[MostAwesomeDude]

You sound like you are a paid shill. I know that you aren't, which disappoints me further, because I'd like to think that people are capable of educating themselves instead of spreading misinformation.

On your first paragraph, pondering whether sucrose breaks down into fructose and glucose immediately: No, it doesn't. HFCS makes sugars available to the bloodstream sooner, causing larger swings in overall blood sugar levels. Additionally, this study covers rats which were given strict diets; the idea that HFCS made them fatter because they ate more food is not borne out based on the experiment's premises.

Second paragraph: Irrelevant. Honey is not being discussed here. Additionally, you contradict yourself by noting (correctly) that HFCS is not half-and-half fructose and glucose, like sucrose.

Third paragraph: Inverted appeal to authority. You dismiss the information that science makes available, and then put your own opinion up for offering as if it is informed and accurate. You further confuse the issue by putting a well-accepted opinion (the diets of the USA are overly rich in sugars) next to a dismissal of this study.

Fourth paragraph: A delightful strawman, substituting artificial sweeteners for table sugar.

Fifth: More ignorance of the general study of nutrition, with a sweeping statement that is obviously true and yet completely uninformative.

Please go read the article before commenting further.

[buddylw]

Wow. I think you severely miss-read my comment as some formal argument and you are holding it to a much higher standard than your own comment.

Your first paragraph is an ad hominem attack that is subsequently withdrawn adding nothing to the conversation.

I think you might have misread my questions for arguments. Questions have a symbol at the end: '?'. Also, sentences starting "I thought" are not formal arguments, but a highlight of the contrast between my past understanding and the article.

Also, in order for me to make such a contrast, wouldn't I have to read the article?

And just in case the attack at the beginning was serious, I would like to point out that the questions at the beginning of my post proposed two mechanisms whereby HFCS would be worse for you than sugar, which is what this study's results imply. That's hardly something a 'paid shill' would do.

The only argument I made, if I made one at all, is that just because HFCS is worse than sugar (as proposed by the article) doesn't mean that other sweeteners are good for you. This is likely an important thing to remember for all of those that will use this data when making decisions in their own lives.

[reeses]

I appreciate your asking the questions that a lot of people have when they hear that HFCS is "evil".

Generally, if people have been taught that there is more than one kind of sugar (yeah, I know), they learn about sucrose, glucose, and fructose, at most.

The name 'fructose' doesn't help clarify this situation. We are told that we (rightly) should eat more fruits and vegetables. But those juicy peaches and other fruits and fruitish foods (berries, etc.) are sweet.

As a result, we make a very direct connection between fructose and fruit, which is enough to create confusion about the HFCS messaging.[1] Points as well for knowing that honey contains a boatload of fructose. Honey's also good for us, or else they wouldn't point out that things are sweetened with honey instead of 'refined' sugar, right?

As with many issues, there's a bathtub curve of understanding. The completely ignorant and the very-slightly informed people are not confused. Nor are people with a high level of understanding about the combination of chemistry and human physiology.

It's that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" zone that has trouble. You have a better than average understanding of the chemistry and the biological processes, but are having trouble putting together the whole picture. How the heck are you going to advise your kids on what to eat without laying down fiat rules?

I think you were treated unfairly in the reply to your post but it does contain some useful information. For the last laugh[2], I would suggest that after you get the understanding you need on the issue, you write a post/page/paper on the topic, targeting your current self as an audience.

Post it here knowing that HN is a culmination of people who are in the bottom of that bathtub on just about every issue, with some awesome representation of the "heavily informed". You'll help a lot of people and get some actionable feedback.

Just filter out the emotion[3] and revise as needed and you'll have a citation handy the next time this sort of thing comes up. Then you'll be that guy on the right hand side of the curve and can have the last laugh by encouraging education instead of discouraging the exposure of innocent ignorance.

[1] The Corn Growers' Association has created some biased but unintentionally hilarious examples of pro-HFCS messaging.

http://sweetsurprise.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ-ByUx552s

[2] and because I am lazy and want people to do things for me

[3] OMFG, he didn't talk about sucralose, galactose, maltose, and zymurlose!

[cpncrunch]

Actually, the article doesn't show that HFCS is worse than sugar - if you look at Table 1 you'll see that rats fed HFCS and sugar had the same weight-gain over the long term. However the article is slightly misleading in implying that HFCS is worse than sugar, even though their own results don't show that.

