6 ms·

Fructose increases diabetes and heart disease

59 points by pg 17y ago

frankus 17y ago
HFCS 55 is actually (according to Wikipedia, anyway), about as sweet as sucrose. Even pure fructose "is generally regarded as being 1.73 times sweeter than sucrose," so I'm not sure where they're getting the six times number.
- tedunangst 17y ago
  Probably screwed up trying to say 6 times sweeter than glucose.
jrockway 17y ago
Isn't sucrose just as bad as HFCS, though?
- TNO 17y ago
  Sucrose can be regulated by your body with Sucrase, whereas HFCS cannot. Maybe that's part of the reason why so many Americans are overweight? Hard to escape HFCS in the average diet. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Cane_and_beet_sugar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Cane_a...
  - pmorici 17y ago
    Some Good documentary films about food... http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food http://www.foodincmovie.com/ http://www.foodincmovie.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Corn_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Corn_%28film%29 (You can rent the last two on iTunes)
    - jseifer 17y ago
      For some good reading on the subject, check out Ray Peat's article "Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context" at http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml. While not specifically about sugars, the Weston Price book is a good read about traditional diets as well: http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston-Price/dp/0916764206/ http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston....
    - warfangle 17y ago
      Food, Inc. is also available on netflix streaming. Quite a good documentary.
  - hga 17y ago
    Yeah, but if you consume enough sucrose and you don't cleave it, you'll get the equivalent of lactose intolerance (lactose is a disaccharide of glucose and galactose instead of fructose).
- hga 17y ago
  Given that sucrose is half glucose, half sucrose, and that none of it can enter your system without the molecule getting cleaved, yes. And sucrose is not a new item in the British diet (think of the Caribbean plantations) and I've read it was at least for a period (but not one in which anyone was paying attention to this sort of public health) an important part of the diet for many poor people.
  - sp332 17y ago
    > sucrose is half glucose, half sucrose That's glucose and fructose
nkurz 17y ago
This linked article is junk[1], but the study on which it is based is rather interesting: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/ The gave either fructose or glucose based to volunteers over a period of 10 weeks, and seem to have shown a clear statistical difference between the reaction to the two. Although both produced similar total weight gains, there were consistent differences in how the volunteers reacted to each: "These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults." [1] The "six times sweeter" claim is false, and indicates a lack of both fact checking and logic. If it was 6x sweeter, you wouldn't need anywhere near as much of it!
- jseifer 17y ago
  I think it would have been interesting to have had the participants rate how they felt with energy levels and other factors during these experiments.
- gregwebs 17y ago
  can we ban posting news article that are crappy summaries of studies?
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    Yeah, posters like pg are really turning this place into reddit ;)
    - RK 17y ago
      Sometimes I have the feeling that some of his submissions are subtle experiments.
    - gregwebs 17y ago
      This is really just a specific instance of "Please submit the original source". In this case there is often an assumption that readers cannot understand the actual article and we need journalists who interview scientists to summarize it for us. I almost always find that, as in this article, there are errors in the news summary, and I have come to the opinion that you can't learn anything about health by reading these kinds of health news summaries.
joe_the_user 17y ago
Aside from the quality of the article, there seems to be a lesson about speculatively changing one's basic diets to things that appear to be safer. Fructose was promoted as a substance which didn't have the high glycemic index of sucrose. Low and behold the final results seem to be worse. The effects of the indigestible fats that still taste appealing probably won't be know for a bit but they could be scary. Who knows what final results will occur with other speculative alterations of the diet (fortunately, calorie restriction is very small fad).
- carbocation 17y ago
  The indigestible fats are demonstrably non-absorbable, so they are less likely to have subtle, sinister side-effects of which we are not yet aware. (By demonstrably, I mean they are easily detected, both by the consumer of said fats, and by lab tests looking for steatorrhea: http://www.annals.org/content/132/4/279.2.full http://www.annals.org/content/132/4/279.2.full ). There are risks, and they are fairly well-characterized: you risk malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins (K,A,D,E). The fructose issue is far more terrifying, both because (a) it is absorbed, and (b) the epidemiology and biochemistry are plausible. You know a product is bad for you when it has to put out commercials claiming that it's no worse for you than sugar...
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    Mmm, Well, I believe that one can prove that these chemicals aren't absorbed by the human digestive tract. I offer that one might INDEED experience "subtle, sinister side-effects" by way of substances which "merely" pass through the digestive tract. I know that eating fair quantities dirt or sawdust generally is rightly discouraged. Of course, this isn't certain ... bu, bu, but my point is that we moderns haven't so far done well by offering ourselves for science's experimentation. There might will likely be a tipping point, where this science finally delivers more than it takes away. But we ought to take concerning whether we've reached that point or not.
    - carbocation 17y ago
anigbrowl 17y ago
