HFCS may not cause cancer, and this study is only the beginning of an investigation into whether it might. On the other hand it is shown to make you obese, significantly faster and more dangerously than ordinary sugar:
So I've already cut it out of my diet. If doing so cuts my cancer risk that's a nice bonus. But we already know that HFCS is bad for you and shouldn't be in food.
I believe HCFS = High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's something I avoid as well. It is in most sodas. This is part of why I drink diet coke, even though the artificial sweeteners in it have apparently been linked to brain cancer (or so I've heard). I figure I have to live that long for it to be a problem but HCFS makes me feel like crap in the here and now. (I have heard that, at least during some parts of the year, you can get "kosher" sodas made with real cane sugar and that some niche brands of sodas are available in some limited markets with real cane sugar. But I haven't tripped across any myself.)
You might also be able to find Mexican Coke, which is sweetened with cane sugar. I've seen it at regular grocery stores in upstate NY and CT so I imagine it's fairly common.
There's a grocery store in Los Angeles with a large collection of glass-bottle sodas and they do sell online at http://www.sodapopstop.com/, but there are other sites as well. Elsewhere in California, I've seen Beverages and More have a small collection also.
I specifically cut out foods containing High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is an artificial additive created by doing messily chemical things to maize. Natural sources of fructose I'm not so bothered with.
This is an exceptionally well-written piece. It's a great window into why you need to be on guard when getting your science news from breathless press releases.
Exactly my thoughts, except for "be on guard". If someone is trying to get science from news they are pretty screwed. In this case reading the news probably made most people more ignorant on the science at hand.
"The bottom line is the modern diet contains a lot of refined sugar including fructose and it's a hidden danger implicated in a lot of modern diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and fatty liver," said Heaney...
And then the author of this piece goes on to say
"And that, is how you go from cell culture work to sweeping policy recommendations"
I guess it was cell culture work that implicated fructose in obesity, diabetes, and fatty liver? Nice sleight of hand.
No, the blogger is correct and you appear to have misunderstood him. He is stating that the study itself does not merit making policy changes. As you note, other studies do, but this is not one of those. The author of the study may be making good policy recommendations, but using his study as the basis for those recommendations would be unwise. Despite my agreement with his recommendations, I disagree with the basis that he chose for his recommendations, as does this blogger. Though I do not know if the blogger supports the policy of reducing fructose—who knows, maybe he doesn't—it doesn't materially impact my agreement with the narrow concern that he wrote this blog post about.
I understood the blogger just fine, but I read Heaney's statement differently. I don't find it clear that he's saying that fructose use should be reduced strictly because of his paper and for no other reason, as the article implies (if it did I would agree with the blogger), especially when he said other bad things about fructose.
This is what we really know - in some undetermined context, in conversation, Heaney said
"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,"
To me it doesn't seem perfectly clear that Heaney intended that the first sentence, by itself, implies the second sentence, though the article sort of makes it look like he did. It's certainly not clear enough to rip him a new asshole, as the blogosphere has done, at least not based solely on the information in this article.
If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him. —Cardinal Richelieu
"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications."
Extrapolating from tissue culture to public health is something that can be rigorously done. This paper doesn't address public health; as such, I don't see how it follows in a scientific fashion that this paper has public health implications. I don't have a problem with the work, or with the author, or with his beliefs about his paper. I simply disagree that his statement, quoted above, is justified by his paper.
I haven't read the paper, but the blog post says it cited prospective human studies showing an association between pancreatic cancer and fructose consumption, so it looks like he digressed into something beyond cell cultures to make the case against fructose.
He could very well have been overselling his paper (the article certainly is), but it's just possible that the journalist made it look that way to get a sexier story. If the blogger had kept a more objective, factual tone, instead of attacking Heaney, I wouldn't have a problem.
Let me preface by saying that I don't want to overstate what I think is really a rather modest difference of interpretation that you and I have.
I have read the paper, and much of their basic biology seems sound. They show convincingly that pancreatic ductal cancer cell proliferation does not differ between glucose and fructose at a variety of concentrations (figure 1).
They then compare pancreatic tumor to hepatic tumor to normal-ish tissues and show a series of metabolic differences when grown in glucose-containing vs fructose-containing media (figure 2). These changes include transketolase activity, ribose synthesis, and release of C13-labeled lactate into the media. Here, I have a bit of an issue. Nobody is claiming that our high-fructose diet causes us to have a glucose-free plasma, so it's totally non-physiologic to compare just glucose vs just fructose (which some of the panels appear to be doing in this figure, while others are comparing glucose vs fructose+glucose, which is a stronger comparison IMHO).
There are other figures; they are fine. I like their data. Where they lose me is with the claims that they make from their data. They show in figure 1 that there is no proliferative difference in Panc-1 cells between a glucose vs a fructose "diet" at all concentrations, but then based on data in figure 4 they claim that the TK-inhibitor oxythiamine reduces "fructose-induced Panc-1 cell proliferation." Well, which is it: does fructose induce Panc-1 cell proliferation, or does it not? Your answer will depend upon whether you like figure 1 better or figure 4. While these claims appear to be contradictory to me, it's also possible that I didn't read the paper carefully enough so please correct me if I missed something.
At any rate, just because this paper cited other work showing human studies (which it did), that certainly does not mean that this paper itself has policy implications. The human studies that it cited might have policy implications.
Especially given figure 1, which shows no difference in proliferation between cancer cells given fructose and those given glucose, I would have a hard time justifying policy claims with this paper.
> "The bottom line is the modern diet contains a lot of refined sugar including fructose and it's a hidden danger implicated in a lot of modern diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and fatty liver," said Heaney...
Eggs were "implicated" at one time too. We're now seeing a shift from "fat is bad" to "some fats are horrible and other fats seem to be okay". Carbs have been all over the map.
Yes, today's information is likely to be better than yesterday's, but why is it likely to be the last word? And, are you sure that there's no face-saving going on? (There is wrt fats.)
BTW - Until the imortality becomes a possibility, tobacco smoking is a good idea if you're old enough....
I've read that it can fend off alzheimer's according to some studies, but I've also read that if you exclude the studies funded by tobacco companies then the remaining studies show that smoking actually increases your chances of getting it. But obviously "smoking bad for you" isn't quite as sexy a headline in the "man bites dog" sense.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
So I've already cut it out of my diet. If doing so cuts my cancer risk that's a nice bonus. But we already know that HFCS is bad for you and shouldn't be in food.