There’s been a lot of noise lately about fructose and high fructose corn syrup. Diet and weight loss gurus are vilify the sugar. The corn syrup industry has come back with their own list of arguments at sweetscam.com, insisting that all the dietary opinion and news in the world just doesn’t exceed their financial need to sell sugar.

The industry site (run by the front organization Center for Consumer Freedom) makes claims that sucrose (table sugar) and fructose are metabolically equivalent and that there is no difference between consuming the two. The site makes heavy use of the word “moderation” to soften their claims but is metabolic equivalence really true?

In 2005, this study in the journal Obesity found that mice fed fructose beverages became fatter while mice receiving sucrose beverages (old school soft drinks) and artificially sweetened beverages did not. Also in 2005, the American Heart Association published this paper linking obesity with consumption of high fructose diets.

In 2000, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published this study that found that fructose specifically results in a rapid change in the fatty acids in the bloodstreams of men. They go so far as to suggest alternate sweeteners solely on the basis of the negative effects on day long raised levels of triacylglycerol. This study found that in women, key hormones (insulin and leptin) that regulate energy metabolism don’t work the same when fructose is consumed versus glucose which can result in consumption of more calories and increased obesity. Finally, in 2008, this study in the Journal of Hepatology found consumption of dietary fructose is a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The big noise the last few weeks has been about fructose and high blood pressure. The paper that got the mainstream media going was this study in the American Journal of Nephrology. The study was a little complicated but found that not only did fructose increase blood pressure and increase metabolic syndrome in men but also that the gout drug allopurinol and blood pressure medicine captopril could retard these effects. Much clearer and more disconcerting is this study from Switzerland. It found that in young adults that fructose significantly raises blood pressure immediately following consumption while glucose didn’t.

These results are consistent with previous studies and searching Medline just finds more of the same. This isn’t a scientific conspiracy, it’s just the realities of research. It’s clear who’s really trying to pull a Sweet Scam.