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Too much fructose can damage your liver, just like too much alcohol

289 points by arikr 9y ago

cies 9y ago
Without saying how much is too much :) I wanted to know because it is probably really hard to reach without processing the sugar. IIRC dates are most fructose dense food we can find in nature. How many dates would be enough to damage my liver? It would probably be hard to hurt your liver with alsohol as well, if you limit yourself to unprocessed alcohol (i.e.: by eating off fruits).
- teach 9y ago
  I suspect there's no good answer to that question. People vary widely. Some people drink lots of alcohol for years with relatively unscathed livers and others get cirrhosis pretty quickly. But your instinct is right that fructose that's bound up in real fruit isn't typically the problem. It's unbound fructose like you find in agave nectar or HFCS.
  - SigmundA 9y ago
    Why is real fruit not a problem but HFCS is? Dates sugar content is mostly sucrose which is broken down in the small intestine very rapidly into 50/50 glucose/fructose while HFCS is typically 45/55 glucose/fructose. Once one sucrose is metabolized by sucrase it hits the bloodstream as glucose and fructose no different than HFSC. Doesn't only matter in the end how much fructose you consume regardless of whether enters your body bound as sucrose or not as HFCS? Can you point to some more information are the differences?
    - teach 9y ago
      That's why I said "unbound" fructose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose with a chemical bond between. HFCS is a slurry; there's no chemical bond connecting the two. "Broken down in the small intestine very rapidly into 50/50..." ignores the fact that it takes a while to make it down as far as the small intestine. I can't speak more to the differences personally because I'm not the one with the PhD and I'm not going to interrupt my wife from grading papers just to correct some rando on the Internet. :)
      - SigmundA 9y ago
        Both sucrose and HFSC must make it to the small intestine to be metabolized, the only difference is the chemical bond is broken by sucrase in the intestinal wall. Both are metabolized quickly and into the same components in the bloodstream. I am still not seeing the difference? edit Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "unbound" I thought you where referring to the chemical bond in sucrose, vs being bound up physically with fiber in fruit.
    - tylererer 9y ago
      Industrial sugar contains no fiber vs. the fiber in many fruits complementing the fructose and ameliorating potentially harmful effects meanwhile slowing digestion [1]. My guess is this leads to a more sustained energy boost and relatively mild to nonexistent crash depending on how well your body reacts to carbohydrates. One may need to be somewhat more moderate with dates as they contain little fiber to sugar content - hinting at the importance of varying your fruit diet. [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-about-fruit/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-abo...
      - SigmundA 9y ago
        So based on that it looks like nothing to do with sucrose vs HFSC, only that the berries have some other properties like binding the sugar up in fiber that slow down metabolism. It would seem if you bound HFSC up with fiber it would have the same effect.
    - DiThi 9y ago
      > Why is real fruit not a problem but HFCS is? Fruit has loads of fiber, although less than what our ancestors gathered, and in less quantity. Fiber is what produces satiety. For the same reason fruit juice is not good for you.
      - SigmundA 9y ago
        Again seems like that has nothing to do with HFSC or sucrose, only whats its mixed with.
    - Gibbon1 9y ago
      > Why is real fruit not a problem but HFCS Two things, people just don't eat that much fruit, usually. And whole fruits/vegetables when eaten release glucose and fructose slowly as the digestive enzymes slowly break it down. I think the idea is not to force your body to deal with a big slug of glucose and fructose all at once.
- arikr 9y ago
  I've read Lustig's book, and my recollection is that he says that more than 10% of your daily calories from (all, both added sugar and naturally included sugar, if I remember correctly) sugar is too much. So if you're eating 2000 calories/day, then 200 calories from sugar, which means 200/4 = 50 grams total (including added sugar). Separately, on the sugar science website they say: > our scientific team recommends keeping all added sugars below the recommended limits of 6 teaspoons/day (25g) for women and 9 teaspoons (38g) for men. http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-faq.html http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-faq.html
  - runeks 9y ago
    So one orange, a large apple and a banana per day will hurt my liver (totaling 63 grams of sugar[1])? Where is the scientific evidence supporting this? [1] http://www.sugarstacks.com/fruits.htm http://www.sugarstacks.com/fruits.htm
    - kieranmaine 9y ago
      I just watched a documentary where Lustig said sugar in fruit is fine because the fibre in the fruit means you absorb the sugar over a period of time, meaning the liver doesn't get one big hit.
      - siquick 9y ago
        No citation available, but I see far more people drinking fruit juice than I do eating fruit with the skin/fibre still intact.
        buttcoinslol 9y ago
        Roughly 25 years ago when I was a kid, I remember drinking orange juice out of small 4" glasses with oranges on the side at diners and in homes. These glasses hold about 6 oz of juice, which is about 85 calories. These glasses have been replaced by much larger ones. These days a 'small' juice is 12-16 oz, or 150-200 calories, which is just as bad as pop. Portion sizes are growing with the collective waistline of America.
- gopalv 9y ago
  > Without saying how much is too much Body weight, metabolism and exercise have to be big variables. The scary part is how much sugar sneaks into your daily diet without noticing - I kept count of the sugar grams per day for a workday and I had about 98 gms of sugar & that's where it got labelled (unlike a tomato sauce pasta). Anyway, all it taught me is that even if exercised like a madman, I won't lose the "moved to US" weight gain without minor diet changes - but what surprised me was that my diet was a good one in the meals, it is just the middle-of-meals grabbing of things that pushed that number up (like a yogurt). > How many dates would be enough to damage my liver? I was told that there's two ways to drink twelve glasses of alcohol a month - one's to hit six for two weekends and the other is to drink a glass on Fri, Sat and Sun. And then said "it's like three pats on the back a week or two punches a month". Bodies heal and repair damage - and at a varying rate as you age.
teach 9y ago
Just wanna say that my wife has a PhD in nutrition and this isn't news to us. We've "known" that unbound fructose is hard on the liver for years.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago
  What isn't hard on your liver these days? Most drugs undergo metabolism and activation through the CYP450 system. Meaning that those drugs which clear hepatically are most likely hard on your liver in the long run.
  - Sevrene 9y ago
    Moderation is the important thing here. It's easier to avoid consuming drugs every day compared to eating a high fructose diet.
    - coderdude 9y ago
