Scientists at the University of Utah have found that high-fructose corn syrup is nearly twice as deadly to female mice as regular table sugar.
James Ruff is the study’s first author and a postdoctoral fellow in biology at the U. He says plenty of other studies show added sugar in general is bad for your health.
“The first step is decreasing consumption across the board.”
Ruff says University biology professor Wayne Potts developed a way to study common house mice in a natural basement-like environment.
“And what we were able to see here is that the animals on the model high-fructose corn syrup diet,” Ruff says, “actually the females had twice the mortality rate as the females who were on sucrose and they also had fewer offspring than those who were on sucrose.”
Ruff says the mortality rate of the male mice they studied was indistinguishable between sugars but they are not sure why. He says now that they’ve found these differences in reaction to various sugars, the next step is to find the causes. The study is scheduled for publication in the March issue of The Journal of Nutrition.
