Is Corn Syrup Destroying Your Physique?

by Chris Mohr, MS, RD, LDN

Unruly insulin levels can royally screw up your physique. 

Specific foods affect insulin levels.  However, what may be more important is knowing what specific ingredients in foods mess with insulin.  You can lift all day until you are blue in the head, but eating specific foods and food ingredients could be holding you back from resembling the chiseled Statue of David.

First, a Little Background

Insulin is THE most anabolic hormone in the body.  Insulin’s anabolic properties make it rather important when thinking about packing on muscle.  However, too much insulin could cause you to resemble Professor Klump from The Nutty Professor.  Here’s how it works.

Insulin secretion occurs via the b-cells in the pancreas with the consumption and digestion of food; particularly in response to carbohydrate-rich foods.  Over stimulation of the b-cells, characterized by diets consistently high in simple sugars (e.g., a “soda and Twinkie” type diet) may lead to insulin resistance overtime (probably because that kind of diet is usually accompanied by weight gain).  Basically, when you consume high sugar foods, blood glucose is chronically elevated and insulin is continually released to control blood glucose levels (not allowing them to go too high). 

Chronically elevated insulin levels decreases the bodies ability to burn fat, increases triglycerides, decreases HDL levels (the good cholesterol) and causes excessive peroxidation (the stuff we pay lots of money to avoid by buying eating lots of fruits and vegetables and antioxidant supplements)! 

Therefore, dietary control and exercise are imperative since both help regulate glucose.  In addition to the umbrella classification of high sugar foods, there are two specific ingredients that need to be considered: fructose and more specifically high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Both are found in a wide variety of foods, many of which may surprise you.      

Fructose and Insulin

Here’s the scoop.  Fructose is a monosaccharide (one sugar) that is often referred to as “fruit sugar” because it is the primary carbohydrate in most fruits.  Fructose is also the primary sugar in honey and makes up half the carbohydrate in sucrose (table sugar).  The interesting thing about fructose is that it does not stimulate insulin secretion and does not require insulin to be transported into cells, like other carbohydrates. 

After all the talk about the importance of controlling insulin levels, it appears as though a lack of insulin secretion from fructose consumption may be a good thing.  However, insulin also controls the fate of another hormone, leptin, so as you’ll see, its release is necessary. 

Leptin tells your body to stop eating when it’s full.  Essentially, leptin signals the brain to stop sending hunger signals because the “tank is full.”  Since fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin, there will be no subsequent increase in leptin levels, and no feeling of satiety (i.e., you’ll keep eating and eating). 

Is fructose making YOU fat?

Fructose requires a different pathway for metabolism than other carbohydrates because it basically skips glycolysis (normal carbohydrate metabolism).  Because of this, fructose serves as an unregulated source of something called acetyl-CoA, the starting material for fatty-acid synthesis.  This, coupled with unstimulated leptin levels is setting you up for a big, fat disaster!  It’s like opening the flood gates of fat deposition.    

Don’t over interpret this; fructose should not be eliminated from the diet.  This is more of a “heads up” since Lean Body Coach Members share similar health and fitness goals.  Remember that fructose is the primary sugar found in fruits.  Fruits provide a whole slew of nutrients that can’t otherwise be obtained from the diet so don’t toss them in the trash too fast.  A little fructose, like that found in fruit, is OK.  It’s when high levels of fructose are consumed, which is common these days because of the inclusion of sucrose and, even more so, HFCS into virtually all commercial foods. 

High Fructose Corn Syrup

HFCS was brought to the market in the 1970’s by food companies looking to save money during production and, therefore, make more money from the consumer.  HFCS hides itself in a variety of common foods such as ketchup, seasonings, barbeque sauce, soda, juices, cereals, pasta sauce, fruit-flavored yogurt and even some meal replacements powders, to name but a few.  HFCS is popular among food companies because it is much sweeter than any natural sugar available, much cheaper, and easy to transport because it is a liquid. 

While it may seem that this is just my over zealous mind taking things to extreme, read on; there are several animal studies to support my theories that body weight and adiposity both increase while consuming a high fructose diet.  The data on humans is a bit more difficult to come across, but there are a few studies.  For example, one study demonstrated that individuals consuming 28% of total energy from sucrose (remember, the carbohydrate in sucrose is fructose) vs. artificial sweetener had a higher energy intake, body weight, and fat mass after a short 10-weeks. 

This doesn’t sound like rocket science; greater energy intake equals greater weight gain.  There were some interesting findings though.  There was an increase of a little more than 400 kcals in the sucrose group, which should result in an approximate weight gain of 3.1 kg if all other factors are held constant.  However, there was only about half that weight gain in this group.  Therefore, the authors estimate that 48% of the excess energy intake from sucrose was used for other energy demanding body processes, such as lipogenesis (the creation of fat). 