      Depends on who you're using as an example. If you're consuming too much alcohol or other, obvious well-known substances that cause liver damage it might be easier to eat healthy than it would be to not consume. (From a mental/logical standpoint.) Point is, the onslaught on the liver is coming from all angles. Actual kids are being hurt unknowingly in a similar way that "college kids" are being knowingly hurt. Moderation shmoderation. Choice isn't always a factor for those affected.
  - nate_meurer 9y ago
    Just because a CYP is involved, doesn't mean the target substance is hard on your liver in any way. Liver toxicity is highly non-linear with dosage, and damage typically starts abruptly when substrates are depleted. The classic example is paracetamol, which is quite safe at reasonable dosages (and without alcohol) where the liver is well within its limits, but causes damage rapidly at higher dosages when you run out of glutathione.
    - Godel_unicode 9y ago
erikb 9y ago
It is really, really surprising that this is discovered so lately. We should be knowing this for 30 or so years. I have a strong guess that this article is overpresenting how new this is. Otherwise something really weird is going on.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  It was either this or having a large part of humanity living without western comforts. Fructose is cheap to get and produce. In addition a fat liver sounds more curable in a thirld-world-country then diabetes. So the worser of two it is.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  > It is really, really surprising that this is discovered so lately. We should be knowing this for 30 or so years. I have a strong guess that this article is overpresenting how new this is. Otherwise something really weird is going on. 1) You're right, it's not that new. I'm pretty sure I've read it at least once before on _HN_ itself. 2) Nutritional science is a mess not because something weird is going on but because it's really, really hard. It's difficult enough to study the short and long term effects of substances on the body when you're taking about a drug but when you're trying to do it for something like food. Food is intimately tied to culture, habit, social settings, and mood, which makes it hard to fully regiment what your test subjects are taking. Nutrients also both appear and are metabolized in extremely complex arrangements that we still don't fully understand (even something as basic as calorie counts use a pretty ridiculous, roundabout measurement technique), which makes it hard to accurately track. It also is something that everyone has to do all the time, so (unlike drugs), we have to go with "best current understanding" recommendations, which create their own political and reputational effects on scientific study when they're contradicted. We just this year upended decades of public health consensus on the effects of low sodium on blood pressure. This isn't "something weird" going on, it's par for the course for the field.
  - erikb 9y ago
    Okay, thinking about your arguments I have to agree. This is not about nutritional advise but about nutritional science. In the pure science department having a good enough result to statistically trust it is rare and may happen even two or three generations until it is common believe already. It is actually good that they ignore common believe in favor of reliable data. Someone must.
guessmyname 9y ago
Too much of everything is always bad.
- amasad 9y ago
  >Too much of everything is always bad. That's folk-wisdom, which is sort of a good heuristic but is not useful when we can actually test and demonstrate. Some things are bad even in small quantities, say poison. Somethings we can't get enough of, say fresh air. I've mostly cut out fructose (and most other forms of sugar) altogether from my diet and it's probably the single-most impactful change that I've made in my lifestyle on my well being.
  - guessmyname 9y ago
    > Somethings we can't get enough of, say fresh air. Well, if you get too much air, the pressure will probably kill you, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - pygy_ 9y ago
      Even at ~atmospheric pressure, it depends on where you put it.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
      I would have gone with hyperventilation, though there's a cutoff there
  - atomical 9y ago
    So you don't eat fruit?
- imron 9y ago
  The problem is when too much of something enters the food chain because manufacturers find it cheap (see for example, high fructose corn syrup).
- corysama 9y ago
  That's a truism. Which makes it thoroughly uninteresting. What is interesting is: How much is too much? And, How much are you currently consuming?
stretchwithme 9y ago
Is it possible to buy processed foods that have no fructose. Certainly, fructose is sweeter and that's why it's used so much. But would be great to avoid it altogether. I know you can bake with dextrose. I wish I'd taken chemistry. I see a lot of conflicting statements about isomers of glucose.
- ovao 9y ago
  There are – or should be - many foods that may meet the definition of "processed food" and contain no fructose. I can't name or confirm specific brands, but unsweetened bran flakes would be one such example. Some varieties of crackers would (or should) also contain no fructose. There are of course many more processed foods that don't contain added sugars, and therefore would contain no added fructose. At least some of these could be considered relatively harmless in moderation. I'm not a doctor, a dietician, nor am I a nutritionist, so take the following with the largest grain of salt you wish, but a diet entirely devoid of fructose doesn't seem like it would be particularly useful compared to a diet with moderate fructose intake, in the general case. On the other hand, I'm unsure whether avoiding it entirely would be particularly harmful, if you were so inclined (but again, I'll point out that I'm not a doctor and this is not to be taken as medical advice.)
- goda90 9y ago
  It frustrates me when I look at things so far from "dessert" like a can of chili, and find corn syrup or even sugar in the ingredients. Most great homemade recipes don't use that sugar, so why should the store bought stuff?
  - edejong 9y ago
    Because you (as a generic customer) will come back to buy more. Customers by now should be aware of significant deviations to the expected ingredients of common, well-known recipes.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    The simple answer is that sugar is a flavor enhancer, as is salt, which is why the level of both is generally very high in processed foods and pre-packaged meals. Take chicken, for instance. A lot of chicken you buy is pumped full of sugar/salt-heavy brine, because water is cheaper than chicken. The salt helps the chicken bind the water, and the sugar balances out the taste. The end result is overpriced and compromised taste-wise. Personally, I try to avoid added sugar wherever I can, and I have started thinking of sugar as a spice to be used very sparingly, if at all. The only exception is when I bake a cake, because cakes that aren't made full-butter, full-sugar full-everything are just sad. Make good cakes, just eat smaller portions of them, less often.
stretchwithme 9y ago
I hear as bananas ripen, the sucrose breaks down and more fructose is available. That's why they get sweeter. So healthier not to wait too long.
- jlg23 9y ago
  It's been a long time I did biology in high school, but a quick fact checking on WP suggests I'm not too far off: This is true for most/all(?) fruit and yet untrue for humans because sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose by the body anyway.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
