i'm...confused.
i mean, the science seems sound, and in fact most peer-reviewed articles on the subject indicate that HFCS and sucrose (table sugar) cause the same (or v. similar) metabolic responses in the body. my main problem is that the slides do not seem to be annotated, and there are no footnotes anywhere (i did not watch the video, my computer is very old). so while the logic seems to be sound, the only proof that seems to be offered is "he's an expert".

but where i'm really, really baffled, is that the live journal author says that s/he had not thought too badly of HFCS until s/he watched this video. but, the video concludes that HFCS is no different from regular fructose, table sugar, and alcohol! so how on earth does that lead to the conclusion that it's bad?

maybe i'm missing something.

That's the lj users summary of the video. Those slides are taken directly from the video. It's a UCSF researcher in Endocrinology who breaks this all down, at a UCSF seminar. He does cite studies in some of the slides on the video (those are even more confusing), but mostly what he does is take the time to explain the bio-chemistry behind how our bodies break down various forms of carbohydrates and what happens to those.

Glucose (the only carb in bread) is broken down and used instantly; if it is not needed it is stored as glycogen in the liver, and even people with liver disease do not suffer toxic effects from glucose. It is what powers our muscles, our bodies, the beneficial bacteria, basically all life on the planet metabolizes to glucose in order to use the foods we eat.

Sucrose, fructose, and ethanol all metabolize down to a certain amount of glucose, plus other compounds including some that are toxic, some that are stored as fat, and some that are harmless. Those diagrams the lj poster put up were a part of that series showing what goes into your liver, what happens once it gets there, and what the end products of the livers metabolism cycle do (produce VLDL fats which cause heart disease, release molecules which cause insulin resistance and stop the production of leptin which is what burns fats, and other things I can't remember).

But the most important slide for me was the chronic ethanol vs. chronic fructose exposure. The only things chronic sucrose exposure doesn't do is make us drunk (hematologic/electrolyte), they don't cause blood vessel dilation (the only good thing alcohol does, which is why 1-2 drinks/day of wine or hard liquor are now considered ok) and cause malnutrition. But the things fructose doesn't do are the only things we notice about alcohol externally, and the reason we regulate alcohol in this country and most of the world.

He made the point talking about the coke vs. beer slide that the effects are the same on the liver and thus the VLDL fats (these are the only truly bad fats, the ones that get into the epitheleal layers and cause plaque to build up in your blood vessels causing heart disease) and the inflamed liver that come from chronic alcohol abuse also occur with chronic fructose exposure, and we wouldn't think twice about giving a six month old a beer, but we push formula which has the same amount of sugar as fructose, hence the rising number of obese six month olds.

They're also tracking the number of babies born who already suffer metabolic syndrome, due not to their mothers drinking alcohol but sugared sodas and juices during pregnancy, and those effects appear to linger as the children grow if they continue to consume sugars in any form except whole fruits without added sweeteners.

There are a bunch of other things I don't fully comprehend or remember, but it's been decades since I took a bio-chem class or even a biology class. The Doctor/researcher is quite credible, he clearly takes down the whole USDA food pyramid, explains why meat, cheese, & natural fats are NOT bad for us, discusses the difference between sucrose in whole fruit (it comes packaged with the cure for the damage, in the form of fiber) and fruit juice, and basically rips the government and most nutritionists a new one on the low-fat, high carb diet that's been killing us since the mistake in the 1970s that said fat caused heart disease.

I know my case is anecdotal, but cutting out carbs for me is definitely part of what let me drop all the excess weight. Of course I did it for a different reason than heart disease but it still had the same impact (my body doesn't process or utilize any carbs well, and the more carbs the worse the candidia). I eat meat and cheese, nuts, lower carb/higher fiber veggies, a little high fiber fresh fruit, and a few complex carbs (dreamfields pasta, jade pearl organic rice, baby red or purple potatoes). And the only thing I drink is water or an occasional amaretto or small amounts of chai tea sweetened with honey or agave. 90%+ of my fluid intake is filtered water though, and even before I was told to cut the carbs out I didn't drink sodas, sweetened drinks or that much juice, so that wasn't the cause of the 40+ lbs of excess weith I was carrying in fall 2009 and which I've since lost.

Anyway, if you get the chance watch the video. It's frightening to see the science behind those charts explained. And there's another thing about the 1960s\1970s study that showed the correlation between fat intake and heart disease that was what turned us all to low fat processed foods in the first place. Ancel Keys' study got it wrong - the original data was 22 countries of which only 6 fit the pattern. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WA5wcaHp4 or http://www.modern-diets-and-nutritional-diseases.com/bias.html for some of the information on that, which the video above also touches on, mainly because the methodology for the six countries he did study was incomplete, and because everyone ignored the comments in the chart that said the higher cholesterol could be from fatty foods but could also be from sucrose.

Hope I made some sense with this; I am so not up-to-date or as trained as you are.

right, no, i get all that.
what i don't get is how someone concluded from that that HFCS is worse than sugar.

Sort of an urban myth that some non-science health sites promote; that because it's not 50/50 sucrose/glucose but 55/45 it's worse. not significantly enough to make a difference in how our body handles it.

That was the starting point for the lj-poster, and the first thing the researcher said was wrong, that hfcs and sugar weren't significantly different, except that hfcs is sweeter and we use more of it.

He showed a chart that sugar is 100 on the sweet scale, hfcs is 12x, but almost every pre-made food on the shelf contains one or both, and "crystaline fructose" at 14x is even worse, but now that's showing up as a healthier alternative. All 3 are bad, and the amount of those that people consume have risen like crazy since post WWII when rationing stopped.

okay. you're making sense...i guess the post didn't communicate this very well (to me).