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Sweet facts

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By JAMES M. RIPPE

Special To The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 12, 2009

If you're confused about similarities and differences between table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, cane sugar, concentrated fruit juice and other sweeteners, you're not alone. A recent survey of 100 Florida dietitians found that 98 percent of them said their patients/clients have "a lot of confusion about the different kinds of sweeteners in foods."

In the midst of that confusion, it's been easy in recent years to finger high fructose corn syrup as a singular suspect in America's obesity epidemic. But quietly over the past few months, medical authorities and scientists - after studying the issue up, down and sideways - have come to the same conclusion about high fructose corn syrup: It's nutritionally the same as sugar. Not worse, not better, but the same.

Does it matter if a food or beverage is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or sugar? Consider these points from an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition review:

• High fructose corn syrup contains the same two compositional sugars (fructose and glucose) as table sugar, honey and many fruit juice concentrates. High fructose corn syrup and sugar are equally sweet, and both contain 4 calories per gram.

• We metabolize these "fructose-glucose" sweeteners through the same pathways, regardless of what form we eat or drink them in.

• We're eating more of everything: From 1970-2005, we Americans increased our caloric intake by 24 percent.

Not surprisingly, many people think that high fructose corn syrup contains high amounts of fructose. But, in fact, it is essentially the same as sugar. Like table sugar and honey, high fructose corn syrup is composed of fructose and glucose in roughly equal amounts.

Many products in the supermarket today contain sweeteners. But in most cases what really matters isn't the particular sweetener in a food or beverage, but the total caloric and nutritive content of the foods we choose over the course of a day and week.

James M. Rippe, M.D., is a cardiologist and biomedical sciences professor at the University of Central Florida.

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