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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why is high-fructose corn syrup bad (compared to cane sugar)? If it's not bad, why do people think that it's bad?

There's a (likely just-so) hypothesis they teach you in undergrad biochemistry, or at least there was many years ago. The first enzyme in the catabolism of glucose, phosphofructokinase, is thought to be a key regulatory step in the pathway - as downstream products build up, flux through the glycolytic pathway is decreased. Fructose has a parallel catabolic pathway that bypasses this regulatory step and thus keeps churning and is more likely to stimulate de novo lipogenesis in the liver (aka getting fat).

I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in this, or how it interacts with CICO. But I think this hypothesis trickles down in an increasingly garbled form to the public and may be a large part of the hostility towards HFCS.