If the conclusions of this study are validated, the food industry is going to be hit by a wave of class-action lawsuits that'll make cigarette litigation look like an amicable chit-chat. If I was in the market I'd be shorting Archer Daniels Midland and a whole bunch of end-product companies starting with Coke and Pepsi. And when you consider how much of the meat industry has switched to feeding cattle on corn instead of grass...yikes. It may take a few years, but governments beset by rising medical care costs (many of which are obesity-related) are inevitably going to try for some recovery.
- nvasilak 17y ago
  Lawsuits? Who wouldn't want a nice, insulating layer of fat to protect their heart? I use a Pepsi IV daily and haven't gotten sick in at least a week and a half. On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic, but I hope you're right.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic," For sure. This is an industry that arranged so that they can sue you if you diss them. http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger-bashing-and-sirloin-slander-food-disparagement-laws-in-the-united-states/ http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger-... http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/eat.html http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/eat.html
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    I agree, but Washington isn't the only game in town. These socioeconomic/medical issues are costing European governments plenty too, and it would suit them just fine to denounce high-fructose corn syrup as an American imposition as a sop to their domestic farming lobbies (even though European food scientists are just as concerned with maximizing saleable weight at minimum cost as their counterparts here). It may not take all that long: consider the history of tobacco litigation (also a powerful lobby) and the fact that federal and particularly state finances are in a tight squeeze, in which soaring medical costs play a significant part. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agree...
jackchristopher 17y ago
To steal a line, nutrition is younger than it seems. We screwed it up fundamentally. This is just another example. This study contradicts the glycemic index theory which claims glucose, specifically rice and potatoes, are the worst carbohydrates sources because they're high-GI. Truth is, we're better adapted to glucose. The body converts all carbohydrates (except fiber) sources to glucose, and then to glycogen. There's a reason blood sugar is glucose. The body prefers it. Fructose - Glucose Study Showdown [1] (a)13.9% increase in LDL cholesterol but doubled Apoprotein B (b) 44.9% increase in small LDL [1] Dr. Davis is a cardiologist that has reversed atherosclerotic plaque in thousands of patients. He recommends a diet where most calories come from fat. Here's his analysis of studies relating fructose to heart disease: http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Fructose http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Fructose
- scythe 17y ago
  "Fructose - Glucose Study Showdown [1] (a)13.9% increase in LDL cholesterol but doubled Apoprotein B (b) 44.9% increase in small LDL" You don't make it clear here whether fructose is (a) or (b), though I'll hazard a guess that it's (b).
- AlisdairO 17y ago
  The idea behind GI theory is not (I believe) that glucose is bad for you, but that too much in one short hit is bad for you. Yes, the body converts all carbohydrates to glucose, but it takes much longer for complex carbs to turn into straight glucose than it does simpler ones, spreading out the absorption. It isn't about fructose vs glucose, but rather fast absorption vs slow absorption.
sabat 17y ago
"Just last week I cut out fructose." --Kramer
ars 17y ago
So it's time to get rid of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar_Program (tariff on sugar, making fructose cheaper). That's going to make some growers and states really really mad.
- foulmouthboy 17y ago
  I suspect that we'll see a much bigger push towards biodiesel as high fructose corn syrup continues to get attacked. Also, anybody capable of growing corn should be capable of growing soybeans, which is something that's also added to every type of food (if not an outright substitute). The corn growers will adapt.
moron4hire 17y ago
I know when I eat a fructose-free diet, I have a much more "tame" alimentary canal, if you know what I mean.
pmichaud 17y ago
Wait, this title is misleading. There's a huge difference between the crystalline fructose you can buy at good grocery stores and the High Fructose Corn Syrup manufacturers shove into every food they can. It's like saying water must be bad for you since we tried forcing someone to drink 5 gallons at once and they got water poisoning.
xiaoma 17y ago
"Even some fruit drinks that sound healthy contain fructose." Uh... fruit has fructose. All of them do.
- mtoledo 17y ago
  If anyone can help me understand: what is the difference between eating a food with a certain fructose percentage on HFCS, and a fruit which has the same amount of fructose? And what is the difference on drinking some artificial drink with a fructose percentage, and pure fruit juice, containing the same amount of fructose? I saw a presentation once arguing that fruits come with "the poison and the cure", in that the fibers counter the fructose. But that doesn't sound very healthy under the perspective of the study, does it? Also, does that mean that, again assuming what the study says, its better to eat glucose based sugar foods than eating fruits, on the "sugar" perspective?
  - mtoledo 17y ago
    Also, in the case of the juice, if it doesn't have the fibers that the fruit has, is it just as bad as soda then (assuming same fructose proportions, of course)?
    - rarrrrrr 17y ago
      Although there are plenty of junk juices out there -- the other bad things in soda give it an edge in nastiness over fruit juice. For example: acidity. Typical pH ranges of colas are 2.5 - 4.2. It literally causes your body to breath faster (exhaling CO2 makes you more alkaline) and if necessary pull calcium out of your bones to maintain your body's pH between 7.35-7.45. If your pH drops below 7.35 you go into acidosis; much farther and you die. Drink excessive soda and avoid exercise if you want weak bones and osteoporosis.
      - mtoledo 17y ago
        Right, but I dont mean junk juices. I mean natural fruit juices, the one just out of the fruit. They are supposedly full of fructose and no fibers, right? So are they just as bad, on a fructose point of view (as in supposedly has the bad side effects the article lists) as a cola with the same amount of fructose derived from HFCS in it?