will_brown 9y ago
>Scientific evidence on fructose and the liver is relatively new People have been force feeding animals to fatten them up (gavage) for about 5,000 years, but specifically feeding them sugars/grains for the purpose of fattening their liver. Ever hear of the French delicacy Foie Gras(1)? It literally means fat liver, and after 5,000 years of perfecting fattening liver what do we force feed the animals? Corn! The same fructose we highly concentrate and load into foods and drinks and feed to kids...which goes hand in hand, per the article, with why kids weren’t diagnosed with fatty liver disease pre 1980’s and now 13% of US children have it. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras
- mrob 9y ago
  High fructose corn syrup is made by processing regular corn syrup (mostly glucose) with enzymes to convert some of the glucose to fructose, making it sweeter. Corn is not naturally high in fructose.
  - canttestthis 9y ago
    Is there a term for scientific claims made in this way? I saw something similar on reddit the other day where a commenter was trying to prove that a certain chemical was not harmful. It went something like "The reason we think this chemical is harmful is because of this study from the 60s which was done in 17 countries. But one country was excluded from the study because of inconclusive results. Which one? The US! The country that we care the most about, and there weren't solid results here!"
    - NTripleOne 9y ago
      I don't know if it has a term of not, but it sounds like the pretty fuckin' opposite of science to me - adjusting the results to fit your wanted view instead of adjusting your view to fit the results.
      - zero_iq 9y ago
0xbear 9y ago
Fun fact for HFCS bashers: it’s nearly the same blend of sugars as honey. If you think HFCS is bad (and I believe it is), honey can’t be good.
- DiThi 9y ago
  Honey has micronutrients HFCS doesn't have. But by far the biggest difference is price. You won't overeat honey simply because you won't want to pay 21 times more. And for a taste that is not a direct replacement of sugar and may not combine well with everything.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    The amount of micronutrients in honey is inconsequential, it is measured in single digit milligrams per hundred grams. It consists primarily of sugars and water, and the main component is fructose.
- andreasgonewild 9y ago
  Yes, and rape seed oil has the about the same combination of fatty acids as olive oil; which is healthy; but it's still poisonous gmo crap. Same goes for HFCS. The amount of genetic manipulation, processing and refining matters.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    [Citations needed] Very much so, in fact. Otherwise your post is simply unfounded paranoia. Specifically, prove your assertion that rapeseed oil is "poisonous GMO crap".
    - andreasgonewild 9y ago
      Google not working for you? I picked this at random, you'll have to use your own brain if you want to know more: https://draxe.com/canola-oil-gm/ https://draxe.com/canola-oil-gm/ "Canola oil is a Canadian invention that’s backed by Canada’s government, cheap to manufacture, and many packaged or processed foods contain it. Canola oil was first created in the early 1970s as a natural oil, but in 1995, Monsanto created a genetically modified version of canola oil. As of 2005, 87 percent of canola grown in the U.S. was genetically modified, and by 2009, 90 percent of the Canadian crop was genetically engineered."
eighthnate 9y ago
Doesn't too much of anything damage your body?
stefantalpalaru 9y ago
Sounds like Lustig's holy war on fructose again. Show me on an animal model how fructose is linked to hepatosteatosis and we'll start from there. Until then, I'm just going to remember how Lustig's main argument for fructose being a toxin was that it's metabolised in the liver.
acidburnNSA 9y ago
The main title in the article ("The Toxic Truth") is a tribute to UCSF's famous Dr. Lustig of the lecture "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" [1], which is a fascinating and well worthwhile lecture about the biochemistry of fructose as it relates to obesity. I thought I'd just watch a few minutes of it and ended up sitting through it and learning a whole lot. He also wrote a book on the topic("Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease")[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/
- smohare 9y ago
  Lustig has always stuck me as a bit alarmist. Another red flag are his attempts to capitalize on his increase in popularity. That being said, he does seem sincere and not attempting to spread disinformation as such. A somewhat old, but measured take on some of Lustig’s claims: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/is-sugar-rea...
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Here's another serious and level-headed look at Dr. Lustig's claims. He's an alarmist, and we don't need those. http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/ http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
Given the US uses HFCS a lot, whereas many other countries use other sugar, it would be interesting to compare liver disease rates since the 1980s in the US vs non-HFCS countries.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  HFCS has roughly the same fructose:glucose ratio as table sugar, honey and other sugars that are claimed to be less unhealthy. HFCS alarmism is just that: Alarmism. The problem is not the composition of HFCS, it's that we in the western world are adding a hell of a lot more sugar to everything compared to 40-50 years ago.
  - nikolay 9y ago
    But some claim that during the conversion of corn glucose to HFCS, a lot of contaminants end up in it, and explain some of its ill-effects to that.
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      Oddly enough, they don't seem able to actually back up those claims.
      - nikolay 9y ago
        Then keep on consuming HFCS. I quickly googled for the lazy you and it's not too hard to find stuff on the subject like [0]. I am personally staying away from all sugars except those naturally found in fruits and honey. [0]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01...
        KozmoNau7 9y ago
        That's production faults, not inherent to HFCS. I try to stay away from added sugars too, but there is no reason to demonize HFCS specifically.
itchyouch 9y ago
>That excess fructose is broken down by the liver and transformed into fat globules (triglycerides) I believe this is not "that" accurate. Generally the presence of excess carbohydrates cause the body to prioritize sucrose/fructose/glucose to glycogen conversion and storage & usage. Dietary Lipids that are ingested are stored rather than used for energy. While, De novo lipogenesis (turning carbs to lipids) does occur, it is inefficient enough that the body barely converts something around 1% of carbs to fat. Since glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles, and insulin signals the muscles & liver to take up the glycogen in the blood, this is probably where diabetes starts when the liver and muscles are already filled with enough glycogen and there is no where for the glycogen in the bloodstream to go. If the body could efficiently convert sugars to lipids, I don't think diabetes would be that much of an issue. People would just get obese with the diabetes. AFAIK, the priorities for energy consumption of the body is: 1. sugars into glycogen into ATP 2. protein into glucose into glycogen (gluconeogenesis) into ATP (some limited amount) 3. lipids into ketone bodies into ATP So as long as the body was sugars to use up, that is the priority of usage. One of the most calorically intensive tasks the body does is growth and repair of new tissue. Excess sugars are generally used up by kids who are growing. However, once people reach adulthood, the growth rate slows so significantly that the excess caloric intake forces all the lipids ingested to be stored.
