Abstract
BackgroundObesity rates in the United States have risen consistently over the last four decades, increasing from about 13% of the population in 1970 to more than 34% in 2009. Dietary fructose has been blamed as a possible contributor to the obesity increase, although the consumption pattern of fructose and other key nutrients during this 40 year period remains a topic of debate. Therefore, we analyzed the USDA Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Database in combination with the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (Release 24) to determine whether fructose consumption in the US has increased sufficiently to be a casual factor in the rise in obesity prevalence.MethodsPer capita loss-adjusted food availability data for 132 individual food items were compiled and analyzed. Nutrient profiles for each of these foods were used to determine the availability of energy as well as macronutrients and monosaccharides during the years 1970-2009. The percent change in energy from food groups and individual nutrients was determined by using the year 1970 as the baseline and area-under-the-curve analysis of food trends.ResultsOur findings indicate that during this 40 year period the percent change in total energy availability increased 10.7%, but that the net change in total fructose availability was 0%. Energy available from total glucose (from all digestible food sources) increased 13.0%. Furthermore, glucose availability was more than 3-times greater than fructose. Energy available from protein, carbohydrate and fat increased 4.7%, 9.8% and 14.6%, respectively.ConclusionsThese data suggest that total fructose availability in the US did not increase between 1970 and 2009 and, thus, was unlikely to have been a unique causal factor in the increased obesity prevalence. We conclude that increased total energy intake, due to increased availability of foods providing glucose (primarily as starch in grains) and fat, to be a significant contributor to increased obesity in the US.
Highlights
Obesity rates in the United States have risen consistently over the last four decades, increasing from about 13% of the population in 1970 to more than 34% in 2009
In order to integrate the Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFIDS) data with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, the proportion of each monosaccharide or disaccharide of total sugar as calculated from CoFIDS was applied to the total sugar content of each food as provided by the USDA database rather than directly applying the monosaccharide masses obtained from CoFIDS
The net energy accumulation of glucose and total carbohydrate are essentially the same because of the trivial change in fructose accumulation (-0.7 kcal/d) and galactose accumulation (0.6 kcal/d; galactose data not shown in table)
Summary
Obesity rates in the United States have risen consistently over the last four decades, increasing from about 13% of the population in 1970 to more than 34% in 2009. We analyzed the USDA Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Database in combination with the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (Release 24) to determine whether fructose consumption in the US has increased sufficiently to be a casual factor in the rise in obesity prevalence. The unique metabolic handling of fructose compared to glucose has been highlighted, leading to increased suspicion of a contributory and possibly even causal role for fructose in the US obesity epidemic [2,3]. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contributes significantly to total fructose consumption and, has inherited a reputation as a causal factor of obesity as well [3,4]. It is often stated that total fructose consumption has greatly increased since 1970, when in reality it is HFCS usage that has greatly increased, while fructose usage per se has stayed relatively stable with only small changes
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