High fructose corn syrup vs cane sugar

Trump was recently in the news promoting a switch from high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar in Coca-Cola, which he’s claiming credit for.

Look, I’m not the world’s best biochemist, but this looked like marketing hype to me. Why is high fructose corn syrup problematic but cane sugar—which is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose—isn’t? The most common type used in soft drinks is HFCS-55, which is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. By definition, sucrose is 50% fructose and 50% glucose.

I put this question to a young assistant professor in my department whose research specialty is metabolism. Here’s his response:

“I would say your hunch is correct, in that replacing HFCS with cane sugar (yes, 50% fructose) is still likely just as bad. Studies and meta-analyses have found pretty similar effects weight gain between the two.

 

“Overall, I would say that the Coke stuff in the news Thanks to Trump is merely trying to wash the bad name of HFCS…

 

“The only halfway logical explanation that I can come up with for the potential of sucrose to be any better, is if you could believe that perhaps some amount of the disaccharide is not broken down and further metabolized. But from my understanding, the combined actions of stomach acid and intestinal sucrase enzyme make that pretty unlikely. There could be some effect of the monosaccharide being absorbed and metabolized quicker than the dissacharide, but that’s likely getting in the weeds.

 

“Long story short, I’m more of a proponent that both are excess calories and likely overall similar effects.

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