The Increasingly Invasive Ingredient that Closely Resembles a Really Bad Additive Actor

Invert Sugar Is Suddenly Everywhere You Look, Despite its Suspect Profile

In 2010 the Corn Refiners Association embarked on a multi-million-dollar marketing and regulatory exercise to spiff up the reputation of high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS. To the chagrin of the corn refiners, it bombed on all accounts. The trade group’s petition to the FDA to change the HFCS name to “corn sugar” failed, and its cornfield commercials morphed into Saturday Night Live spoofs. But along the way, consumers learned some interesting facts as to the negative effects that HFCS has on the body.

HFCS, studies found, significantly contributes to obesity inducing “metabolic dysregulation,” can up the odds of several types of cancers, stimulate fat accumulation in the liver (fatty liver disease), up cholesterol levels, and is linked with diabetes.

By now, most products – with the exception of soda, tea, and other bottled drinks – have ditched the use of HFCS, with many still stating “NO HFCS” on the packaging.

But as HFCS use seemed to disappear another sweetening agent, invert sugar, has largely taken its place in baked goods (including so-called “healthy” ones), along with many other processed foods. Investigating this sweetener during an update of a book we co-authored A Consumer's Guide to Toxic Food Additives, we found some interesting parallels with HFCS, disturbing enough for us to recommend that consumers avoid it -- and for us to do so ourselves.

What we found is that invert sugar – like HFCS -- tastes sweeter than ordinary sugar, helps food retain moisture and crystallize less easily. It's also made -- at least commercially -- by using the chemical reaction known as hydrolysis to break the bonds in sugar between the glucose and fructose, resulting in a solution of half-free glucose and half-free fructose.

While noting that it’s a far different process than the one used in creating HFCS, the results are the same in that both end up with chemically separated glucose and fructose. And that 'unbound' fructose -- and how rapidly the body absorbs it -- according to many experts is the main thing that makes HFCS such a hazard to our health.

A Matter of Fructose Metabolism  

While there doesn’t seem to be much research on how the body metabolizes invert sugar compared to traditional cane sugar, some experts have thoughts on it.

One of them, Dr. Michael Goran of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and co-director of its Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, who has studied the effects of HFCS extensively, gave us his view on invert sugar for our book.

He noted that “the issue with fructose is how rapidly it’s absorbed. Anytime bonds are broken, it accelerates the rate at which fructose is absorbed.”

So, while four years later, we still lack any "hard evidence" that invert sugar may be in the same category as HFCS, there remains enough of a similarity to the dissed sweetener for us to go on recommending that products sweetened with it be left on the shelf.

You can pick up a copy of A Consumer's Guide to Toxic Food Additives here.

NOTE: Please read this comment from a reader who writes the well-researched and extremely informative Substack Ageddon.

Great piece on how they continue to manufacture words to hide what they are doing to our food.

Sounds like another case of "Pick Your Poison". The first clue that it's something you should not eat is if there's a patent on it. A google search of "invert sugar patents" has "About 2,670,000 results" Just the first one I clicked on had 2 quick hitter issues: (https://patents.google.com/patent/US2758040A/en)

1. "An object of this invention is to produce invert sugar which contains a minimum quantity of the decomposition product of levulose." Levulose is just different word for fructose.

2. "Another object of this invention is to provide a sterile water white solution of invert sugar which is substantially free from S-hydroxymethylfurfural." Yet another link tells us "Both acrylamide and HMF are considered as probably or potentially carcinogenic to humans or might be metabolized by humans to potentially carcinogenic compounds." (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0023643810003798), I'm sure they're getting all of the S-hydroxymethylfurfural removed before they put it in our food. Right?

I didn't read the rest of this patent. That was enough for me.