Accidental Hedonist

So…that HFCS study from Princeton that gives credibility to the idea that High Fructose Corn Syrup is evil?

Yeah, not so much.

Marion Nestle (Yes, THAT Marion Nestle) says this isn’t the magic bullet, and in fact, the study in of itself may have flaws.

Although the authors say calorie intake was the same, they do not report calories consumed nor do they discuss how they determined that calorie intake was the same. This is an important oversight because measuring the caloric intake of lab rats is notoriously difficult to do (they are messy).

As for me? I’m done looking for this evidence in the news. I don’t like HFCS and avoid it when possible. It added more sugar to our American diet that was already sugar-laden at the time it was introduced. Beyond that? I don’t know, and more importantly, no one else has provided substantial evidence of “teh evils” of HFCS versus excessive consumption of cane sugar. Proof may be out there somewhere, and we may someday learn that HFCS may be the singular cause of everything from diabetes to stigmata, but my default position from here on out is that we have simply too much of it in our diet. Period.

Wake me when we have real proof of otherwise.

From the New York Times:

In a small study, Texas researchers showed that the body converts fructose to body fat with “surprising speed,’’ said Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The study, which appears in The Journal of Nutrition, shows how glucose and fructose, which are forms of sugar, are metabolized differently.

It is important to remember that High Fructose Corn Syrup is not 100% fructose. Depending on the product (there are several varieties of HFCS), it can be comprised with as much as 58% glucose, so your mileage may vary.

And of course the standard caveats apply… HFCS is only one variable out of many regarding obesity, you shouldn’t eat too much of any sugar, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, and it still makes soda taste dull and lifeless.

As always, thanks to Jack at Fork & Bottle

Newspaper recipes may impact health! That’s right. The mere presence of recipes in your local newspaper is enough to put the entire region’s obesity risk on the rise, at least according to the fine folks at WSMV in Nashville.

Have you ever tried a recipe printed in your city’s newspaper? Those recipes may have more of an impact on health than you might think.

A new study suggests a link between calorie-dense dessert recipes printed in major newspapers across the country and obesity rates in large cities.

Wow! This is kind of a big deal! The recipes in a newspaper are a root cause of obesity. Imagine what kind of havoc Martha Stewart’s Living and Better Homes and Gardens inflicts upon a populace. I imagine the Conde Nast magazine themselves are responsible for billions of health care costs.

Oh…wait a minute. Let me read further into the article…

Lead researcher Catherine McCarty said in a news release that the study doesn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Of COURSE it doesn’t prove cause and effect, because the study( .pdf file) didn’t take into account the key factor of these recipes – the readers who actually take the time to make the darn things.

I’m not denigrating the study here, because sometimes researchers have to go where ever they need to go in order to prove their hypotheses. A lot of time their published work is intended to provide proof for other larger (and some would say, more critical) works.

No, the fools here are the editorial staff of WSMV, who misinterpreted a piece of research, and then passed the misinterpretation off as “health news”.

The science of weight gain and obesity is difficult enough as it is, and there’s more than enough con artists muddying the science for their own benefit. The last thing we need is yet another media outlet adding more white noise to the discussion.

And yes, I’m a bit cranky today.

This latest article from the New York Times should surprise absolutely no one who even pays half attention to the food industry. To paraphrase Captain Renault, I am shocked, SHOCKED that there is bias going on in Food Industry studies. From the article:

Of 24 studies of soft drinks, milk and juices financed by the industry, 21 had results favorable or neutral to the industry, and 3 were unfavorable, according to the research led by Dr. David S. Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston and an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School.

Of 52 studies with no industry financing, 32 were favorable or neutral to the industry and 20 were unfavorable. The biases are similar to findings for pharmaceuticals.

Bias in nutrition studies, Dr. Ludwig said, may be more damaging than bias in drug studies because food affects everyone.

“These conflicts could produce a very large bias in the scientific literature, influence the government’s dietary guidelines which are science based,ˮ he said in an interview. “They also influence the advice health care providers give their patients and F.D.A. regulations of food claims. That’s a top-order threat to public health.ˮ

But the funniest quote comes from in the following paragraphs.

