Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav. doi:10.1016/j.pbb.2010.02.012 (2010)

A widely used sweetener could be one culprit behind Americans' rapidly expanding waistlines.

High-fructose corn syrup has been proposed to account for as much as 7% of the daily caloric intake in the United States — a conservative estimate, say Bartley Hoebel and his team at Princeton University in New Jersey. They report that rats fed high-fructose corn syrup along with their regular chow for eight weeks gained more weight than those that munched on sucrose-supplemented chow, even when they consumed the same total number of calories.

The same was true when the rats were given high-fructose corn syrup over longer periods — up to seven months. This extended diet was also associated with signs of obesity, including increases in fat deposits, particularly around the abdomen, and higher levels of fats called triglycerides in the blood.