High-Fructose Corn Syrup: Separating Myths from Facts

Executive Summary

• Since the 1970s, the use of high-fructose corn syrup in the U.S. food supply has increased dramatically typically as a replacement for sucrose (table sugar) in soft drinks and many food products.
• The prevalence of obesity has also increased substantially between the 1970s and the early 2000s.
• Because of this coincidental timing, HFCS has been erroneously demonized as a unique cause of the obesity epidemic in the United States.
• Sucrose and HFCS have essentially the same composition, and thus it would be highly unlikely for them to have different effects on body weight or metabolism.
• Experimental evidence, as well as analyses of epidemiologic data, indicate that sucrose and HFCS have equivalent effects on food intake and therefore on body weight.
• Scientific evidence does not support the notion that HFCS is uniquely responsible for the American obesity epidemic.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup: Separating Facts from Myths