The American Beverage Association, which sponsored at least one study in the article, said the authors had their own biases.

“This is yet another attack on the industry by activists who demonstrate their own biases in their review by looking only at the funding sources and not judging the research on its merits,ˮ the president of the trade group, Susan K. Neely, said in a statement.

It seems that Ms. Neely either doesn’t understand the basis of the Scientific Method, or wishes to spin the negative press her industry just received by saying, in essence, “Yeah, but this report has bias too!” What’s missing from her assertion of bias? Oh yeah, a simple thing called evidence.

What we’re seeing here is the age-old battle between scientists and public relations. Let’s see how this battle plays out.

Step One: Scientists create a hypothesis. For example “Food studies sponsored by food companies are biased”.

Step Two: Scientists seek evidence that will either prove or disprove their hypothesis. In this example, scientists used statistical analysis that found that Food Industry sponsored studies have a 12% chance of being unfavorable to the food industry.

Step Three: Scientists then compare this data against a control group. In this example – Food studies not sponsored by the Food Industry, where it is found that it is likely that such a study will have a 38% chance of being unfavorable to the food industry.

Step Four: As a 26% deviation between the study and control group is noteworthy, the scientists then note said deviation by writing up a study.

Step Five: News organizations also believe that the deviation is noteworthy, and create a news article based on the aforementioned study. In order to give the appearance that the story is also free of bias, the writer of the article searches for contrary opinions.

Step Six: Instead of contacting a scientist (or anyone else who uses an approximation of the scientific method), the journalist contacts a president of a food industry trade group. This president is unlikely to advocate against the food industry because their job is specifically designed to advocate for the food industry. It should be noted that having a job that entails advocating for the good of an industry is very nearly the definition of bias.

Step Seven: The very biased president of the food industry trade group calls “Bias” against the scientist who used the unbiased scientific method.

The evidence provided by the president? Bias exists in the scientist’s report because…wait for it…the president of the trade group said so.

Step Eight: I repeatedly slam my forehead against my desk.

See also Derrick’s post yesterday for a more in depth look at Cordelia’s Dilemma, something which may be pervasive in food-industry sponsored studies.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics, Bias, Food Studies

Beer is healthier than wine, says Charles Bamforth, chairman of the food science department at the University of California.

Dr Bamforth, author of Beer: Health and Nutrition, told delegates that beer also provided a valuable resource of soluble fibre, which aids digestion, and that the active ingredient in alcohol – either from beer or wine – helps to counter blockage of the arteries.

Presumably he’s talking about moderate consumption on beer. If you drink like a bleacher bum at Wrigley Field, it’s probably not as healthy.

Technorati Tags: Beer, Health

I’ve gotten the following two e-mails, one day after the other. Both represent what I think are the two basic stances people have on High Fructose Corn Syrup.

E-Mail 1:

Ever since I first saw some information on your site about HFCS I’ve been trying to learn more. I now see a lot of sites and references to HFCS, how it’s made, the politics surrounding it, and so forth, but no real justifiable claims that it’s any worse for the human body than any other sweetener. The only semi-health-related claim I’ve seen is that “the body processes it more like a fat than a sugar,” which my brother (a biochemist) said is hooey, after giving me a 30-minute lecture on the chemical properties and structures of fats and lipids v. glucose and sugar molecules and the body’s metabolic processes for each. “Fat people drink lots of soda and soda has HFCS so HFCS makes people fat” isn’t the kind of logic I buy, even if it could be a contributing factor. The oft-cited HFCS study about mice and their heart and reproductive complications is troubling, but the experiment and its results are only ever told anecdotally; where’s the study? Has it been repeated? Has it been studied at all in people?

E-mail #2:

I’ve stumbled upon your website and have discovered foods that contain this waist-increasing heart-killing artificial sweetener. I am armed with information now when I go to the grocery store and will be ever-vigilant of what I purchase and what comes home with me. I’ve been hearing bad things about high-fructose corn syrup and am growing more and more concerned for my children’s health. How are they supposed to go out in the world, or more importantly, to school and eat their lunch and stay healthy? Is there any legislation in the works to ban this horrible substance? If they can ban cigarettes to minors because it causes lung cancer, how can they not ban a product that has been shown over and over again to cause obesity in children ultimately leading them to a life of diabetes, heart disease, and other sad illnesses?
Thank you for your eye-opening website and just from a look in my pantry, I see a lot of junk food that needs to be, well, junked!

