The National Institute of Health (NIH) predicted that American life expectancy will decrease by five years if the obesity rates continue to rise (NIH, 16 March 2005). As obesity rates climb, so do incidents of Type-2 diabetes. New York City has implemented blood-sugar tracking programs for diabetic residents (Washington Post, 11 January 2006), and city health officials are beginning a milk program to promote the sale of healthier foods at bodegas in low-income neighborhoods(New York Times, 20 January 2006) all in the interest of controlling the epidemic.

In December, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a coalition of lawyers filed a class action lawsuit against beverage industry giants, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, who peddle their products in public schools(Melanie Warner, The New York Times, 7 December 2005). Marketing foods to children is a $10 billion dollar industry and installing soda machines is an attractive way for administrators to boost lost revenues in the wake of drastic budget cuts in public schools (Susan Douglas, Let Them Eat Crap, 24 January 2006). These profits are made at the expense of the health of school-aged children in the United States.

The response from the industry is twofold. Smaller beverage companies like IZZE Sparkling Juice are offering healthier options. That is, they are providing fruit juice as an alternative to sodas (BusinessWire, 14 February 2006). Denial is the other response. The American Beverage Association, the industry’s lobby, maintains that the soft drinks are not the main or significant contributing factor in rising childhood obesity rates.

Soft drinks and other beverages have a place in a healthy lifestyle. The American Dietetic Association (ADA) counsels that a healthy diet incorporates the basic principles of variety, balance, and moderation. In fact, the ADA coined the phrase "all foods fit" in a healthy diet. An ADA Fact Sheet entitled, "Straight Facts About Beverage Choices," published in the September 2001 edition of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association states that all beverages can have a place in a well-balanced eating pattern and that soft drinks - even caffeinated soft drinks - can contribute to proper hydration. (American Beverage Association, School Partnerships, 2006)

The same report also claims that “While there is no easy answer to the obesity problem, the advice our mothers always gave us is a good place to start – eat a variety of foods in moderation and get at least thirty minutes of physical activity each day to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle.” There is truth to this common-sense idea. However, the industry underemphasizes the harmful effects of certain ingredients included in the product, like High-Fructose Corn-Syrup (HFCS). Shift of blame onto the individual consumers is simply a way for the industry to absolve itself of responsibility.

The beverage and corn industries would have us believe that HFCS is no better and no worse than sugar a.k.a sucrose. However, scientists at the University of Florida found a strong causal link between consumption of fructose and obesity. High-fructose intake is much more efficient in inducing metabolic syndrome and speeding up weight gain.

"There may be more than just the common concept that the reason a person gets fat is because they eat too many calories and they don't do enough exercise," said Richard J. Johnson, MD, the J. Robert Cade professor of nephrology and chief of nephrology, hypertension and transplantation at UF's College of Medicine. "And although genetic predispositions are obviously important, there's some major environmental force driving this process. Our data suggest certain foods and, in particular, fructose, may actually speed the process for a person to become obese." (University of Florida News, 6 December 2005).

Scientists at the University of Cincinnati confirm these findings and assert that fructose adds more body fat than other sweeteners. Experiments showed that mice increased their body fat after consuming fructose-sweetened water even after they had a net decrease in calories consumed in solid food.

This, said author Matthias Tschop, MD, associate professor in UC's psychiatry department and a member of the Obesity Research Center at UC's Genome Research Institute, suggests that consuming fructose appears to affect metabolic rate in a way that favors fat storage. "Our study shows how fat mass increases as a direct consequence of soft drink consumption," said Tschop, whose research appears in Obesity Research. (Dana Kimmon, University of Cincinnati, 29 July 2005).

These are only the latest in the damning evidence accumulating about the nutritional properties of fructose sweeteners. The USDA, led by Meira Fields, conducted an experiment on rats comparing the negative effects of sugar and fructose. The rats consuming fructose had multiple problems with severity that went beyond that of the sugar group. Not only did they develop anemia and high cholesterol, but many had heart hypertrophy. Add to this, retarded testicular development and infertility. And because fructose, unlike sugar, is metabolized in the liver, the mice demonstrated heavy liver damage.

"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic." (Linda Joyce Forristal, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, 3 December 2003)

What else? Nancy Appleton lists sixteen different problems with fructose, including an increase in total serum cholesterol, LDLs, uric acid, and triglycerides. All of these are known contributing factors of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The Maillard reaction, browning of foods, occur seven times faster with fructose than sugar increasing the aging process and toxicity of proteins. As if this weren’t enough, fructose can also cause gastro-intestinal problems, bowel disease, and diarrhea.

Yet, American per capita consumption of fructose has increased significantly since the 1970’s growing from zero to 60 lbs per year. (Jack Challem). Fructose is quickly supplanting sugar as a sweetening agent in soft drinks, baked goods and processed foods because it is cheaper, sweeter, easier to blend into liquids, and has a longer shelf life:

In the 1980s, manufacturing methods improved, prompting a boost in production of high-fructose corn syrup and a drop in price to just pennies below that of refined sugar. "While that may not sound like much to the average consumer, when you consider how many pounds [the soft drink industry buys], it was millions of dollars if not hundreds of millions of dollars in savings," says Drew Davis, NSDA's vice president for federal affairs (Washington Post, 11 March 2003).

HFCS is not just in soft drinks. They are in foods that we may not think as sweet. They are in all kinds of processed foods, meats, condiments, preservatives, etc. It is a $2.6 billion industry, 85-percent of which is controlled by only four companies: Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Staley Manufacturing Co. and CPC International. (Linda Joyce Forristal, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, 3 December 2003) The strong corn lobby not only ensures that the government doles out $37 billion in subsidies between 1995 and 2003, it ensures that byproducts of corn, such as HFCS, remains a healthy industry. (Grist Magazine, 13 December 2004). And, as partially hydrogenated oils from soybeans gradually supplanted corn oils, the place of HFCS became essential to the corn industry.

The Food and Drug Administration, once again, ignores public health concerns in favor of big agri-business. The FDA applies little scrutiny over sucrose and fructose, closely associating the two. Widely used foods, like sugar, was grandfathered in 1938 as “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS) foods. In spite of all of the health risks of fructose, it is also GRAS because it is a component of sucrose (Jack Challem).

Such decisions are only a benefit to what Susan Douglas (Let Them Eat Crap) calls the ‘illness industrial complex,’ a troika comprising the food, health care, and insurance industries. And as Michael Rosenwald (Washington Post, 22 January 2006) points out, there is tons of money to be made on obesity and ‘obesity industries.’ $315 billion, to be specific. Here are some of the numbers the article throws around, provided by William L. Weis and the Mintel Group:

Fast-food restaurants: $133.7 billion

Medical treatments re obesity: $124.7 billion

Diet books: $1.8 billion

Carbonated beverages: $37 billion

Cookies: $3.9 billion

Potato chips: $6.2 billion.

You can fill in your own glib thoughts about priceless values. A healthy liver and a healthy heart? Those are some nice features.