Sugar, HFCS and Artificial Sweeteners

I have set before thee life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life. — Deuteronomy 30:19

The First Foods of Modern Commerce

In the 1930s, the dentist Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the world looking for people who still had perfect teeth, and he found them: in Swiss mountain villages, in the Outer Hebrides, among the Inuit, the Pacific Islanders, the Maori and the peoples of Africa and the Americas. Those still eating the traditional foods of their ancestors had broad, well-formed dental arches, straight teeth free of decay, and strong bones. Their smiles would put a toothpaste commercial to shame. (You will read more of his work in Chapter 13.)

And in every population he studied, he also found the children: the children of the same families who had moved into town or taken up what Price called the foods of modern commerce. The first of those foods to arrive were almost always white flour and sugar, followed by the canned goods, the jams, the bottled drinks, the chocolates and the candies. Commerce, it seems, always shows up carrying dessert. Within a single generation, those children showed narrow arches, crowded teeth, cavities, and a new susceptibility to tuberculosis and other illness. The decline was visible in the bones of their faces.

Not one of the traditional diets Price studied contained refined sugar. Not one. Sweeteners, when they existed, were honey, maple syrup, dates and other whole sweet foods, eaten in modest amounts.

Today sugar is everywhere, and much of it comes as high-fructose corn syrup. The “diet” alternatives that were sold to us as the escape hatch bring problems of their own. In this chapter I want to teach you what fructose does to the liver, how the sugar industry shaped the science we were all taught, why artificial sweeteners are no way out, and which sweeteners my teachers accept. Consider it a tour of the candy aisle with the lights on.

The teacher I lean on most for the sugar story is Dr. Joseph Mercola, the osteopathic physician and founder of Mercola.com whom you met in Chapter 5. Of the three chemical changes he names in the modern diet, high-fructose corn syrup is the one this chapter is about. He is also the author of Sweet Deception, a book on artificial sweeteners, so he will be riding along with us when we come to the “diet” drinks too.

Dr. Mercola does not sugarcoat his view of sugar. (Forgive me; I could not resist.) In his special report “The Dangers of High-Fructose Corn Syrup,” he writes: “it is my firm belief that regular use of sugar is even worse for you than cigarettes.”

How High-Fructose Corn Syrup Took Over

The story of high-fructose corn syrup is one of the clearest cases in modern food history of an industrial invention that produced exactly the harm its biochemistry predicted. The chemistry wrote the forecast, and the forecast came true.

Table sugar (sucrose), from cane or beet, is half glucose and half fructose, the two joined together. It has been part of human diets for a long time, though at far lower levels than we eat it today. Until the 1970s it was the main caloric sweetener in the American food supply, the undisputed king of the sugar bowl.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is made from corn starch. The starch is broken down to glucose, and then part of that glucose is converted to fructose with enzymes. It is less a recipe than a chemistry project. The most common forms are 42% or 55% fructose, and some formulations run higher.

The first process for turning glucose into fructose was invented in 1957. In the late 1960s a Japanese research group developed an industrial process that made it practical, and through the 1970s HFCS became cheap, helped along by American corn subsidies that kept corn prices low and sugar tariffs that kept cane sugar prices high. Public policy, it turns out, has a sweet tooth. As Mercola.com puts it, “it’s actually cheaper to make HFCS than to buy cane or beet sugar!” HFCS was also sweeter per gram and easier to blend into processed foods and drinks.

The shift was fast. By 1985, HFCS had become the main sweetener in soft drinks. By the mid-1990s it was in nearly every category of processed food. Soft drinks became the single largest source of added sugar in the American diet.

Look for it and you will find it nearly everywhere: in almost every commercial soft drink, in most commercial baked goods, in flavored yogurts, and in condiments such as ketchup, salad dressings and barbecue sauce. Yes, even the ketchup.

What Fructose Does to the Liver

Here is the part of the story that matters most for your body.

Every cell in the body can use glucose. Your muscles, your brain, your red blood cells all burn it for fuel. Glucose is the common currency; every shop in town accepts it.