59 points by pg 17y ago

HFCS 55 is actually (according to Wikipedia, anyway), about as sweet as sucrose. Even pure fructose "is generally regarded as being 1.73 times sweeter than sucrose," so I'm not sure where they're getting the six times number.

tedunangst 17y ago
Probably screwed up trying to say 6 times sweeter than glucose.

jrockway 17y ago

Isn't sucrose just as bad as HFCS, though?

TNO 17y ago
Sucrose can be regulated by your body with Sucrase, whereas HFCS cannot. Maybe that's part of the reason why so many Americans are overweight? Hard to escape HFCS in the average diet. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Cane_and_beet_sugar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Cane_a...
- pmorici 17y ago
  Some Good documentary films about food... http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food http://www.foodincmovie.com/ http://www.foodincmovie.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Corn_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Corn_%28film%29 (You can rent the last two on iTunes)
  - jseifer 17y ago
    For some good reading on the subject, check out Ray Peat's article "Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context" at http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml. While not specifically about sugars, the Weston Price book is a good read about traditional diets as well: http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston-Price/dp/0916764206/ http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston....
  - warfangle 17y ago
    Food, Inc. is also available on netflix streaming. Quite a good documentary.
- hga 17y ago
  Yeah, but if you consume enough sucrose and you don't cleave it, you'll get the equivalent of lactose intolerance (lactose is a disaccharide of glucose and galactose instead of fructose).
hga 17y ago
Given that sucrose is half glucose, half sucrose, and that none of it can enter your system without the molecule getting cleaved, yes. And sucrose is not a new item in the British diet (think of the Caribbean plantations) and I've read it was at least for a period (but not one in which anyone was paying attention to this sort of public health) an important part of the diet for many poor people.
- sp332 17y ago
  > sucrose is half glucose, half sucrose That's glucose and fructose

nkurz 17y ago

This linked article is junk[1], but the study on which it is based is rather interesting: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/ The gave either fructose or glucose based to volunteers over a period of 10 weeks, and seem to have shown a clear statistical difference between the reaction to the two. Although both produced similar total weight gains, there were consistent differences in how the volunteers reacted to each: "These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults." [1] The "six times sweeter" claim is false, and indicates a lack of both fact checking and logic. If it was 6x sweeter, you wouldn't need anywhere near as much of it!

