The sugar that’s driving a liver disease epidemic

At this point, every person on the planet should be aware of the dangers of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This stuff is toxic and added to far too many manufactured and fast foods to ever list.

• The food industry says HFCS is safe.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says HFCS is safe.

Those are lies and you should not believe them.

As for your doctor, when was the last time he or she questioned what you normally eat or drink before prescribing a medication? Chances are, they never ask! That’s because they know next to nothing — and refuse to learn — about the short-term and long-term effects of processed food on human health.

It’s almost as if they don’t think it’s their problem!

Funny enough, the dismal state of our food supply is probably the main reason most doctors are in business in the first place. After all, explosions in diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and cancer coincide with the bogus medical claims that high-fructose corn syrup was the same as “regular” corn and hydrogenated oils were better than “full fat” butters and lards.

More lies that have had a detrimental impact on the health of millions — if not billions, all told — of people around the world.

Numerous studies have shown that fructose is horrific for your liver, your heart, and your reproductive system… and yet, it’s being used more, not less, in our food supply.

Conservative estimates state that the U.S. population consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar daily — which equates to almost 60 pounds of sugar every year. Others put that number much, much higher — to 130 pounds of sugar consumption annually.

It should come as no surprise that most of that sugar is delivered through the beverages we drink. The Diabetes Council published the following breakdown:

• Fancy Coffee (16 ounces): 12-44 grams of added sugar
• Bottled Teas (20 ounces): 18-33 grams of added sugar
• Soda (12 ounces): 35-37 grams of added sugar
• Sports Drinks (20 ounces): 8-40 grams of added sugar
• Energy Drinks (20 ounces): 38-62 grams of added sugar
• Bottled Smoothies (15 ounces): 40-80 grams of added sugar

To put this list into perspective, understand that 4.2 grams of sugar is equal to one teaspoon. Now, these statistics are terrible. Make no mistake: all sugars are bad for you if you eat or drink too much.

The dangers of high-fructose corn syrup are many times worse for your body than “regular” sugar. HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by your body.

High-fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far cry from the “natural” label claimed for it. In fact, it’s prepared by a secret formula — that the food industry will not reveal (even to government agencies or health workers).

Related: 12 natural substitutes for processed sweeteners (infographic)

Unlike glucose, which is nature’s real sugar, fructose goes straight to the liver and triggers fat production (lipogenesis). We are now seeing an explosion of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) which can lead to deadly cirrhosis (which claims almost 90,000 lives in the U.S. every year).

Approximately 100 million Americans have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease right now, according to the American Liver Foundation. This epidemic is easily traceable to the massive rise in fructose intake that has been forced on us — without our consent — through our diet by the food industry.

The damage doesn’t stop at your liver. Dangers of high-fructose corn syrup leads to several metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and much more.

Why you crave what hurts you

1. Fructose is much sweeter than normal sugar. Every time you eat it, you’re training your body and brain to demand more. It’s a simple path to addiction and that’s exactly what food manufacturers want.
2. Fructose does not trigger the normal satisfaction hormones leptin and insulin. In other words, there’s nothing to tell you that you’ve had enough.

Researchers in many of the studies cited here have proven that removing the dangers of high-fructose corn syrup from the diet reduces fatty liver, metabolic disorders, obesity, diabetes, and more.

No one needs this much sugar

The importance of starting early to limit sugar intake cannot be overstated. Because HFCS is found in so many manufactured foods, it’s not always clear how much we’re actually consuming.

It’s not easy to eliminate HFCS from your diet entirely. It’s added to foods you would assume (like soda and candy) but also appears in foods you wouldn’t suspect (like salad dressing, bread, and boxed or frozen meals). They aren’t “sweet” so you might not think they contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Unfortunately, so many do.

Children exposed to these quantities actually change at the cellular level. Forty kids were evaluated by researchers at Touro University California in Vallejo. The findings were presented at The Endocrine Society 2015 annual meeting.

Researchers wanted to see if changes in diet would have an impact on both hepatic lipogenesis and total concentrations of fat in the liver. Lead author of the study, Jean-Marc Schwarz, Ph.D., likened ingesting fruit drinks or sodas laced with HFCS to a “tsunami” in the liver, forcing it to produce more fat.

The team recruited 25 Latino children (15 girls, 11 boys) and 15 African-American children (12 girls, three boys) with a median age of 13. The median fat percentage was 47.3 percent — youngsters considered obese by medical biomarkers.

Throughout the 10-day trial, patients were fed meals that contained the same relative energy and macronutrient content of their normal diet. However, high-fructose products were replaced with vegetables, breads, or pasta that did not contain HFCS.

The improvement was immediate, substantial, and unarguable: the conversion of sugar to fat dropped by 53 percent and total liver fat dropped by a massive 20 percent — in just 10 days!

Schwarz acknowledged that the study was short, but pointed out that it was “an intervention that goes on beyond just correlation. We saw that in 10 days, there was this dramatic change that suggests benefits for cardiovascular disease.”

There was no weight loss but the drop in fat in the liver was practically a miracle.

Another takeaway from this study is that researchers were able to find a bunch of 12 and 13-year-olds with fatty liver! That’s a terrible foreshadowing of health in ten or twenty more years.

Not the same: Fructose in fruit

I’m asked all the time about fructose in fruit. Let me be clear: eating fruit is not a bad thing! If you eat a handful of grapes or an apple, you’re going to be fine. Even if you do this a couple of times a day.

The enemy is HFCS. It is fortified concentrated fructose — a perverted manufacturing process with no balancing nutrients.

The dangers of high-fructose corn syrup in your diet is one of the single worst ways you can destroy your liver… forcing it to produce more fat.

Love your liver! It’s a powerful organ absolutely essential to life!

I wrote a book about liver health and give you vital information about protecting your primary detox organ for a long and healthy life. Read “Love Your Liver” right now!

Sources:

1. Abundance of fructose not good for the liver, heart — Harvard Health Publishing
2. Carbohydrate intake and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: fructose as a weapon of mass destruction — Hepatobiliary Surgery and Nutrition
3. Effect of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) Intake on the Female Reproductive Organs and Lipid Accumulation in Adult Rats — Development & Reproduction Journal
4. The growing concern over too much added sugar in our diets — University of California – San Francisco
5. How Much Sugar Are Americans Eating? — Forbes
6. How Much Sugar is in Popular Drinks? — The Diabetes Council
7. Liver Disease Statistics — American Liver Foundation
8. Schwarz J-M, et al “Isocaloric fructose restriction for 10 days reduces hepatic de novo lipogenesis and liver fat in obese Latino and African American children” — ENDO 2015.
9. Bray, G.A., Nielsen, S.J., and B.M. Popkin. 2004. “Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity” — Am J Clin Nutr. 79(4):537-43. Review.