Corn Syrup and Cancer Scare Story

There is always a danger in the media reporting on scientific studies as if they were a new Gospel – which is what they tend to do, with the blessing of the scientists involved, of course – since more publicity means more grant money to do more studies. The problem is that scientific research can’t just be boiled down to a headline or a sound bite that explains it all, without being totally misleading – and one single study does not a new truth make. Such is the case with a study out of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center publicized this week linking high fructose corn syrup to cancer growth.

The sensationalized headlines are all many people will actually read about this study. “Fructose: The Sugar of Choice for Cancer Cells” and “Cancer Cells Slurp Up Fructose, Study Finds” are two of the examples – one from AOL News and one from Reuters. The more medical among the media get a little more detailed, noting that the study involved pancreatic cells in particular – which is an important detail because not all cancer cells are created equal.

You can’t entirely blame the media, since stories tend to come from press releases, which are written to get publicity. If they happen to be about a high profile social issue, like high fructose corn syrup, they tend to get more attention. As part of the press release on the study, author Dr. Anthony Heaney says that because of his research, a federal effort should be launched to reduce refined fructose intake. “I think this paper has a lot of public health implications,” Heaney said. “Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of HFCS in our diets.”

As a voice crying out in the wilderness, the Corn Refiners Association issued its own press release in response to the study to point out some of the premature and potentially misleading conclusions made by both the researchers and the media. One major point they make is that it is a big leap to “extrapolate the results of laboratory research on pure fructose to real-world conditions.”

This study does not look at the way fructose is actually consumed by humans, as it was conducted in a laboratory, not inside the human body. The study also narrowly compared pure fructose to pure glucose, neither of which is consumed in isolation in the human diet. Humans consume a wide array of foods that contain both fructose and glucose in combination along with many other sugars and nutrients. Most notably, both sugar (sucrose) and high fructose corn syrup contain roughly 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose.

It is also significant to note that it is difficult to pinpoint any one cause for any cancer – even smoking, since some people can smoke two packs a day for 50 years and die of old age while some who have never smoked a single cigarette get lung cancer. As the Corn Refiners put it, “To blame one component of the diet is highly speculative based on one, small study done in a Petri dish.”