- dl904 9y ago
  Something that has been popularized in certain countries is the notion that there is a huge difference between different kinds of sugars, and that especially fructose is harmful to people. I wonder if there is any truth to that.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    What I understand is the core structure of glucose and fructose differ enough that the metabolic pathways are different. And also while fructose tastes sweet it isn't under homeostatic control like glucose is. So I think it's important health-wise to distinguish the two. There are other sugars that either differ only slightly from glucose or are dimer, etc. AKA lactose is a disaccharide sugar composed of galactose and glucose. Compare with sucrose which is disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose.
lunarcave 9y ago
For anyone interested in this subject - and how sugars and carbs can _potentially_ harm your overall emotional and physical well-being and lead to obesity - I'd recommend "Why we get fat" by Gary Taubes. It has a surprisingly healthy dose of scientific studies condensed for the layman, and some historical context as well.
- asveikau 9y ago
  > sugars and carbs I feel like carbs are unfairly vilified by a lot of people, to the point of resembling fad diets. Anecdote: I eat very carb-heavy. I also lost 35 lbs in the last couple of months. I didn't do it by cutting carbs. Sugar I buy into vilifying a bit more... Since it's particularly evil how much sugar gets added to everyday items these days, in the "high fructose corn syrup" era which is probably responsible for a lot of the current obesity problems. But I've come to see even a "no sugar" backlash as a little unfair. My daughter loves sweet desserts, as kids do, and we often cave and give her what she wants. But I've been finding on my current weight loss kick that I can eat a lot of it with her and still lose weight every week. For me, being mindful of portion sizes and thinking about calories holistically has done a lot better than demonizing certain foods.
swendoog 9y ago
Why is it that I can eat tons of sugar, including HFCS soda, and not gain any fat?
- nikolay 9y ago
  Depends on your age, metabolism, and lifestyle. By the way, just because you cannot see it, it doesn't mean that irreversible damage isn't being done on your pancreas beta cells. There's a diabetes epidemic among thin Asians.
- Mz 9y ago
  I don't know the answer to your question about you in specific, but I have a genetic disorder that predisposes people to being super thin. One element of it is that fats are misprocessed. I have made some headway on dealing with it. But, I mean, I wouldn't know where to begin to explain it and I have no idea how it relates to your experience. So, I mean, I don't know what pieces to even talk about. If I know someone has, for example, diabetes, I can come up with pertinent things to say, even though that isn't my condition. There is a lot of info out there these days. You may be able to eventually hack this and find a means to put on weight.
nnq 9y ago
This is know scientifically for ~10 years now (in a sense that there are some studies, and the biochemistry of mechanisms is know, but the statistical power of the studies might be low... can''t remember, left the biomedical field years ago), and anecdotally since like for ever (google "making fois gras"). Also, for cats and dogs, other sugar (xylitol if I member well) can destroy their livers pretty fast. Fortunately, we come from sugar-happy monkeys (that used to eat lots of rottenfruit), so we can safely enjoy our booze in moderation :) And for extra self-destructive power, mix fructose and fats: your liver will be too overloaded processing the fructose (that btw, also gets transformed to extra fat and collesterol if its other metabolizing pathways get saturated) to be able to handle the fats correctly, so "bad collesterol" will accumulate in you blood, and then clog your arteries (yeah, it needs some extra help from inflamation). But, oh, wait, there's a name for that: donuts! ...or virtually every other fatty sweet stuff. Oh, and for extra-extra-damage the fats should be fried (for reason I don't have time to detail). And there's a name for that too: KFC + dessert! Now go enjoy your deserts! Or the fois gras you had before it ;) EDIT+: video explaining some (older) science behind it, form UCTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
- misja111 9y ago
  Plus, when you eat sugar your body produces insulin, which instructs your body to stop burning fat and store it straight into your fat cells.
  - s4vi0r 9y ago
    That's not true at all... What would possibly make you think that?
    - alex_hitchins 9y ago
      I can't point to anything specific, however I was under this impression from listening to a few Keto diet enthusiasts.
    - nnq 9y ago
      First search shows: http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/pancreas/insulin_phys.html http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/panc... > Insulin promotes synthesis of fatty acids in the liver > Insulin inhibits breakdown of fat in adipose tissue ...but don't take that to mean "insulin is what gets you fat". It does not... or not as in it being a bad thing. It's more like "insulin just tells your body to process away that damn extra sugar"... and your body does whatever it can with it, like converting it into stored fat. It would be much worse if it didn't! You'd have diabetes then, and that sugar standing unprocessed in you blood would do tons of damage to your body! Making you a bit fatter is kind of the best thing your body can do with the extra sugar that got dumped into your blood...
enraged_camel 9y ago
It's almost as if too much of any one thing is bad for you. It's interesting that science is just figuring this out. And I say this as someone who has doctor parents.
manigandham 9y ago
Based on how much conflicting studies, stories, evidence, research and anecdotes out there, it seems nutrition is the one thing that really just boils down to self-experimentation, moderation, and common sense.
jlebrech 9y ago
going to bed with left over sugar is bad for you. but for regular exercise sugar is good too (slower carbs are better) It's all about balance, possibly everyone should have a blood glucose meter and burn off that excess glucose every night.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nikolay 9y ago
Fructose has always been known to be metabolized just like alcohol, so, here's the news? The only type of fructose that's tolerable, in my view, is in moderate consumption of whole fruits (not juice or other processed versions), and unadulterated honey - still in moderation. When I see people eating huge amounts of fruits, I start feeling sorry about their pancreas and liver!
- kwoff 9y ago
  Why "unadulterated honey"?
  - nikolay 9y ago
    Supermarket-quality honey is pasteurized and has added sugar, i.e., it has almost no benefits, but gives you all the negatives of glucose and fructose.

