A Princeton University research team lead by psychology professor Bart Hoebel (pictured) demonstrated that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gain significantly more weight than those with access to water sweetened with table sugar. (Photo courtesy of Princeton University, Denise Applewhite)
We know eating too much sweet stuff puts on the pounds. A new study suggests the kind of sweet stuff matters too. Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
We know eating too much sweet stuff puts on the pounds.
Shawn Allee reports a new study suggests the kind of sweet stuff matters, too.
Food companies mostly sweeten things with table sugar, called sucrose, or they use high fructose corn syrup.
Dr. Bart Hoebel is at Princeton University.
A while back, his team fed rats regular food and let them drink watered-down sucrose to see if they’d put on fat.
They didn’t.
But, recently he let rats eat the same food, but drink a solution of high-fructose corn syrup.
“The ones with the high-fructose corn syrup became significantly fatter.
Corn sweetener companies dismiss the study since it involves rats, not people.”
Hoebel says rat studies point out where we should do human studies later.
“So we want to find out if the kind of sugar matters as the food producers are putting sugar in more and more things.”
More research on corn syrup is in the pipeline, including work on animals and people.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.