In addition, even though all subjects were told they were being given artificially sweetened products, most of those in the sucrose group guessed the true content of their beverages.  Even though subjects knew they were consuming more calories from drinks, they didn’t compensate by eating less calories from other foods.  Again, the authors suggest this could be a mechanism due to lack of control over eating behavior (remember the lack of insulin secretion and subsequent leptin production from fructose consumption talked about earlier). 

Similarly another study demonstrated those consuming HFCS sweetened soda vs. artificially sweetened soda did not reduce participants total energy intake to compensate for the extra energy consumed as HFCS.  These data, like above, suggest that the consumption of HFCS (from soda in this case) does not provide the body with a sense of fullness causing an increase in excess energy, hence, weight gain.  I will say it again; fructose does not stimulate insulin or leptin, causing an increase in total energy intake because the “shut off switch (leptin)” is not registering that there is food in the body.

To make matters even worse, fructose consumption is even tied specifically to insulin resistance in rodents (suggesting it may have the same affect on humans too) and increased triglyceride secretion. 

So what does this all mean?

Let me sum up this whole article in one sentence: avoid HFCS like the plague!  Go through your entire refrigerator, freezer and cabinets and read the ingredient labels with the same attention to detail you would use when going on a first date.  If HFCS is high up on the list of ingredients (meaning there is a relatively large amount in the particular food) toss it in the garbage.  Soda is one of the biggest culprits.  It’s a great deal for the soda companies (e.g., use less of an even cheaper sugar for a sweeter product), but a heck of a deal for your body (e.g., get fat).  Now of course HFCS alone cannot make you fat; for example soda made with “natural sugar” is still soda.  However, coupled with an increased caloric intake (eating too much) and decrease energy output (not being active enough), you’re setting yourself up for a recipe for unhealthy disaster.

The easiest trick to avoid this (and many other “useless” ingredients) is to primarily shop around the perimeter of the store.  Think about it: produce is on one side, seafood, red meat, poultry on another, and dairy products, eggs, bread on the third.  HFCS infests commercially available products; the more these can be avoided, the better off you’ll be, both health and physique-wise.  Try to buy foods in the most “natural” state possible; the less processing the manufacturers do, the better off you’ll be.

Chris Mohr is a registered dietitian and Exercise Physiology expert. He is currently working on several projects related to preventing and treating obesity.

Contact Chris Mohr at crm12@pitt.edu

10 Quickest Ways to Become More Positive

by Dr. Alan Zimmerman

Part 1 of 5

Two businessmen went on a moose hunting expedition in the outer reaches of Canada. They drove as far as they possibly could, where they found a small shop operated by a bush pilot. They asked him to fly them to a specific remote location.

The bush pilot said, "That’s not possible. The mountains are too high. The forest is too thick, and the strip of water is much too small to safely land the plane." The hunters replied, "That’s strange. We came here last year. We hunted on that same lake. And that bush pilot had no difficulty getting us there." The bush pilot responded, "Well, if that bush pilot could make it, I can too. I am the best one around here. Get in; we’re going!"

They put in their equipment, got in the plane, flew over the mountains, and landed just short of the shoreline. They asked the bush pilot to come back in four days. At the appointed time, the bush pilot returned. The hunting trip had been successful; the hunters bagged several moose. So they said, "Let’s go." The pilot said it wasn’t possible to fly out with all the extra weight. But the hunters protested. They said, "That’s strange, because the bush pilot last year had no problem getting off the water with several moose on board." The bush pilot grabbed the challenge and said, "If he can do it, I can do it!" They packed the plane, started up slowly, gained some speed, and just barely pulled the plane above the water. They flew a few minutes, and then crashed into the side of a mountain.

When the hunters awoke they were hanging from pine trees. One asked, "Where, where are we?" The other replied, "About 30 feet farther than last year."

Are you a positive person?

I suppose a number of choice phrases could be used to describe those two hunters, but one thing is for sure. They were certainly positive.

Back in the 1950’s, Norman Vincent Peale coined the phrase "positive thinker." Since then, it’s become a phrase that almost everyone is familiar with. Almost everyone recognizes the importance of thinking positively. What about you? Are you a positive thinker? Or more importantly, are you a positive person? Do you have a positive personality? I certainly hope so. The research makes it quite clear that you stand to gain a lot if you’re a positive person. You’ll probably have better health, better relationships, and more success.

Of course, if you’re like a lot of people, you’re thinking you’d like to be more positive. You just don’t know how to do that. Well that’s what this short series of articles book is all about. I’ll give you ten, quick, sure-fire ways to become a positive person. After all, the mind and body work together. When you improve one, you improve the other.