Fructose is different. It is handled almost entirely by the liver, and the liver turns much of it into fat. Fructose slips past the normal checks that regulate glucose, like a delivery truck that skips the front gate, so when it arrives in large amounts, especially in liquid form, as it does in a soft drink, the liver has little choice but to store it.

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, makes this case from inside mainstream medicine, which makes him hard to wave away. His lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” and his book Fat Chance underlie the documentary Sugar Coated. In large amounts, he explains, fructose behaves in the liver much like alcohol, and it drives fatty liver disease even in children who have never had a drink.

The Mercola report explains that in animal studies fructose produced insulin resistance, high insulin, high triglycerides and high blood pressure. That is quite a goody bag for one sweetener. Over time, a steady diet of fructose produces fatty liver, insulin resistance, raised triglycerides, and the cluster of problems physicians now call metabolic syndrome.

Fructose also forms damaging compounds called advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), which stiffen tissues and add to oxidative stress. Picture sugar browning in a hot pan, and you have the general idea.

Fruit is different. I do not want anyone afraid of an apple. Whole fruit comes with fiber, water and nutrients that slow the fructose down, brakes built right in, and traditional peoples ate it in season. Fruit juice, large amounts of dried fruit, and agave are another matter: they are concentrated fructose. A glass of store-bought orange juice is not the same food as an orange.

A Disease of Insulin and Leptin

This is one of Dr. Mercola’s most important teachings, and it changes how you think about diabetes.

“The concept being overlooked by conventional medicine,” he writes, “is that diabetes is not actually a disease of blood sugar.” Instead: “The primary problem with diabetes is insulin, and more specifically insulin resistance, along with faulty leptin signaling.”

High blood sugar, in other words, is the sign, not the root. It is the smoke, not the fire. The root is that the cells have stopped listening to insulin, like a teenager with earbuds in.

Leptin is the hormone that tells the brain the body has enough stored energy. When it works properly, it says to the brain, in effect, “we are well supplied; you can stop eating.” When a diet high in fructose makes the brain resistant to leptin, that message never gets delivered. People stay hungry even as they gain weight. That is not a failure of willpower. It is a hormone signal that has been jammed.

Sugar weakens your defenses, too. The most cited finding on sugar and the immune system comes from a 1973 paper by Dr. Albert Sanchez and colleagues in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. They measured how well white blood cells engulf and destroy bacteria, the Pac-Man work of the immune system. A single dose of one hundred grams of sugar, about the amount in two and a half cans of soda, cut white blood cell function by about forty percent within thirty minutes, and the suppression lasted about five hours. The drop occurred with sucrose, glucose, fructose, honey and orange juice.

In the Mercola report’s words: “In fact, sugar suppresses your immune system for hours after you consume it.” Hours, not minutes.

Think about what that means for a person drinking one or two sodas a day, every day. Her immune system is working at reduced capacity for much of her waking life, like a night guard dozing at the gate. The slow wound healing, the easy colds, the lingering low-grade infections are all connected, in part, to that steady suppression.

Dr. Mercola’s summary is one I repeat to clients: “Fructose is fructose, and if you are challenged with obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, or even if you’re simply insulin resistant, fructose is NOT your friend.”

How the Sugar Industry Shaped the Science

If you have ever wondered why a whole generation was taught to fear fat and not sugar, here is part of the answer. Spoiler: it involves money.

In 2016, Dr. Cristin Kearns, a dentist, and her colleagues published internal sugar industry documents in JAMA Internal Medicine. Leave it to a dentist to find the sugar. The documents showed that in the 1960s a sugar industry group paid Harvard scientists to write a review that played down sugar’s role in heart disease and blamed dietary fat instead.

That review helped shape decades of low-fat advice. And the low-fat products that followed were often sweetened to make up for the flavor of the missing fat, so the advice that was supposed to protect our hearts pushed even more sugar into our diets. We traded the butter for sugar and called it progress.