289 points by arikr 9y ago

cies 9y ago

Without saying how much is too much :) I wanted to know because it is probably really hard to reach without processing the sugar. IIRC dates are most fructose dense food we can find in nature. How many dates would be enough to damage my liver? It would probably be hard to hurt your liver with alsohol as well, if you limit yourself to unprocessed alcohol (i.e.: by eating off fruits).

teach 9y ago
I suspect there's no good answer to that question. People vary widely. Some people drink lots of alcohol for years with relatively unscathed livers and others get cirrhosis pretty quickly. But your instinct is right that fructose that's bound up in real fruit isn't typically the problem. It's unbound fructose like you find in agave nectar or HFCS.
- SigmundA 9y ago
  Why is real fruit not a problem but HFCS is? Dates sugar content is mostly sucrose which is broken down in the small intestine very rapidly into 50/50 glucose/fructose while HFCS is typically 45/55 glucose/fructose. Once one sucrose is metabolized by sucrase it hits the bloodstream as glucose and fructose no different than HFSC. Doesn't only matter in the end how much fructose you consume regardless of whether enters your body bound as sucrose or not as HFCS? Can you point to some more information are the differences?
  - teach 9y ago
    That's why I said "unbound" fructose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose with a chemical bond between. HFCS is a slurry; there's no chemical bond connecting the two. "Broken down in the small intestine very rapidly into 50/50..." ignores the fact that it takes a while to make it down as far as the small intestine. I can't speak more to the differences personally because I'm not the one with the PhD and I'm not going to interrupt my wife from grading papers just to correct some rando on the Internet. :)
    - SigmundA 9y ago
      Both sucrose and HFSC must make it to the small intestine to be metabolized, the only difference is the chemical bond is broken by sucrase in the intestinal wall. Both are metabolized quickly and into the same components in the bloodstream. I am still not seeing the difference? edit Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "unbound" I thought you where referring to the chemical bond in sucrose, vs being bound up physically with fiber in fruit.
  - tylererer 9y ago
    Industrial sugar contains no fiber vs. the fiber in many fruits complementing the fructose and ameliorating potentially harmful effects meanwhile slowing digestion [1]. My guess is this leads to a more sustained energy boost and relatively mild to nonexistent crash depending on how well your body reacts to carbohydrates. One may need to be somewhat more moderate with dates as they contain little fiber to sugar content - hinting at the importance of varying your fruit diet. [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-about-fruit/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-abo...
    - SigmundA 9y ago
      So based on that it looks like nothing to do with sucrose vs HFSC, only that the berries have some other properties like binding the sugar up in fiber that slow down metabolism. It would seem if you bound HFSC up with fiber it would have the same effect.
  - DiThi 9y ago
    > Why is real fruit not a problem but HFCS is? Fruit has loads of fiber, although less than what our ancestors gathered, and in less quantity. Fiber is what produces satiety. For the same reason fruit juice is not good for you.
    - SigmundA 9y ago
      Again seems like that has nothing to do with HFSC or sucrose, only whats its mixed with.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    > Why is real fruit not a problem but HFCS Two things, people just don't eat that much fruit, usually. And whole fruits/vegetables when eaten release glucose and fructose slowly as the digestive enzymes slowly break it down. I think the idea is not to force your body to deal with a big slug of glucose and fructose all at once.
arikr 9y ago
I've read Lustig's book, and my recollection is that he says that more than 10% of your daily calories from (all, both added sugar and naturally included sugar, if I remember correctly) sugar is too much. So if you're eating 2000 calories/day, then 200 calories from sugar, which means 200/4 = 50 grams total (including added sugar). Separately, on the sugar science website they say: > our scientific team recommends keeping all added sugars below the recommended limits of 6 teaspoons/day (25g) for women and 9 teaspoons (38g) for men. http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-faq.html http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-faq.html
- runeks 9y ago
  So one orange, a large apple and a banana per day will hurt my liver (totaling 63 grams of sugar[1])? Where is the scientific evidence supporting this? [1] http://www.sugarstacks.com/fruits.htm http://www.sugarstacks.com/fruits.htm
  - kieranmaine 9y ago
    I just watched a documentary where Lustig said sugar in fruit is fine because the fibre in the fruit means you absorb the sugar over a period of time, meaning the liver doesn't get one big hit.
    - siquick 9y ago
      No citation available, but I see far more people drinking fruit juice than I do eating fruit with the skin/fibre still intact.
      - buttcoinslol 9y ago
        Roughly 25 years ago when I was a kid, I remember drinking orange juice out of small 4" glasses with oranges on the side at diners and in homes. These glasses hold about 6 oz of juice, which is about 85 calories. These glasses have been replaced by much larger ones. These days a 'small' juice is 12-16 oz, or 150-200 calories, which is just as bad as pop. Portion sizes are growing with the collective waistline of America.
gopalv 9y ago
> Without saying how much is too much Body weight, metabolism and exercise have to be big variables. The scary part is how much sugar sneaks into your daily diet without noticing - I kept count of the sugar grams per day for a workday and I had about 98 gms of sugar & that's where it got labelled (unlike a tomato sauce pasta). Anyway, all it taught me is that even if exercised like a madman, I won't lose the "moved to US" weight gain without minor diet changes - but what surprised me was that my diet was a good one in the meals, it is just the middle-of-meals grabbing of things that pushed that number up (like a yogurt). > How many dates would be enough to damage my liver? I was told that there's two ways to drink twelve glasses of alcohol a month - one's to hit six for two weekends and the other is to drink a glass on Fri, Sat and Sun. And then said "it's like three pats on the back a week or two punches a month". Bodies heal and repair damage - and at a varying rate as you age.

teach 9y ago

Just wanna say that my wife has a PhD in nutrition and this isn't news to us. We've "known" that unbound fructose is hard on the liver for years.

