Could High-Fructose Corn Syrup Be Making You Hungry?

Does high-fructose corn syrup make people hungrier? New findings show that fructose, the kind of sugar found in a wide variety of foods and beverages, may encourage overeating, may be leaving some consumers unsatisfied. The recent findings were presented Wednesday in Phoenix at the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Unlike sugar, fructose is also a "simple" sugar with a natural fruit component.

However, "in a series of studies we have found that when compared to glucose, the simple sugar, fructose, is a weaker suppressor of brain areas that help control appetite and the motivation to eat," said study co-author Dr. Kathleen Page, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, in a news release.

This means that individuals who consume fructose are more likely to stay unsatisfied longer than those who consume lots of glucose.

Furthermore, prior studies have also indicated that glucose consumption or ingesting fructose can spark a smaller release of hormones such as insulin that give rise to a sense of being full. In other words, health officials believe that glucose, not fructose, works to slow down activity found in a specific region of the brain (the hypothalamus).

For this study in particular, researchers found that more than two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, putting them at an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and even certain cancers.

They enlisted 24 men and women between the ages of 16 and 25 to participate in a hunger exercise.

All participants were instructed to consume a drink sweetened with either glucose or fructose, and then asked to view images of various foods and indicate their hunger levels. Each participant was hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner in order to track real-time brain activity and what was going on in the reward center of the brain.

Findings revealed that hunger levels were higher among those who had consumed fructose over glucose.

However, researchers also noted the failing of the study.

"The subjects in this study were given large amounts of pure fructose and pure glucose separately, which almost never occurs outside a laboratory setting," concluded the Corn Refiners Association. "While those who received pure fructose may have reacted as if they were less sated, these study conditions did not correspond to anything like a natural setting in which people normally would be consuming roughly equal amounts of glucose in combination at the same time."

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