High-fructose corn syrup -- typically added to baked goods and sweetened drinks – won’t make people fatter faster than other carbohydrates. But consuming products high in fructose, in addition to a standard diet, will pack on the pounds over time.
That’s the key finding of a new analysis of recent studies of the health risks of high-fructose corn syrup, a main ingredient in many common foods and drinks, including soda.
Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto examined 31 studies that compared weight gain in people assigned to eat diets high in fructose or other carbohydrates. The studies, involving more than 600 people, included participants who were normal weight, overweight or obese.

Over an average of four weeks, there was no difference in weight gain between the different dieters who consumed the same amount of calories, the researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine. But people on diets that ate products with high-fructose corn syrpup on top of the normal calories fed to all participants took in more than twice as much sugar as others. They also gained 1.2 pounds more than those in the comparison groups.

The results suggest it may not be the fructose itself that causes weight gain, according to the researchers, but the higher calories that come with products made with it.

“Fructose does not seem to cause weight gain when it is substituted for other carbohydrates in diets providing similar calories,” they wrote. “Free fructose at high doses that provided excess calories modestly increased body weight, an effect that may be due to the extra calories rather than the fructose.”