We already know that much of the added sugar in processed foods – which are known to aid and abet obesity – comes in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup. But recent research shows the stuff also associated with at least one disease that’s not connected with obesity…
Put down that Soft Drink and pick up a cup of Coffee! You get almost as much
Caffeine from Coffee as you do from Sugary beverages, and other health
benefits have recently been revealed thanks to Coffee’s flavinoids!
High Fructose Corn Syrup is often named as a leading cause of obesity in folks who consume a lot of processed foods. It’s particularly linked to sugar-sweetened beverages, which are tagged as a leading source of excess Sugar in our diets. That, in turn, has been directly linked with obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. We recently learned that folks who consume as little as 2 Sugar-sweetened beverages a day run a 14 percent higher risk of early death than those who don’t. If you drink 2 or more Sugar-sweetened beverages a day, you could run as high as a 21 percent higher risk of early death.
But now researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine have discovered that an excess of High Fructose Corn Syrup in your diet can also accelerate the growth of intestinal tumors. Well, they’ve based that prediction on mouse-based studies, anyway. But science has long known that experimental results in mice often mirror potential results in humans.
What they did…
Researchers fed controlled amounts of High Fructose Corn Syrup to a group of mice for a period of several weeks, while feeding a parallel group normally. The Corn Syrup mice did not become obese, but they did develop intestinal tumors. The non-Corn Syrup group did not develop tumors.
The takeaway…
“While many studies have correlated increased rates of colorectal cancer with diet, this study shows a direct molecular mechanism for the correlation between consumption of sugar and colorectal cancer,” says Dr. Lewis Cantley, co-Author of the study.
“Our findings also open new possibilities for treatment,” notes Dr. Jihye Yun, another co-Author of the study report. “Unlike glucose, fructose is not essential for the survival and growth of normal cells, which suggests that therapies targeting fructose metabolism are worth exploring. Alternatively, avoiding consuming sugary drinks as much as possible instead of relying on drugs would significantly reduce the availability of sugar in the colon.”
I see an opportunity here for a data-mining study of large-scale, long-term health survey results, checking for a correlation between folks who develop colon cancer and their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.
My take…
Yup. Reducing one’s colon cancer risk could be as easy as not consuming processed foods – especially beverages sweetened with High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Dr. Obvious says this conclusion couldn’t be more obvious, even if we don’t wait for the results of further research on humans. And meanwhile, reducing or eliminating added sugar in your diet will bring you other proven, important health benefits.
~ Maggie J.