Bad science, move on. All the evidence we have shows that HFCS and sucrose are equally bad for you.

[jjoonathan]

First of all, I tend to agree with the sibling posts accusing you of failing to maintain scholarly decorum. The "paid shill" remark was uncalled for, even if I tend to agree with your criticisms (at least, all but the most crucial one).

> pondering whether sucrose breaks down into fructose and glucose immediately: No, it doesn't.

Can you substantiate this further (say, with an in-vivo sucrose half-life)? I don't have journal access at the moment, so the best I could find was this study: http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/content/59/1/413.extract which seems to support what you claim (only 90% inversion after 6.5 hours in rabbits), but I'd still like to see something more modern and preferably in humans.

> Additionally, this study covers rats which were given strict diets

Strict diets? It seems to me like they had unmeasured and uncontrolled access to chow and sugar solution ("controlled" only on the basis of availability time)! I tend to agree with the grandparent post that the observed results could be caused by the relative sweetness of HFCS driving the rats to continue consuming HFCS past the point where they would have stopped consuming sucrose solution. Since humans tend to consume drinks in fixed quantities (8oz, 16oz) not entirely chosen on the bases of satiety, I question the relevance of this study to human health.

> you contradict yourself by noting (correctly) that HFCS is not half-and-half fructose and glucose

You quibble. I'll take it back iff you substantiate the implicit claim (which occurs under the assumption that you weren't quibbling) that the 5% or 7% difference in sugar concentrations creates a disproportionate effect on energy output or weight gain.

[carbocation]

Here is a free article covering a study in humans comparing the pharmacokinetics of high-fructose corn syrup to those of sucrose [1]. Key figure showing blood concentrations of some sugars is here [2].

1 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3306467/

2 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t...

[maxerickson]

In the paper, they state that they did daily measurements of chow and sugar drink intake. So the intake was mostly unregulated, but it was measured.

[jjoonathan]

My bad, turns out I was completely wrong:

> There was no overall difference in total caloric intake (sugar plus chow) among the sucrose group and two HFCS groups.

Technically, I was right in that they didn't control overall intake, but they did prove that they didn't need to control overall intake so my alternative hypothesis was refuted in any case.

[tokenadult]

You sound like you are a paid shill.

This kind of comment is never helpful to the community or to thoughtful discussion on Hacker News, and is a violation of the Hacker News guidelines.

[tzs]

> Second paragraph: Irrelevant. Honey is not being discussed here.

No, it is NOT irrelevant. Testing with honey would be a natural followup to these kinds of experiments. It is entirely relevant for him to wonder about it.

[vidarh]

Why exactly do you believe it is warranted to reply in this tone? To me, regardless of the issue being discussed, this comment reflects extremely poorly on you.

[smsm42]

>>>> You sound like you are a paid shill.

I'm sorry but starting with this you lost all credibility in my eyes immediately. Which would be no problem if you supported your statements with links to independent sources, but you did not.

[meowface]

He does not sound like a paid shill. He's asking perfectly valid questions.

[maxerickson]

It is too bad that they lacked the resources to include sucrose in the long term study (because why not).

It's also confusing that they never discuss (as far as I have seen anyway) how they determined the levels of sweeteners in the sugar drinks. I would like to see a study where the drinks had equivalent calories/volume, I can see where rats with access to water might avoid syrup but prefer a less sweet sugar drink. Even given some good explanation for the different calorie loads, it would still be interesting to see how it factored in.

[sami36]

Yours has to be the most dickish comment on a comment I've ever read on HN. Congratulations. What is it that you've added to the conversation again ? Nothing.

[stcredzero]

As far as I can tell, everything he says is grounded in fact or is at least cogently supported. I intend to follow some of his pointers and read more.

On the other hand, your comment is strangely and unintentionally self referential.

[vidarh]

The problem was that the comment starts out with that comment about being a paid shill, and then goes on to treat the comment it replies to as if it was a series of firm claims made to mislead, when it starts out with a bunch of questions, and draws some very limited conclusions on the belief that we know too little.

MostAwesomeDude could have started out answering the questions on the assumption they are honestly meant, without the attitude, and it would have come across a lot better.

[foobarbazqux]

My that was uncivil.