Laura Beil at Science News begins her helpful survey of fructose research with an interesting historical footnote. She reports that two chemists found an enzyme that could turn glucose from cornstarch into fructose, which is sweeter. What's interesting is that the discovery was published in Science in 1957, Beil reports, and largely ignored. It was not until the 1970s that Japanese researchers learned how to use the finding to produce fructose on an industrial scale. And it was not until 2004, she writes, that consumers began to be concerned.
Beil does a nice job of looking over the research on whether fructose might be, as critics, claim, particularly harmful to health–worse than sugar, or sucrose, produced from sugar cane. As I read the story, it seems to say that there is evidence of harm from fructose, because of how it affects the liver, but it's unclear, according to her reporting, whether or not the switch to fructose by food and soft-drink makers is responsible, or even partially responsible, for the U.S. obesity epidemic.
But while the reporting is solid, the editing is a bit off-kilter. The headline, "Sweet Confusion," reflects the findings in the story. But the subhed–"Does high-fructose corn syrup deserve such a bad rap?"–implies that fructose does not deserve a bad rap. So does the last graf, a quote from a researcher: "If you replaced all of the high-fructose corn syrup with cane sugar, would we be better off? No. We would be in the same place." That likewise leaves readers with the idea that fructose does not deserve its bad rap. But the reporting in the story suggests otherwise. The story should not have ended with that quote, which does not capture the sweet confusion in the story.
And I'm puzzled by the cover, which says, "Cane's Comeback: How high-fructose corn syrup is losing the sweetener war."
Is this the headline for a different story? Beil's story says nothing about the comeback of cane; it's a story about fructose, and cane is mentioned only three times in passing. I looked at the table of contents to see whether Beil's story was a sidebar to a main story on the business of sugar cane, but I couldn't find anything. Curious.
Beil has done a good job, but her editors do not seem to have served her well.
-Paul Raeburn
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