ShabbosGoy 9y ago
What isn't hard on your liver these days? Most drugs undergo metabolism and activation through the CYP450 system. Meaning that those drugs which clear hepatically are most likely hard on your liver in the long run.
- Sevrene 9y ago
  Moderation is the important thing here. It's easier to avoid consuming drugs every day compared to eating a high fructose diet.
  - coderdude 9y ago
    Depends on who you're using as an example. If you're consuming too much alcohol or other, obvious well-known substances that cause liver damage it might be easier to eat healthy than it would be to not consume. (From a mental/logical standpoint.) Point is, the onslaught on the liver is coming from all angles. Actual kids are being hurt unknowingly in a similar way that "college kids" are being knowingly hurt. Moderation shmoderation. Choice isn't always a factor for those affected.
- nate_meurer 9y ago
  Just because a CYP is involved, doesn't mean the target substance is hard on your liver in any way. Liver toxicity is highly non-linear with dosage, and damage typically starts abruptly when substrates are depleted. The classic example is paracetamol, which is quite safe at reasonable dosages (and without alcohol) where the liver is well within its limits, but causes damage rapidly at higher dosages when you run out of glutathione.
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago

erikb 9y ago

It is really, really surprising that this is discovered so lately. We should be knowing this for 30 or so years. I have a strong guess that this article is overpresenting how new this is. Otherwise something really weird is going on.

Pica_soO 9y ago
It was either this or having a large part of humanity living without western comforts. Fructose is cheap to get and produce. In addition a fat liver sounds more curable in a thirld-world-country then diabetes. So the worser of two it is.
wutbrodo 9y ago
> It is really, really surprising that this is discovered so lately. We should be knowing this for 30 or so years. I have a strong guess that this article is overpresenting how new this is. Otherwise something really weird is going on. 1) You're right, it's not that new. I'm pretty sure I've read it at least once before on _HN_ itself. 2) Nutritional science is a mess not because something weird is going on but because it's really, really hard. It's difficult enough to study the short and long term effects of substances on the body when you're taking about a drug but when you're trying to do it for something like food. Food is intimately tied to culture, habit, social settings, and mood, which makes it hard to fully regiment what your test subjects are taking. Nutrients also both appear and are metabolized in extremely complex arrangements that we still don't fully understand (even something as basic as calorie counts use a pretty ridiculous, roundabout measurement technique), which makes it hard to accurately track. It also is something that everyone has to do all the time, so (unlike drugs), we have to go with "best current understanding" recommendations, which create their own political and reputational effects on scientific study when they're contradicted. We just this year upended decades of public health consensus on the effects of low sodium on blood pressure. This isn't "something weird" going on, it's par for the course for the field.
- erikb 9y ago
  Okay, thinking about your arguments I have to agree. This is not about nutritional advise but about nutritional science. In the pure science department having a good enough result to statistically trust it is rare and may happen even two or three generations until it is common believe already. It is actually good that they ignore common believe in favor of reliable data. Someone must.

guessmyname 9y ago

Too much of everything is always bad.

amasad 9y ago
>Too much of everything is always bad. That's folk-wisdom, which is sort of a good heuristic but is not useful when we can actually test and demonstrate. Some things are bad even in small quantities, say poison. Somethings we can't get enough of, say fresh air. I've mostly cut out fructose (and most other forms of sugar) altogether from my diet and it's probably the single-most impactful change that I've made in my lifestyle on my well being.
- guessmyname 9y ago
  > Somethings we can't get enough of, say fresh air. Well, if you get too much air, the pressure will probably kill you, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - pygy_ 9y ago
    Even at ~atmospheric pressure, it depends on where you put it.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    I would have gone with hyperventilation, though there's a cutoff there
- atomical 9y ago
  So you don't eat fruit?
imron 9y ago
The problem is when too much of something enters the food chain because manufacturers find it cheap (see for example, high fructose corn syrup).
corysama 9y ago
That's a truism. Which makes it thoroughly uninteresting. What is interesting is: How much is too much? And, How much are you currently consuming?

stretchwithme 9y ago

Is it possible to buy processed foods that have no fructose. Certainly, fructose is sweeter and that's why it's used so much. But would be great to avoid it altogether. I know you can bake with dextrose. I wish I'd taken chemistry. I see a lot of conflicting statements about isomers of glucose.

ovao 9y ago
There are – or should be - many foods that may meet the definition of "processed food" and contain no fructose. I can't name or confirm specific brands, but unsweetened bran flakes would be one such example. Some varieties of crackers would (or should) also contain no fructose. There are of course many more processed foods that don't contain added sugars, and therefore would contain no added fructose. At least some of these could be considered relatively harmless in moderation. I'm not a doctor, a dietician, nor am I a nutritionist, so take the following with the largest grain of salt you wish, but a diet entirely devoid of fructose doesn't seem like it would be particularly useful compared to a diet with moderate fructose intake, in the general case. On the other hand, I'm unsure whether avoiding it entirely would be particularly harmful, if you were so inclined (but again, I'll point out that I'm not a doctor and this is not to be taken as medical advice.)
goda90 9y ago
It frustrates me when I look at things so far from "dessert" like a can of chili, and find corn syrup or even sugar in the ingredients. Most great homemade recipes don't use that sugar, so why should the store bought stuff?
- edejong 9y ago
  Because you (as a generic customer) will come back to buy more. Customers by now should be aware of significant deviations to the expected ingredients of common, well-known recipes.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  The simple answer is that sugar is a flavor enhancer, as is salt, which is why the level of both is generally very high in processed foods and pre-packaged meals. Take chicken, for instance. A lot of chicken you buy is pumped full of sugar/salt-heavy brine, because water is cheaper than chicken. The salt helps the chicken bind the water, and the sugar balances out the taste. The end result is overpriced and compromised taste-wise. Personally, I try to avoid added sugar wherever I can, and I have started thinking of sugar as a spice to be used very sparingly, if at all. The only exception is when I bake a cake, because cakes that aren't made full-butter, full-sugar full-everything are just sad. Make good cakes, just eat smaller portions of them, less often.

stretchwithme 9y ago

I hear as bananas ripen, the sucrose breaks down and more fructose is available. That's why they get sweeter. So healthier not to wait too long.