1. Stop the negatives from entering your mind.

Your mind is a garden. And like a garden, you know that whatever you put into the ground is what will come up. You don’t plant beans, for example, hoping to get carrots. It just "ain’t gonna" happen. Whatever you put in is what is going to come up. Your mind works the same way.
But you also know that you don’t plant a bean to get a bean. You get lots of beans. With normal sunshine and rainfall, multiplication takes place. The mind operates exactly the same way. One thought planted in your mind, some 50 years ago, may still be controlling you today.

You may have had a teacher tell you that couldn’t sign. In fact, when they had the school sing-along, the teacher may have told you to simply "mouth" the words or blend into the background. And now as an adult you still feel incapable of singing in church. I remember being told by one teacher that my handwriting would never be any good. And I’ll have to admit that even now I’m somewhat self-conscious about my handwriting—despite the fact I’ve been very successful and written hundreds of articles.

What about you? Do you have some negative thoughts planted in your mind? And are you continuing to let additional negative thoughts get into your mind? Do you think, for example, that you’ll never be able to accomplish your goal of being physically fit? I hope not. You’ve got to stop the negatives from getting in if you’re going to be a positive person. After all, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out.

That’s obvious if you look at the research on televised violence. Way back in 1972, the Surgeon General issued the results of a two-year study. The report made it clear that there was a definite causal relationship between televised violence and antisocial behavior. Additional studies at Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin confirmed it. They found that people who watch televised violence act twice as violently as those who don’t see it.

To stop negatives from entering your mind, there are some things you can do. First, avoid negative people. If you’re in the lunchroom at work, for example, and everyone is going on and on, griping about the company, the managers, and the customers, you may have to excuse yourself. You may have to say something like, "I don’t want to be rude, but I have to leave. I just can’t listen to a lot of negativity today. I need to be at my best, and negative talk just brings me down."

Who are the most negative people in your life? Which people create the biggest drag on your enthusiasm? You may have to avoid those people or reduce your exposure to them. And if that isn’t possible or practical, you need to neutralize the negative impact they have on you. Later tips in this article will tell you how.

Second, avoid negative input. Most of the news, for example, is negative. In fact there’s very little in the news that will inspire you or make your life better. That’s why CNN should be renamed "Constant Negative News." You may have to give up the evening news or reduce your exposure to the news if you want to be a more positive person.
What are the negative inputs in your life? And how can you avoid them? You need to have an answer to these questions.

Third, avoid negative situations. As they say in some treatment programs, avoid those "slippery" places. If you struggle with alcohol, for example, you may have to avoid bars. Or if you struggle with gambling, you have to stay out of casinos. You simply avoid those situations that would make it all too easy for you to slip into negative behavior.

Identify the negative influences in your life. Pull away from them. Otherwise those negative influences will plant themselves in your mind. That’s a given. And you will have work all that much harder to become the positive person you want to become.

2. Avoid negative expectations.

While it’s true that other people can plant negatives in your mind, you might be planting your own negatives. In fact, that’s what you’re doing every time you expect a negative outcome in life. Let’s say you go to work some morning. You find a note on your desk from your boss that says, "See me immediately!" What is your first reaction? Do you expect a negative situation? Do you wonder what you did wrong? Or do you think, "Great! I wonder what the good news is." Most people expect a negative. Or let’s say your child comes home from school with a note from the teacher. The note says, "I suggest a conference as soon as possible." How do you respond? Do you automatically assume your kid did something wrong?

Take a look at your health. Do you think, "I always get the flu in February?" Or do you tell yourself you’ll "never be able to lift more than a certain number of pounds?" It’s almost impossible to become a positive person if you live a life filled with negative expectations. You’ve got to stop expecting the worst and look for the good. And yet people are strange. They actually keep track of the negative things that happen in their lives. They’ll say things like, "That’s the third thing that has gone wrong today. What’s next?" They’re looking forward to the next negative event.

Wouldn’t it make a great deal more sense to practice positive expectations? Look for the good. Keep track of them. And say things like, "That’s the second neat thing that has happened today. I wonder what good thing is coming next." Check out your first response to any bit of news you receive. Maybe it’s your boss talking about a new procedure at work, or it’s your spouse saying some things need to be fixed around the house. If your first response tends to be negative, you’ve got to stop yourself. You’ve got to stop expecting the negative.

You can do that by telling yourself "No." As soon as a negative expectation pops into your mind, take control. Be assertive. Be firm. Tell your mind, "No. I will not allow myself to automatically expect the worst." As strange as it may sound, with a bit of practice, your mind will follow your command.

That’s it for today. I’ll give you 8 more quick ways to become a more positive person in upcoming articles. But to keep on helping you achieve more of your goals, you should sign up for a FREE subscription to my weekly internet newsletter called "Dr. Zimmerman’s Tuesday Tip." Just go to www.DrZimmerman.com

Dr. Alan Zimmerman is one of most sought-after motivational speakers in America, and a recent inductee into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame.

To contact Alan, visit www.drzimmerman.com