jseifer 17y ago
I think it would have been interesting to have had the participants rate how they felt with energy levels and other factors during these experiments.
gregwebs 17y ago
can we ban posting news article that are crappy summaries of studies?
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Yeah, posters like pg are really turning this place into reddit ;)
  - RK 17y ago
    Sometimes I have the feeling that some of his submissions are subtle experiments.
  - gregwebs 17y ago
    This is really just a specific instance of "Please submit the original source". In this case there is often an assumption that readers cannot understand the actual article and we need journalists who interview scientists to summarize it for us. I almost always find that, as in this article, there are errors in the news summary, and I have come to the opinion that you can't learn anything about health by reading these kinds of health news summaries.

joe_the_user 17y ago

Aside from the quality of the article, there seems to be a lesson about speculatively changing one's basic diets to things that appear to be safer. Fructose was promoted as a substance which didn't have the high glycemic index of sucrose. Low and behold the final results seem to be worse. The effects of the indigestible fats that still taste appealing probably won't be know for a bit but they could be scary. Who knows what final results will occur with other speculative alterations of the diet (fortunately, calorie restriction is very small fad).

carbocation 17y ago
The indigestible fats are demonstrably non-absorbable, so they are less likely to have subtle, sinister side-effects of which we are not yet aware. (By demonstrably, I mean they are easily detected, both by the consumer of said fats, and by lab tests looking for steatorrhea: http://www.annals.org/content/132/4/279.2.full http://www.annals.org/content/132/4/279.2.full ). There are risks, and they are fairly well-characterized: you risk malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins (K,A,D,E). The fructose issue is far more terrifying, both because (a) it is absorbed, and (b) the epidemiology and biochemistry are plausible. You know a product is bad for you when it has to put out commercials claiming that it's no worse for you than sugar...
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  Mmm, Well, I believe that one can prove that these chemicals aren't absorbed by the human digestive tract. I offer that one might INDEED experience "subtle, sinister side-effects" by way of substances which "merely" pass through the digestive tract. I know that eating fair quantities dirt or sawdust generally is rightly discouraged. Of course, this isn't certain ... bu, bu, but my point is that we moderns haven't so far done well by offering ourselves for science's experimentation. There might will likely be a tipping point, where this science finally delivers more than it takes away. But we ought to take concerning whether we've reached that point or not.
  - carbocation 17y ago

anigbrowl 17y ago

If the conclusions of this study are validated, the food industry is going to be hit by a wave of class-action lawsuits that'll make cigarette litigation look like an amicable chit-chat. If I was in the market I'd be shorting Archer Daniels Midland and a whole bunch of end-product companies starting with Coke and Pepsi. And when you consider how much of the meat industry has switched to feeding cattle on corn instead of grass...yikes. It may take a few years, but governments beset by rising medical care costs (many of which are obesity-related) are inevitably going to try for some recovery.

nvasilak 17y ago
Lawsuits? Who wouldn't want a nice, insulating layer of fat to protect their heart? I use a Pepsi IV daily and haven't gotten sick in at least a week and a half. On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic, but I hope you're right.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic," For sure. This is an industry that arranged so that they can sue you if you diss them. http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger-bashing-and-sirloin-slander-food-disparagement-laws-in-the-united-states/ http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger-... http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/eat.html http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/eat.html
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I agree, but Washington isn't the only game in town. These socioeconomic/medical issues are costing European governments plenty too, and it would suit them just fine to denounce high-fructose corn syrup as an American imposition as a sop to their domestic farming lobbies (even though European food scientists are just as concerned with maximizing saleable weight at minimum cost as their counterparts here). It may not take all that long: consider the history of tobacco litigation (also a powerful lobby) and the fact that federal and particularly state finances are in a tight squeeze, in which soaring medical costs play a significant part. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agree...