jlg23 9y ago
It's been a long time I did biology in high school, but a quick fact checking on WP suggests I'm not too far off: This is true for most/all(?) fruit and yet untrue for humans because sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose by the body anyway.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

will_brown 9y ago

>Scientific evidence on fructose and the liver is relatively new People have been force feeding animals to fatten them up (gavage) for about 5,000 years, but specifically feeding them sugars/grains for the purpose of fattening their liver. Ever hear of the French delicacy Foie Gras(1)? It literally means fat liver, and after 5,000 years of perfecting fattening liver what do we force feed the animals? Corn! The same fructose we highly concentrate and load into foods and drinks and feed to kids...which goes hand in hand, per the article, with why kids weren’t diagnosed with fatty liver disease pre 1980’s and now 13% of US children have it. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras

mrob 9y ago
High fructose corn syrup is made by processing regular corn syrup (mostly glucose) with enzymes to convert some of the glucose to fructose, making it sweeter. Corn is not naturally high in fructose.
- canttestthis 9y ago
  Is there a term for scientific claims made in this way? I saw something similar on reddit the other day where a commenter was trying to prove that a certain chemical was not harmful. It went something like "The reason we think this chemical is harmful is because of this study from the 60s which was done in 17 countries. But one country was excluded from the study because of inconclusive results. Which one? The US! The country that we care the most about, and there weren't solid results here!"
  - NTripleOne 9y ago
    I don't know if it has a term of not, but it sounds like the pretty fuckin' opposite of science to me - adjusting the results to fit your wanted view instead of adjusting your view to fit the results.
    - zero_iq 9y ago

0xbear 9y ago

Fun fact for HFCS bashers: it’s nearly the same blend of sugars as honey. If you think HFCS is bad (and I believe it is), honey can’t be good.

DiThi 9y ago
Honey has micronutrients HFCS doesn't have. But by far the biggest difference is price. You won't overeat honey simply because you won't want to pay 21 times more. And for a taste that is not a direct replacement of sugar and may not combine well with everything.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  The amount of micronutrients in honey is inconsequential, it is measured in single digit milligrams per hundred grams. It consists primarily of sugars and water, and the main component is fructose.
andreasgonewild 9y ago
Yes, and rape seed oil has the about the same combination of fatty acids as olive oil; which is healthy; but it's still poisonous gmo crap. Same goes for HFCS. The amount of genetic manipulation, processing and refining matters.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  [Citations needed] Very much so, in fact. Otherwise your post is simply unfounded paranoia. Specifically, prove your assertion that rapeseed oil is "poisonous GMO crap".
  - andreasgonewild 9y ago
    Google not working for you? I picked this at random, you'll have to use your own brain if you want to know more: https://draxe.com/canola-oil-gm/ https://draxe.com/canola-oil-gm/ "Canola oil is a Canadian invention that’s backed by Canada’s government, cheap to manufacture, and many packaged or processed foods contain it. Canola oil was first created in the early 1970s as a natural oil, but in 1995, Monsanto created a genetically modified version of canola oil. As of 2005, 87 percent of canola grown in the U.S. was genetically modified, and by 2009, 90 percent of the Canadian crop was genetically engineered."

eighthnate 9y ago

Doesn't too much of anything damage your body?

stefantalpalaru 9y ago

Sounds like Lustig's holy war on fructose again. Show me on an animal model how fructose is linked to hepatosteatosis and we'll start from there. Until then, I'm just going to remember how Lustig's main argument for fructose being a toxin was that it's metabolised in the liver.

acidburnNSA 9y ago

The main title in the article ("The Toxic Truth") is a tribute to UCSF's famous Dr. Lustig of the lecture "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" [1], which is a fascinating and well worthwhile lecture about the biochemistry of fructose as it relates to obesity. I thought I'd just watch a few minutes of it and ended up sitting through it and learning a whole lot. He also wrote a book on the topic("Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease")[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/

smohare 9y ago
Lustig has always stuck me as a bit alarmist. Another red flag are his attempts to capitalize on his increase in popularity. That being said, he does seem sincere and not attempting to spread disinformation as such. A somewhat old, but measured take on some of Lustig’s claims: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/is-sugar-rea...
KozmoNau7 9y ago
Here's another serious and level-headed look at Dr. Lustig's claims. He's an alarmist, and we don't need those. http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/ http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

Given the US uses HFCS a lot, whereas many other countries use other sugar, it would be interesting to compare liver disease rates since the 1980s in the US vs non-HFCS countries.

KozmoNau7 9y ago
HFCS has roughly the same fructose:glucose ratio as table sugar, honey and other sugars that are claimed to be less unhealthy. HFCS alarmism is just that: Alarmism. The problem is not the composition of HFCS, it's that we in the western world are adding a hell of a lot more sugar to everything compared to 40-50 years ago.
- nikolay 9y ago
  But some claim that during the conversion of corn glucose to HFCS, a lot of contaminants end up in it, and explain some of its ill-effects to that.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    Oddly enough, they don't seem able to actually back up those claims.
    - nikolay 9y ago
      Then keep on consuming HFCS. I quickly googled for the lazy you and it's not too hard to find stuff on the subject like [0]. I am personally staying away from all sugars except those naturally found in fruits and honey. [0]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01...
      - KozmoNau7 9y ago
        That's production faults, not inherent to HFCS. I try to stay away from added sugars too, but there is no reason to demonize HFCS specifically.

itchyouch 9y ago

>That excess fructose is broken down by the liver and transformed into fat globules (triglycerides) I believe this is not "that" accurate. Generally the presence of excess carbohydrates cause the body to prioritize sucrose/fructose/glucose to glycogen conversion and storage & usage. Dietary Lipids that are ingested are stored rather than used for energy. While, De novo lipogenesis (turning carbs to lipids) does occur, it is inefficient enough that the body barely converts something around 1% of carbs to fat. Since glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles, and insulin signals the muscles & liver to take up the glycogen in the blood, this is probably where diabetes starts when the liver and muscles are already filled with enough glycogen and there is no where for the glycogen in the bloodstream to go. If the body could efficiently convert sugars to lipids, I don't think diabetes would be that much of an issue. People would just get obese with the diabetes. AFAIK, the priorities for energy consumption of the body is: 1. sugars into glycogen into ATP 2. protein into glucose into glycogen (gluconeogenesis) into ATP (some limited amount) 3. lipids into ketone bodies into ATP So as long as the body was sugars to use up, that is the priority of usage. One of the most calorically intensive tasks the body does is growth and repair of new tissue. Excess sugars are generally used up by kids who are growing. However, once people reach adulthood, the growth rate slows so significantly that the excess caloric intake forces all the lipids ingested to be stored.

