Elsevier

Nutrition

Volume 30, Issues 7–8, July–August 2014, Pages 928-935
Nutrition

Basic nutritional investigation
Fructose content in popular beverages made with and without high-fructose corn syrup,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2014.04.003Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Abstract

Objective

Excess fructose consumption is hypothesized to be associated with risk for metabolic disease. Actual fructose consumption levels are difficult to estimate because of the unlabeled quantity of fructose in beverages. The aims of this study were threefold: 1) re-examine the fructose content in previously tested beverages using two additional assay methods capable of detecting other sugars, especially maltose, 2) compare data across all methods to determine the actual free fructose-to-glucose ratio in beverages made either with or without high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and 3) expand the analysis to determine fructose content in commonly consumed juice products.

Methods

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and fruit juice drinks that were either made with or without HFCS were analyzed in separate, independent laboratories via three different methods to determine sugar profiles.

Results

For SSBs, the three independent laboratory methods showed consistent and reproducible results. In SSBs made with HFCS, fructose constituted 60.6% ± 2.7% of sugar content. In juices sweetened with HFCS, fructose accounted for 52.1% ± 5.9% of sugar content, although in some juices made from 100% fruit, fructose concentration reached 65.35 g/L accounting for 67% of sugars.

Conclusion

Our results provide evidence of higher than expected amounts of free fructose in some beverages. Popular beverages made with HFCS have a fructose-to-glucose ratio of approximately 60:40, and thus contain 50% more fructose than glucose. Some pure fruit juices have twice as much fructose as glucose. These findings suggest that beverages made with HFCS and some juices have a sugar profile very different than sucrose, in which amounts of fructose and glucose are equivalent. Current dietary analyses may underestimate actual fructose consumption.

Keywords

Fructose
Obesity
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
Soda
Juice
SSB
HFCS
Sucrose

Cited by (0)

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

Portions of this work were supported by The Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award National Institutes of Health (grant no. 2 T32 ES013678-06). All authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study; generation, collection, assembly, analysis, and/or interpretation of data; and drafting or revision of the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.