jackchristopher 17y ago

To steal a line, nutrition is younger than it seems. We screwed it up fundamentally. This is just another example. This study contradicts the glycemic index theory which claims glucose, specifically rice and potatoes, are the worst carbohydrates sources because they're high-GI. Truth is, we're better adapted to glucose. The body converts all carbohydrates (except fiber) sources to glucose, and then to glycogen. There's a reason blood sugar is glucose. The body prefers it. Fructose - Glucose Study Showdown [1] (a)13.9% increase in LDL cholesterol but doubled Apoprotein B (b) 44.9% increase in small LDL [1] Dr. Davis is a cardiologist that has reversed atherosclerotic plaque in thousands of patients. He recommends a diet where most calories come from fat. Here's his analysis of studies relating fructose to heart disease: http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Fructose http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Fructose

scythe 17y ago
"Fructose - Glucose Study Showdown [1] (a)13.9% increase in LDL cholesterol but doubled Apoprotein B (b) 44.9% increase in small LDL" You don't make it clear here whether fructose is (a) or (b), though I'll hazard a guess that it's (b).
AlisdairO 17y ago
The idea behind GI theory is not (I believe) that glucose is bad for you, but that too much in one short hit is bad for you. Yes, the body converts all carbohydrates to glucose, but it takes much longer for complex carbs to turn into straight glucose than it does simpler ones, spreading out the absorption. It isn't about fructose vs glucose, but rather fast absorption vs slow absorption.

sabat 17y ago

"Just last week I cut out fructose." --Kramer

ars 17y ago

So it's time to get rid of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar_Program (tariff on sugar, making fructose cheaper). That's going to make some growers and states really really mad.

foulmouthboy 17y ago
I suspect that we'll see a much bigger push towards biodiesel as high fructose corn syrup continues to get attacked. Also, anybody capable of growing corn should be capable of growing soybeans, which is something that's also added to every type of food (if not an outright substitute). The corn growers will adapt.

moron4hire 17y ago

I know when I eat a fructose-free diet, I have a much more "tame" alimentary canal, if you know what I mean.

pmichaud 17y ago

Wait, this title is misleading. There's a huge difference between the crystalline fructose you can buy at good grocery stores and the High Fructose Corn Syrup manufacturers shove into every food they can. It's like saying water must be bad for you since we tried forcing someone to drink 5 gallons at once and they got water poisoning.

xiaoma 17y ago

"Even some fruit drinks that sound healthy contain fructose." Uh... fruit has fructose. All of them do.

mtoledo 17y ago
If anyone can help me understand: what is the difference between eating a food with a certain fructose percentage on HFCS, and a fruit which has the same amount of fructose? And what is the difference on drinking some artificial drink with a fructose percentage, and pure fruit juice, containing the same amount of fructose? I saw a presentation once arguing that fruits come with "the poison and the cure", in that the fibers counter the fructose. But that doesn't sound very healthy under the perspective of the study, does it? Also, does that mean that, again assuming what the study says, its better to eat glucose based sugar foods than eating fruits, on the "sugar" perspective?
- mtoledo 17y ago
  Also, in the case of the juice, if it doesn't have the fibers that the fruit has, is it just as bad as soda then (assuming same fructose proportions, of course)?
  - rarrrrrr 17y ago
    Although there are plenty of junk juices out there -- the other bad things in soda give it an edge in nastiness over fruit juice. For example: acidity. Typical pH ranges of colas are 2.5 - 4.2. It literally causes your body to breath faster (exhaling CO2 makes you more alkaline) and if necessary pull calcium out of your bones to maintain your body's pH between 7.35-7.45. If your pH drops below 7.35 you go into acidosis; much farther and you die. Drink excessive soda and avoid exercise if you want weak bones and osteoporosis.
    - mtoledo 17y ago
      Right, but I dont mean junk juices. I mean natural fruit juices, the one just out of the fruit. They are supposedly full of fructose and no fibers, right? So are they just as bad, on a fructose point of view (as in supposedly has the bad side effects the article lists) as a cola with the same amount of fructose derived from HFCS in it?