HFCS makes rats fat? A counterpoint.

http://www.foodpolitics.com/2010/03/hfcs-makes-rats-fat/

by tghw • 16 years ago

33 20 16 years ago

Good questions in here. While I'm personally inclined to be sympathetic to the study, I have to admit that if I'm to be skeptical about other things (I want to say AGW, but don't want to open that can of worms), I need to be consistent in looking for high-quality research here as well.

hga• 16 years ago

I have a very simple rule: anything I read in the MSM (or similar "science" publications) about a study that agrees with the current politically correct opinion I automatically discount. Especially if it's medicine related (weak science and fraud are particularly common in this area).

If it's important enough to me, I'll dig down and actually read the paper ... but I generally don't bother, because most of the time I'll find junk science (or nearly so) like in this case. I'd rather spend my time with the Journal of Irreproducible Results and the upside down parts of the Worm Runner's Digest/Journal of Biological Psychology.

aresant• 16 years ago

Amazing how quickly the original store made it onto every major news channel etc.

Yet not one fact checker or news editor seems to have spent the time Marion Nestle did in this article.

nas• 16 years ago

Mass media sucks. Hooray for Internet and "amateurs".

wdewind• 16 years ago

I actually haven't been able to find it anywhere respectable except the princeton site. Got an example?

chipsy• 16 years ago

It was a story people were prepared to believe; the "HFCS bad" meme started taking hold years ago. It's a lot more comfortable for people with a sweet tooth to swallow this than to say "all sugar bad" and actually change their behavior.

00joe• 16 years ago

Page one of the study supports the original claim. Is this blog post just a test to see if we will really read it now?

Per the study...... 3. Results 3.1. Male rats with daily 12-h HFCS access gain more weight in 8 weeks than animals with equal access to sucrose Animals with 12-h 8% HFCS access gained significantlymore weight in 8 weeks than animals with 12-h 10% sucrose access

thomaspaine• 16 years ago

Keep reading.

"Further, no difference was found in HFCS intake and total overall caloric intake in the groups given 12-h access versus 24-h access. Both groups consumed the same amount of HFCS on average (21.3 ± 2.0 kcal HFCS in 12-h versus 20.1 ± 1.6 kcal HFCS in 24 h), even though only the 12-h group showed a signiﬁcant difference in body weight when compared with the control groups."

As per the author's criticism, these results are seemingly inconsistent. Why would rats with 12-h access to HFCS gain more weight while rats with 24-h access did not, when their HFCS intake was the same on average?

donaldc• 16 years ago

Perhaps the liver or some part of the digestive system can only handle a certain amount of HFCS per hour.

turnersauce• 16 years ago

The say on page 2: "...our previous publications show limited (12 h) access to sucrose precipitates binge-eating behavior (Avena et al., 2006)."

madair• 16 years ago

When I eat too much cake, I like to stop too ;-)

I realize that's not scientific. I'm just saying the inconsistency is not a smoking gun, and was addressed within the paper.

jongraehl• 16 years ago

Also, scaling for mass, the rats are given the equivalent of 3000 kcal (more than most humans eat in a day) in pure HFCS.

nevinera3• 16 years ago

Scaling for mass is not a particularly useful measure. Their metabolisms are much higher..

araneae2• 16 years ago

Well, you can scale for mass, just not linearly. Metabolism scales with mass^(3/4).

Interestingly, so do the number of cars in a city with a city's population size- this is a fun essay on the subject: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the...

nevinera3• 16 years ago

>The rats fed HFCS for 24 hours per day, which should be expected to be fatter, were not. They weighed less (470 grams) than the rats fed sucrose for 12 hours per day. So these results are inconsistent.

I don't see why you would expect those to be fatter; the data point is completely separate. Common sense doesn't apply in biology - any number of factors could cause the results to reverse on a 24 hour feeding schedule.

Humans don't follow a 24 hour feeding schedule, as it happens.

obfuscate• 16 years ago

> Humans don't follow a 24 hour feeding schedule, as it happens.

Regardless, I would think that instability of results under seemingly minor variations in conditions for rats suggests we should drastically reduce our confidence in any generalization of even the seemingly more relevant result.

nevinera3• 16 years ago

>should drastically reduce our confidence in any generalization of even the seemingly more relevant result.

Oh, absolutely! I certainly didn't mean that you should go trusting the scientist to vet his own research; most studies say exactly what the researcher wants them to say. But I think the results are strong enough to prompt (probably stronger) testing in other labs.

If the research was done properly, then instability of results under minor variations generally implies that the variations weren't actually minor.

maeon3• 16 years ago

Sugar, Glucose, and High Fructose Corn Syrup is pumped into everything that Americans eat, nearly all drinks, nearly all Breads and Snacks, chips, and fast-food is chock full of it. Go check your fridge and pantry if you don't believe me. America has the highest percentage of obese people on Earth because of these sweet sweet chemicals. It's killing us.

But don't believe it because I said it, take it from an MD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Double up on your fruits and vegetables, apples, pears, carrots, oranges, spinach, bell peppers, bananas, potatoes, unsalted nuts, things with high fiber, and everything else that comes from a plant or tree.

Cut in half any food that contains a significant percentage of Sugars, Sucrose, Glucose, Fructose, or Corn Syrups. That paunch under your belly button will thank you.

invisible• 16 years ago

If your message were merely about sugars, you probably wouldn't be advocating bananas, apples, and pears. They have a decent chunk of sugar in them.

For example, my Trix has 13g of sugar [1] and an apple (small) has 13g [2]. The calories do sway in the apple's favor, but there are fewer vitamins in an apple. Does this mean Trix are healthier? No (see the sodium and carbs), but it also doesn't mean they will be the death of me if I exercise and don't eat 5000 calories worth.

1) http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-trix-i116032

2) http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-apples-i9003

araneae2• 16 years ago

The ironic thing is that this is probably true because corn syrup is more "natural" than table sugar. We're better at extracting calories from foods commonly found in our evolutionary history. Sucrose is only found in a handful of foods (like beets) but fructose is everywhere. It's similar to how East Asians extract 20% more calories from rice than people with other ethnic backgrounds.

HFCS makes rats fat? A counterpoint.

Related Stories