles Times reported last week on how pressure and cash from the nation’s trash food and fast food giants and subsidiary companies have influenced Latino groups, including doctors, and African American politicians – including Representative John Lewis, who represents the Atlanta district where Coke is headquartered – to question food taxes as a burden on the poor (as if dying from diabetes and heart disease isn’t worse). Coke itself likens the taxes to a Communist control of grocery carts.

Another reason the soda companies cynically applaud Michelle Obama is because they are replacing any calorie conscious Americans with unsuspecting consumers in developing countries. Coke has a stated goal of doubling its servings to 3 billion a day by 2020. Coke’s unit case volume in the last quarter was up 29 percent in China and 20 percent in India, the latter of which is experiencing one of the biggest explosions of diabetes in the world. Pepsi claimed 32 percent beverage growth in India in 2009 and double-digit gains in snack volume in India, Pakistan, Egypt and Thailand.

This of course should not stop Michelle Obama from trying to raise some awareness about obesity and get whatever voluntary industry pledges she can to better label soda and increase school-lunch nutrition. But under current politics, those efforts pale against the profits that are turning America’s obesity crisis into a global public health disaster.

The “Let’s Move’’ campaign has the potential to become a movement, but only when the trash food and sugar sugar lobby can no longer throw its weight around Capitol Hill, applauding Michelle Obama’s efforts while weighing down our children with more pounds today and more disease tomorrow.

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Yoli Truth: High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Worse Than Sugar

April 7, 2010

A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

Princeton University research team, including (from left) undergraduate Elyse Powell, psychology professor Bart Hoebel, visiting research associate Nicole Avena and graduate student Miriam Bocarsly…

“has demonstrated that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup — a sweetener found in many popular sodas — gain significantly more weight than those with access to water sweetened with table sugar, even when they consume the same number of calories.”

The work may have important implications for understanding obesity trends in the United States. (Photo: Denise Applewhite)

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who 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 all gain extra weight.”
In results published online March 18 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.” In addition to Hoebel and Bocarsly, the research team included Princeton undergraduate Elyse Powell and visiting research associate Nicole Avena, who was affiliated with Rockefeller University during the study and is now on the faculty at the University of Florida. The Princeton researchers note that they do not know yet why high-fructose corn syrup fed to rats in their study generated more triglycerides, and more body fat that resulted in obesity.

High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.

“Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said.

The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse.

In the future, the team intends to explore how the animals respond to the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in conjunction with a high-fat diet — the equivalent of a typical fast-food meal containing a hamburger, fries and soda — and whether excessive high-fructose corn syrup consumption contributes to the diseases associated with obesity. Another step will be to study how fructose affects brain function in the control of appetite.

The research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service.

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