The documentary Sugar Coated tells this story, featuring Dr. Lustig and the documents Dr. Kearns uncovered, and it shows the industry’s other tactics: funding research, shifting the blame to fat, and repeating that “a calorie is a calorie.” If a calorie is a calorie, then a soda is no different from a handful of nuts, and the only problem is that you ate too much. Convenient, if you sell soda. You now know why that is not true: fructose goes to the liver and jams the signals that tell you when you have had enough.

This is the clearest example I know of the “follow the money” test from Chapter 1. Before you trust a study, ask who paid for it. If the answer leaves a sweet aftertaste, read with care.

Diet Drinks Are No Escape: The Aspartame Story

When people learn what sugar does, many of them switch to diet drinks. I understand the impulse. But Dr. Mercola warns: “While diet sodas don’t contain HFCS, they are likely even WORSE due to the artificial sweeteners they contain.” Out of the frying pan, into the fizz.

Dr. Blaylock, the neurosurgeon whose work on excitotoxins fills Chapter 7, agrees. In his June 2021 Blaylock Wellness Report, “Artificial Sweeteners: The Bad, the Worse, and the Downright Deadly,” he reviews two decades of research. He does not mince words, and neither does his title. “Aspartame is a perfect example,” he writes. “It should never have been approved.”

What aspartame becomes in the body

“When aspartame is absorbed,” Dr. Blaylock explains, “it is metabolized into three major components: the (excitotoxic) amino acid aspartate, the amino acid phenylalanine, and a toxic alcohol called methanol.”

So one little packet hands your body three things. Aspartame breaks down into aspartate, phenylalanine and methanol:

• Aspartate is the excitotoxin you studied in Chapter 7, the brain’s “go” signal in a dose that can excite nerve cells to death. Remember, too, that aspartame eaten with MSG roughly doubles blood glutamate. The diet soda with the flavored chips is one pairing worth skipping.
• Phenylalanine is dangerous for people with the genetic condition phenylketonuria (PKU), which is why aspartame products carry a warning. People with PKU must avoid aspartame.
• Methanol is converted in the body to formaldehyde, which is a known neurotoxin in its own right. Yes, that formaldehyde, the one with the biology-lab smell.

How it was approved

The aspartame story shows how a compound with documented concerns can be approved, marketed and swallowed on an enormous scale. The documentary Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World tells it, with Dr. Blaylock and other physicians, alongside the stories of people who believe aspartame harmed them.

Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by a chemist working for the drug company G.D. Searle. He was working on an anti-ulcer drug, got some of the experimental compound on his fingers, licked a finger to turn the page of a notebook, and noticed it tasted sweet. (Not a lab technique I recommend.) The company saw its commercial potential and began the process of having it approved as a food additive.

Through the 1970s, Searle’s animal studies raised serious concerns, including brain tumors in laboratory rats at rates above the control animals. In 1980 the FDA’s own board of inquiry recommended against approval until more cancer testing was done. In 1981 a new FDA commissioner approved it anyway. You may want to read that sentence twice. Searle’s chief executive at the time was Donald Rumsfeld. The story is disputed in some of its details, but its core, that aspartame was approved over the objection of the FDA’s own scientific review, is well documented. Dr. John Olney, the scientist who coined the word “excitotoxin,” was among those who objected publicly.

In the decades since, the FDA has received tens of thousands of adverse-event reports from consumers about aspartame, more than for any other food additive. They describe headaches, seizures, mood changes, visual disturbances and other neurological symptoms. The FDA’s standard response has been that the reports do not establish cause and that the additive remains safe. Tens of thousands of letters, one form reply.

What the newer research shows

Dr. Blaylock’s 2021 report reviews studies linking aspartame to headaches, seizures, memory loss, depression, and damage to the liver, kidneys and immune organs. That is a long rap sheet for a sweetener. Among them:

• Dr. Morando Soffritti’s lifetime rat studies at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy, which found dose-related lymphomas and leukemias.
• A 90-day study that showed liver and kidney damage. Dr. Blaylock notes: “In truth, this study used a dose of aspartame equivalent to two cans of artificially sweetened soda.” Two cans. Not a vat.
• A 2017 analysis of the Framingham Heart Study, which found higher rates of stroke and dementia among adults who drank artificially sweetened drinks daily.

