Corn product sweetener culprit for rise in obesity since 1970s say researchers

Main Category: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Article Date: 29 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PST


According to researchers, there is a link between the rise in obesity and a sweetener that has been used in soft drinks for the last thirty years. The substance is a corn based product.

The researchers looked at the records from the Department of Agriculture, USA, between the years 1967-2000. They then looked at other previous research as well.

They noticed that the increase in obesity occurred in parallel to the increase in the use of high-fructose corn sweeteners. The use of this sweetener started in the 1970s, the obesity increase started at the same time, the increase in the use of the sweetener was immediately followed by an increase in obesity since that time.

This is according to Dr. George Bray, Obesity Scientist, Louisiana State University System's Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

He added that the research did not prove there was a definite link.

Bray said "Body weights rose slowly for most of the 20th century until the late 1980s…..At that time, many countries showed a sudden increase in the rate at which obesity has been galloping forward."

You can read about this study in the April issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Experts say that even if the sweetener had not been introduced the obesity rise would have happened anyway. Others say it is a simple question of how many calories you consume each day and how many you burn.

Two thirds of Americans are now overweight. Obesity rates rose from 23% in 1990 to 30% now. Obesity increases people's chances of becoming diabetic, developing cancers and having heart disease.

High-fructose sweeteners are more likely to be turned into fat by the body, say researchers.

These corn based sweeteners are cheaper to produce and use than sweeteners that come from cane and beet.

The tests on how the body digests fructose corn sweeteners were done on animals, not humans. Hence, they are inconclusive, say others.

Another expert, Barry Popkin, Nutrition Professor, University North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA said that 30-50% of the increase in people's calorie consumption is due to the consumption of soft drinks and fruit drinks. He was one of the researchers in this study.

His team said that Americans aged two or more are consuming 132 calories a day just from these corn sweeteners. If you add that up, that is a lot of calories (extra empty ones) built up each month.

Popkin said we cannot offset this increase in calorie intake with enough physical activity.

Others say it does not matter what you put into the soft drinks, be it table sugar, sucrose, fructose or corn sweeteners. If people are drinking more soft drinks and fruit juices, and if the containers get bigger and bigger, they will get fatter.

Basically, there are two schools of thought here. One says that these corn sweeteners could be partly to blame for the rise in obesity since the 1970s. The other says that people have been drinking more soft drinks, drinks have got bigger, and drinks are more widely distributed.

I have been to the USA many times (I live in the UK). I have noticed that over the last 20 years meal portions have got bigger and bigger in the USA. Surely, that has something to do with it. Surely there are other factors as well:

-- People do less exercise

-- TV zappers have made us more sedentary

-- People eat more

-- There is more junk food around

-- Kids spend more time in front of screens and less time playing physically

-- We snack more

-- We sleep less

-- We have gadgets at home that do everything (before we did them manually)

-- We drive more and walk less

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