Sugar vs HFCS - The Experiment

[PrincessFiona60]

Actual eating part will be on Tuesday and Wednesday as they will be regular work days for me.

• I will eat the same breakfast and lunch each day
• Tuesday will be the BBQ Sauce (Bull's-Eye KC style) with sugar
• Wednesday will be the BBQ Sauce (KC Masterpiece Original) with HFCS
• both sauces will be served in 2 tablespoon portions with 5 little smokey links, no other carbs for dinner or dessert will be eaten
• I will check my blood sugars the next morning and take a picture of my Glucometer readings with date and time

I propose that my blood sugars will be higher on the morning after I eat the KC Masterpiece.


Side note: I picked up the Bull's-Eye Original and the first ingredient was HFCS. I had to dig to find this bottle of B-E KC style and it has an older best by date than the other bottles around it. It was the last on the shelf with Sugar...their recipe has changed, too!

 

[Andy M.]

Interesting. My bottle of Bullseye Original contains sugar. The website references sugar. Maybe they made a recent change from HFCS to sugar.

Looking forward to the results.

60 Minutes tonight had a piece on sugar as a poison. Maybe it doesn't matter which you use.

 

[Dawgluver]

Looking forward to the results. Thanks for being the guinea pig, PF!

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Interesting. My bottle of Bullseye Original contains sugar. The website references sugar. Maybe they made a recent change from HFCS to sugar.

Looking forward to the results.

60 Minutes tonight had a piece on sugar as a poison. Maybe it doesn't matter which you use.

The last bottle of Original I bought had sugar listed, the only reason I bought it.

This bottle has a best by Jun 2013, the other bottles with HFCS listed were Dec 2013. Not a good sign. Make sure you are re-checking items that have been sugar in the past.

As far as the report on 60 minutes goes...phbbbbppppt...so it raises dopamine levels the same as cocaine...just means you like sugar, it's still not cocaine. We are made to like sugar, the ONLY nutrient your brain can metabolize for energy is glucose...no glucose, no brain waves.

 

[Andy M.]

The new scare is that sugar increases a particularly dangerous type of LDL that is more likely to stick to artery walls so can increase the chance of a heart attack. Also that it can feed certain types of cancer cells, enabling them to grow faster.

It's always something.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

The new scare is that sugar increases a particularly dangerous type of LDL that is more likely to stick to artery walls so can increase the chance of a heart attack. Also that it can feed certain types of cancer cells, enabling them to grow faster.

It's always something.

Well...since I went to making sure I don't ingest HFCS's (unintentionally) my LDL levels have gone down and my 40% blockage has not increased in the last year. For me, sugar is the lesser of all evils.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I am interested in your findings on this!

My own experiments have convinced me that using small amounts of sugar as a seasoning is better for me than artificial sweeteners or other commercial sweeteners like HFCS.

 

[Margi Cintrano]

Interesting Post Fiona

Thank you for posting.

Margaux Cintrano.

 

[Kylie1969]

Look forward to the results Fiona

 

[CWS4322]

I happened to catch the segment on Sugar on 60 Minutes last night. The "experiment" that was being done in hospital (the people were locked down and fed a very specific diet) showed that there were changes in LDL within 2 weeks. The body handles sugar differently than other energy from calories, according to one of the researchers interviewed. Our addiction to sugar is akin to cocaine. We are also wired to like sweet things because sweet berries, etc., are not poisonous. Very interesting segment and I mean to go to the web site to look at the studies, etc. I will be interesting to hear about your results, PF.

I'm not sure this a "new scare." When fats were replaced in the '70s by sweeteners, the changes in the disease rates thought to be linked to fats did not change. What did change is that sweeteners were added to foods instead of fats (by the food industry) so that people would buy them--removing the fat makes for very bland tasting food. There were two camps of research at the time--one anti-fat, the other anti-sugar. The anti-fat camp won out (fats in foods = fat people?) logical, I guess. In hindsight, researchers are thinking that might have been wrong, it is the sugar that is making people fat because of how much is consumed now and how the body processes it.

 

[Hoot]

I recall that several years ago (in the early 90's as I recall), there was a big to do about sugar and the statement was made then that if sugar had been first discovered yesterday, it would likely be classified as a poison.
Hard to know what to believe from TV programs....everybody seems to have an agenda these days.