In 2022 the large French NutriNet-Santé study, which followed a big group of adults forward in time, found that people who consumed more artificial sweeteners, aspartame and acesulfame potassium in particular, had a higher overall cancer risk.

And in 2023 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency (IARC) classified aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Not a phrase you want anywhere near your morning coffee.

Stop

The practical work for anyone who has been using aspartame is simple. Stop. The diet soda, the sugar-free yogurt, the no-sugar-added drink mix, the sweetener packets in the coffee: all of these go. Clear the cupboard; no farewell party needed. The body that has been exposed for years will, over time, clear much of what it has been carrying, especially when the exposure stops early.

Splenda, Sugar Alcohols and the Others

Aspartame is not the only artificial sweetener to worry about. It has company, and the company is no better.

Sucralose (Splenda). “Sucralose (Splenda) is a chlorinated form of table sugar,” Dr. Blaylock writes. “Chlorine is a highly reactive substance of great toxicity.” Whatever the friendly marketing suggests, it is not a plant extract and not a natural sugar: it is table sugar with chlorine attached.

Dr. Blaylock reports that:

• Heating sucralose in baking produces chlorinated compounds related to dioxins. Never bake with it. Your birthday cake deserves better.
• It disturbs the gut bacteria. Not a good neighbor.
• Children, because of their small size, reach much higher blood levels.

“Actually,” he adds, “Splenda stimulates the formation and growth of fat cells.” So the sweetener chosen to help lose weight may work against it, which is quite the bait and switch.

A 2023 study from North Carolina State University found that a compound formed when sucralose is digested, sucralose-6-acetate, damaged DNA in laboratory tests and made the gut lining leakier.

Saccharin and acesulfame K belong on the same “avoid” list. Different names, same club. Acesulfame potassium was one of the two sweeteners most clearly linked with cancer risk in the NutriNet-Santé study.

Sugar alcohols. Xylitol and erythritol are made from sugars and are not fully absorbed, which is why they can cause digestive upset. Despite the name, there is no party here, only the occasional rumble.

• Erythritol. In 2023 a study in Nature Medicine linked high blood levels of erythritol to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and found that it made platelets more likely to clot. The research is new, but it is a reason to be cautious with products heavily sweetened with erythritol, and watch for it in stevia blends.
• Xylitol. Dr. Mercola notes that it helps prevent tooth decay. It can upset digestion, and it is deadly to dogs, so keep xylitol gum, mints and baked goods away from pets, however sweetly they beg.

Who Decides What Is Safe?

You may be asking how all of this can still be on the shelves. Fair question. Dr. Blaylock does not trust the regulators to answer it.

“The public needs to appreciate that regulatory agencies are not legitimate scientific institutions — they are political, business-controlled agencies,” he writes. “And once a product is accepted by the FDA, no follow-up studies are required.”

That second point is worth sitting with. A sweetener approved in 1981 does not have to be re-examined as new research comes in. Imagine renewing your driver’s license once in 1981 and never again. The burden falls on independent scientists, and on families, to notice.

The conventional view. I want you to know both sides. The FDA, and the food-safety agencies in Europe, still consider aspartame and sucralose safe within an acceptable daily intake, and the WHO’s food additives committee did not change aspartame’s intake limit when IARC classified it in 2023. Critics answer that those limits were set largely on industry studies, and that a child drinking diet soda can come close to them. As always, know both sides and weigh them for yourself, and let the people you help do the same.

Which Sweeteners to Use

My teachers do not fully agree on sweeteners, and you should know where they differ. You deserve the whole picture, not a sales pitch.