One e-mail represents cautious skepticism, the other represents an out and out indictment of all things containing HFCS.

The truth? Well, the truth is that we don’t know the truth. No one can say for certain that HFCS is better or worse than cane sugar. When we look to the Corn folks for information, all they point to is the fact that the FDA has allowed the use of HFCS, so it has to be safe, right?

Of course, that’s a bit disengenuous on the Corn folks’ part, because the FDA has NEVER tested HFCS, nor accepted any outsourced test results. The have deemed HFCS as “generally regarded as safe”, which essentially means that No one has been reputed to have died of the stuff.

Any excess of sweetener is a bad thing, whether it’s sugar or HFCS. The question that no one seems to be willing to answer is “Which is worse – Too much sugar or too much HFCS?” Until this question is answered, any indictment of HFCS is premature.

That being said, there’s much to circumstantial evidence that excessive Fructose is really bad for you. I’ve mentioned some of the test studies here. The short version is that excessive frutose in the diet can lead to a magnesium imbalance in the body, spurring bone loss. The University of Minnesota produced a study where it was found that in men, fructose produced “significantly higher levelsˮ of trigylcerides in the blood than glucose does and that “diets high in added fructose may be undesirable, particularly for men.ˮ Finally, University of London researcher P.A. Mayes wrote that excessive fructose consumption causes the liver to release an enzyme called PDH that instructs the body to burn sugar instead of fat. Are these issues worse than those caused by cane sugar? No one seems to be able or willing to answer that.

The one part of the HFCS debate which bugs me is the one that surrounds personal responsibility in regard to sugar intake. According to “An Omnivore’s Dilemma”, HFCS has not replaced sugar consumption in the US, it has merely added to it. In other words, not only are we consuming the same amount of sugars we did 20 years ago, we’ve added HFCS consumption on top of it. Before we can say “HFCS causes obesisty”, we have to be honest with ourselves and say “Too much sweeteners cause obesity”, because the consumption of both absolutely plays into our weight gains.

It’d be nice to restrict HFCS intake, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s in more foods than many people realize. From ketchups to soups to even cough syrups, HFCS has been made a staple of the processed food revolution. Avoiding HFCS has been made a difficult proposition that many people, including myself, are too undisciplined to address on a daily basis.

In addressing the above e-mails, it should be said that banning HFCS is an unlikely possibilty, at least not until we recognize our own culpability in its consumption. But its excessive usage needs to be addressed and reduced. I would love to see food processors explain their addiction to the stuff, and in the process of this confrontation, we find out just how bad (or not) the stuff is for people.

Technorati Tags: Food, Food Politics, High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS

In the Trek world, Synthenol was a chemical variant of alcohol, invented by the Ferengi, that had the same taste and smell as ‘real’ alcohol but none of its effects. It would prevent evrything from alcoholism to hangovers.

It was also science-fiction, at least for now. Psychopharmacologist David Nutt of the University of Bristol in the UK is suggesting in next month’s Journal of Psychopharmacology.

From the New Scientist:

The trick pharmacologists need to pull off is to make a mixture of molecules that deliver alcohol’s pleasurable effects, notably relaxation and sociability, without the aggression, nausea, loss of coordination and amnesia that can cause drinkers and those around them so much grief. Long-term problems such as cirrhosis of the liver could also be eliminated, says Nutt…

Althuogh the search for the cure for hangovers has been common ground for con men and idealists, tt’s not as far fetched as one might have believed in the past. Now that science has figured out what causes the effects of alcohol (essentially it’s a bio chemical response within a brain’s GABA A receptor…and this is a vaaaaaaast oversimplification), figuring out how to prevent the less-than-welcome after effects of alcohol may now be only a matter of time.

(via eGullet)
Technorati Tags: Drink, Alcohol, hangover+Cures