 

[CWS4322]

It is difficult to obtain funding for nutritional research (for universities, not private companies). So, the people who are researching sugar and doing the feeding trials in Calif. probably are churning out some interesting stuff. I recall reading about sugar in the early '90s and stopped diet soda after that.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

I'm hearing a lot of, "I heard on TV"...I have heard that HFCS's are good for you, it's processed just like sugar. I know this statement to be false from my research. However me reading and regurgitating this information is baseless. Thus, I am doing this experiment. I've controlled all the variables I can without checking myself into a hospital or such.

The premise here is that HFCS's cause more problems than sugar does. I'm not saying that sugar is good for you, I'm saying it's better for you than HFCS.

 

[forty_caliber]

The premise here is that HFCS's cause more problems than sugar does. I'm not saying that sugar is good for you, I'm saying it's better for you than HFCS.

PF has got this one right. Here is a great article that talks about why HFCS is worse than Sugar. It's all about the component molecules....


.40

 

[Hoot]

It seems that it is or at least has been a confusing issue. Come to find out, according to a number of news reports, in May of this year, the Corn Refiners Association was denied by the FDA in their petition to allow HFCS to be called "corn sugar." Now the only use I have ever knowingly made of "corn sugar" was back in the days when I was homebrewing beer. I used it to naturally condition (carbonate) the beer in the bottling process. All this leads me to a number of questions. I will only pose one here....does anyone know whether Karo Corn syrup--light or dark...(been used for years in all manner of recipes) is now or has ever been HFCS?

 

[Hoot]

One more thing and then I will hush.
I find it highly disturbing that the CRA is actively pursuing what I view to be a deliberate campaign of misinformation and that the FDA and FTC are seemingly unable to deter them from making questionable claims about HFCS.

 

[bakechef]

I am not a scientist, I just know what works for me. If I avoid HFCS, and I avoid artificial sweeteners I don't get blood sugar swings. If I stick to 3 meals a day with small snacks here and there, I'm fine, but add one of those other two additives, and I get blood sugar drops long before I'm hungry.

I'm not diabetic, but I did used to have low blood sugar at least once a day. It could be just a couple hours after a meal. Now It doesn't happen unless I have been more than 4 hours from eating anything or when I am exerting myself more than usual. The only difference is the artificial sweeteners and the HFCS. I swear that my body releases insulin when I eat most artificial sweeteners because it is shortly after drinking a diet soda that my blood sugar will drop, no diet soda, no problem.

I don't have this issue with stevia sweetened things.

My aunt is diabetic, she refuses to consume artificial sweeteners. She has no problems using real sugar in her coffee in the morning. She keeps her carbs in check. Every diabetic is different, but she swears, just like I do, that your body is better equipped in most cases to handle things that are natural. She's a recently retired RN, so she has a bit of experience to go on and is interested and knowledgeable about health.

 

[Andy M.]

CWS, I called it a new scare for the very reason you stated re: fat. The medical profession and the US Govt. came out telling us all fat was evil and it would kill you. Come to find out maybe not so much. It may have been the sugar. I call that a scare.

Now it's sugar that's evil. Based on incomplete research. Studies suggest... Maybe we'll find out, after we have eliminated that evil sugar from our diets, that the real culprit is dark leafy greens, tofu and granola.

Pass the bacon.

 

[bakechef]

I just had to go check the 2 bottles of Bullseye in the pantry, they were BOGO last week so I bought a couple, they still have sugar, I'll check in my store to see if the HFCS version has shown up yet. This ticks me off, because it was the only one in the store that still had sugar. I'll have to get mine at trader joe's now.

 

[bakechef]

CWS, I called it a new scare for the very reason you stated re: fat. The medical profession and the US Govt. came out telling us all fat was evil and it would kill you. Come to find out maybe not so much. It may have been the sugar. I call that a scare.

Now it's sugar that's evil. Based on incomplete research. Studies suggest... Maybe we'll find out, after we have eliminated that evil sugar from our diets, that the real culprit is dark leafy greens, tofu and granola.

Pass the bacon.

I've become fed up with "studies". I am going to eat REAL food with as little additives as possible and hope for the best.