HFCS more toxic than table sugar, study shows

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has just received another blow to its already tarnished reputation: researchers have found that it is more toxic to mice than table sugar.

When fed sugar in doses proportional to what many people eat, University of Utah researchers found that the fructose-glucose mixture found in HFCS reduced female rodents’ lifespan and reproduction.

The study found no differences in survival, reproduction or territoriality of male mice on the HFCS and sugar diets. The researchers suggest that this is because both sugars are equally toxic to male mice.

“This is the most robust study showing there is a difference between high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar at human-relevant doses,” said biology professor Wayne Potts, senior author of a new study due to be published in the March 2015 issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

Potts says the debate over the relative dangers of fructose and sucrose is important “because when the diabetes-obesity-metabolic syndrome epidemics started in the mid-1970s, they corresponded with both a general increase in consumption of added sugar and the switchover from sucrose being the main added sugar in the American diet to high-fructose corn syrup making up half our sugar intake”.

“Our previous work and plenty of other studies have shown that added sugar in general is bad for your health. So first, reduce added sugar across the board. Then worry about the type of sugar, and decrease consumption of products with high-fructose corn syrup,” said James Ruff, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in biology.