Sweetener	What the sources say
Raw honey	Dr. Mercola calls it the one unprocessed sugar he endorses, in small amounts: no more than a teaspoon a day for those with insulin problems. Never give honey to a baby under one year old, because of the risk of infant botulism.
Stevia	Dr. Mercola calls it his sweetener of choice: no calories and almost no effect on blood sugar. Dr. Blaylock cites one rat study that found effects on cognition. Use the whole leaf or a pure extract, sparingly, and watch for blends with erythritol.
Maple syrup, dates, whole fruit	Traditional, unrefined sweeteners. Still sugar, so use them occasionally.
Xylitol	Dr. Mercola notes it helps prevent tooth decay. It can cause digestive upset, and it is deadly to dogs.
Erythritol	Caution, because of the 2023 study linking it to blood clotting.
Aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, acesulfame K	Avoid. Both teachers agree.
HFCS, agave, “corn syrup,” crystalline fructose	Avoid. Agave is often higher in fructose than HFCS.

Agave surprises people, because it is sold as natural, with a health halo on the label. But it is concentrated fructose, often more concentrated than the corn syrup it was meant to replace. The health-food aisle has its tricksters too.

Traditional peoples did enjoy sweetness, in fruit, honey and maple, but as occasional foods eaten alongside plenty of fat and protein, not as a constant drip through the day. That is the pattern I want for my own family: a little honey in the tea, maple on a special breakfast, fruit in its season, and the rest of the day built on real food.

How to Cut Back

Here is the practical work, gathered into one place. Stick it on the fridge if you like.

• Stop all sodas, regular and diet. The Mercola report calls this one of the most important steps anyone can take. Sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon, or plain water, is the better switch. You keep the fizz and lose the fallout.
• Keep total fructose under about 25 grams a day, as Dr. Mercola recommends, and eat fruit whole rather than as store-bought juice. Chew your fruit; do not drink it.
• Read labels for HFCS, corn syrup, glucose-fructose syrup, crystalline fructose, agave, aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame K. “Natural,” “light,” “sugar-free” and even organic products may contain them, and so may gum, toothpaste, vitamins and children’s medicines. Yes, even the toothpaste. These sweeteners get around.
• Never bake with Splenda. Yes, I am saying it twice.
• Cook at home from fresh, whole ingredients, and eat enough fat and protein at each meal to steady blood sugar and cravings. Your kitchen is the one food factory you get to run. As Dr. Mercola says, “The very best way I know to avoid ingesting any products containing HFCS is to prepare your own meals at home from unprocessed, fresh, organic ingredients.”
• If you take diabetes medication, your blood sugar can fall as you cut sugar. Monitor your blood sugar and tell your doctor about the changes; only your doctor adjusts the medication.

The reduction in total sugar is good in itself. The removal of HFCS and artificial sweeteners in particular is a gift to the liver, the immune system and the brain. Choose life, and choose it at the kitchen counter.

Footnotes and sources for this chapter

Sources and Further Reading

• Mercola, J. “The Dangers of High-Fructose Corn Syrup.” Special report, Mercola.com.
• Mercola, J. Sweet Deception: Why Splenda, NutraSweet, and the FDA May Be Hazardous to Your Health. Thomas Nelson, 2006.
• Blaylock, R. L. “Artificial Sweeteners: The Bad, the Worse, and the Downright Deadly.” The Blaylock Wellness Report, June 2021.
• Price, W. A. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. 1939.
• Lustig, R. Fat Chance. And his lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.”
• Sugar Coated (documentary), featuring Dr. Robert Lustig and Dr. Cristin Kearns.
• Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World (documentary).
• Kearns, C. E., et al. Sugar industry documents on the 1960s heart-disease research, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2016.
• Sanchez, A., et al. “Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 26, no. 11 (1973): 1180–1184.
• Debras, C., et al. “Artificial Sweeteners and Cancer Risk: Results From the NutriNet-Santé Population-Based Cohort Study.” PLOS Medicine 19, no. 3 (2022): e1003950.
• Soffritti, M., et al. Lifetime aspartame studies in rats, Ramazzini Institute, Italy.
• Framingham Heart Study analysis of artificially sweetened drinks, stroke and dementia, 2017.
• International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classification of aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” 2023.
• North Carolina State University study of sucralose-6-acetate, 2023.
• Study of erythritol and cardiovascular risk, Nature Medicine, 2023.
• Mullarkey, B. Bittersweet Aspartame: A Diet Delusion. Health Press, 1992.
• Moss, M. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. Random House, 2013.