dl904 9y ago
Something that has been popularized in certain countries is the notion that there is a huge difference between different kinds of sugars, and that especially fructose is harmful to people. I wonder if there is any truth to that.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  What I understand is the core structure of glucose and fructose differ enough that the metabolic pathways are different. And also while fructose tastes sweet it isn't under homeostatic control like glucose is. So I think it's important health-wise to distinguish the two. There are other sugars that either differ only slightly from glucose or are dimer, etc. AKA lactose is a disaccharide sugar composed of galactose and glucose. Compare with sucrose which is disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose.

lunarcave 9y ago

For anyone interested in this subject - and how sugars and carbs can _potentially_ harm your overall emotional and physical well-being and lead to obesity - I'd recommend "Why we get fat" by Gary Taubes. It has a surprisingly healthy dose of scientific studies condensed for the layman, and some historical context as well.

asveikau 9y ago
> sugars and carbs I feel like carbs are unfairly vilified by a lot of people, to the point of resembling fad diets. Anecdote: I eat very carb-heavy. I also lost 35 lbs in the last couple of months. I didn't do it by cutting carbs. Sugar I buy into vilifying a bit more... Since it's particularly evil how much sugar gets added to everyday items these days, in the "high fructose corn syrup" era which is probably responsible for a lot of the current obesity problems. But I've come to see even a "no sugar" backlash as a little unfair. My daughter loves sweet desserts, as kids do, and we often cave and give her what she wants. But I've been finding on my current weight loss kick that I can eat a lot of it with her and still lose weight every week. For me, being mindful of portion sizes and thinking about calories holistically has done a lot better than demonizing certain foods.

swendoog 9y ago

Why is it that I can eat tons of sugar, including HFCS soda, and not gain any fat?

nikolay 9y ago
Depends on your age, metabolism, and lifestyle. By the way, just because you cannot see it, it doesn't mean that irreversible damage isn't being done on your pancreas beta cells. There's a diabetes epidemic among thin Asians.
Mz 9y ago
I don't know the answer to your question about you in specific, but I have a genetic disorder that predisposes people to being super thin. One element of it is that fats are misprocessed. I have made some headway on dealing with it. But, I mean, I wouldn't know where to begin to explain it and I have no idea how it relates to your experience. So, I mean, I don't know what pieces to even talk about. If I know someone has, for example, diabetes, I can come up with pertinent things to say, even though that isn't my condition. There is a lot of info out there these days. You may be able to eventually hack this and find a means to put on weight.

nnq 9y ago

This is know scientifically for ~10 years now (in a sense that there are some studies, and the biochemistry of mechanisms is know, but the statistical power of the studies might be low... can''t remember, left the biomedical field years ago), and anecdotally since like for ever (google "making fois gras"). Also, for cats and dogs, other sugar (xylitol if I member well) can destroy their livers pretty fast. Fortunately, we come from sugar-happy monkeys (that used to eat lots of rottenfruit), so we can safely enjoy our booze in moderation :) And for extra self-destructive power, mix fructose and fats: your liver will be too overloaded processing the fructose (that btw, also gets transformed to extra fat and collesterol if its other metabolizing pathways get saturated) to be able to handle the fats correctly, so "bad collesterol" will accumulate in you blood, and then clog your arteries (yeah, it needs some extra help from inflamation). But, oh, wait, there's a name for that: donuts! ...or virtually every other fatty sweet stuff. Oh, and for extra-extra-damage the fats should be fried (for reason I don't have time to detail). And there's a name for that too: KFC + dessert! Now go enjoy your deserts! Or the fois gras you had before it ;) EDIT+: video explaining some (older) science behind it, form UCTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

misja111 9y ago
Plus, when you eat sugar your body produces insulin, which instructs your body to stop burning fat and store it straight into your fat cells.
- s4vi0r 9y ago
  That's not true at all... What would possibly make you think that?
  - alex_hitchins 9y ago
    I can't point to anything specific, however I was under this impression from listening to a few Keto diet enthusiasts.
  - nnq 9y ago
    First search shows: http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/pancreas/insulin_phys.html http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/panc... > Insulin promotes synthesis of fatty acids in the liver > Insulin inhibits breakdown of fat in adipose tissue ...but don't take that to mean "insulin is what gets you fat". It does not... or not as in it being a bad thing. It's more like "insulin just tells your body to process away that damn extra sugar"... and your body does whatever it can with it, like converting it into stored fat. It would be much worse if it didn't! You'd have diabetes then, and that sugar standing unprocessed in you blood would do tons of damage to your body! Making you a bit fatter is kind of the best thing your body can do with the extra sugar that got dumped into your blood...

enraged_camel 9y ago

It's almost as if too much of any one thing is bad for you. It's interesting that science is just figuring this out. And I say this as someone who has doctor parents.

manigandham 9y ago

Based on how much conflicting studies, stories, evidence, research and anecdotes out there, it seems nutrition is the one thing that really just boils down to self-experimentation, moderation, and common sense.

jlebrech 9y ago

going to bed with left over sugar is bad for you. but for regular exercise sugar is good too (slower carbs are better) It's all about balance, possibly everyone should have a blood glucose meter and burn off that excess glucose every night.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nikolay 9y ago

Fructose has always been known to be metabolized just like alcohol, so, here's the news? The only type of fructose that's tolerable, in my view, is in moderate consumption of whole fruits (not juice or other processed versions), and unadulterated honey - still in moderation. When I see people eating huge amounts of fruits, I start feeling sorry about their pancreas and liver!

kwoff 9y ago
Why "unadulterated honey"?
- nikolay 9y ago
  Supermarket-quality honey is pasteurized and has added sugar, i.e., it has almost no benefits, but gives you all the negatives of glucose and fructose.