Fructose - A Debate

It’s not important how much sugar is “added” to a product. What matters is the actual “sugars” percentage content . Sugar is sugar, and with a couple of exceptions it’s all bad for your health, in spades! Glucose is the fuel which powers just about all animal life.Lactose is milk sugar which metabolises as glucose when digested. In fact nearly every carbohydrate we eat ends up as glucose. The notable exception is FRUCTOSE, or fruit sugar. Sucrose (cane sugar) is a double molecule of glucose and fructose, so it’s 50% fructose. This sugar has three main harmful effects:

  1. In inhibits the gut hormones which control hunger and satiety. So the brain doesn’t get the message that we are full. This is why obese people can eat and eat when they are obviously not hungry.
  2. It inhibits the production if insulin in the pancreas, leading to the pandemic of Type-2 diabetes which accompanies that of obesity.
  3. All the fructose beyond the 10 grams a day we need goes directly to the liver where it is converted to fat which is deposited around the vital organs. Which is why so many overweight people have large bellies. Average daily consumption in Australia is about 30 g/day.which accounts for the large proportion of overweight and obese people in the community.
  4. In addition, fructose has been causally linked to a string of undesirable medical conditions as long as your arm, including tooth decay, leaky gut, non-alcoholic fatty liver, kidney failure, gout, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, hypertension, erectile dysfunction, and so on.

Cutting fructose from your diet will enable you to avoid most of these conditions. It’s easy to avoid eating excess fructose - limit your fruit to two small pieces (200g) per day, avoid fruit juices, dried fruits (concentrated fructose) and any processed food with more than 2% “sugars”. Yogurt s OK at up to 7% as the first 5% is lactose based. And watch out for “low fat” foods. The flavour is removed with the fat and replaced by sugar and salt.

Mainstream medicine is slowly getting around to recognizing the role of “sugar” in community health. But many doctors and nutritionists do not understand the role of fructose. Interested readers can check authors like David Gillespie, Robert Lustig, Peter Dingle, John Yudkin etc.

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Everything that is good for us is also bad for us. Whether you trust this site is for you to decide, but


or

https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/food-essentials/five-food-groups/fruit

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It is very true and often missed in debates and media hysteria. Over consumption of anything leads to problems, whether in the short or long term.

The term moderation and balance is often used by nutritionists for a reason.

Reading information on the internet one may decide to give up food and drink totally.

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Not sure if this is the best place but it follows on from many of the comments. Brendan feel free to edit or move this post if desired.

A new entry in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) calling out Coca-Cola (RTM) for deceptive practices:

http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1638

and a news article referring to it

http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/eat-drink/2017/04/07/coca-cola-sugar-exercise-tobacco/

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Thanks @grahroll. I find the university funding issue is particularly troubling, although I know that’s not limited to the sugar issue.

After all we’ve been through on the other sugar thread ! ! !
You state “Maybe the teaspoons could be colour-coded? Green indicating natural sugars, red indicating added??”
What the hell is “natural sugar”? This is simply a way that manufacturers can increase the amount of sugar in a product whilst getting around the issue of how much “sugar” is in the product. If sultanas are part of the product (say sultana and apple museli bar) then with the “natural” sultanas (full of sugar), the “natural” apple (which is reconstituted apple juice) and the “natural” honey you can end up with a product which is 60% sugar.
The worst thing is that this “sugar” is chock-a-block with FRUCTOSE which is the poison which causes hypertension, de novo lipogenesis, dyslipidemia, hepatic steatosis, inflamation, hepatic insulin resistance, obesity, CNS leptin resistance.

Can we please get away from this “added sugar” wording.
It is “added” fructose that is the problem. Eating raw fruit is not generally a problem (some are better than others - see the list on the David Gillespie web site). Even fruit juice and adding fruit juice is a no-no.

We, as humans, have never consumed large amounts of fruit (until now). With regard to honey, modern bee farming of European bees (such as is carried out today) didn’t start until the 18th century and until recently honey was too expensive for many people to buy. For example Australian Aboriginal people often had to extract honey from a hive by poking a stick into a hive, or climbing a tree; further Australian native bees provide very small quantities of honey.

Saying that you can eat huge quantities of fruit without seeing any ill effects is like saying drinking large amounts of alcohol doesn’t have any ill effects. Both will be doing terrible things to your organs and brain which will over time cause hypertension, de novo lipogenesis, dyslipidemia, hepatic steatosis, inflamation, hepatic insulin resistance, obesity, CNS leptin resistance.

Not all people who eat fructose display the all medical problems, some will have one or two, others most of them. And the medical problem won’t show up in 3 months, 3 years or even 30 years, but they will eventually show up and by then it is too late because the body is already damaged.

Just think of the tobacco issue. For years there was no “evidence” that smoking caused health problems but eventually the faux research and blocking of genuine research could not hold back the tide. It is now recognised that smoking kills. There are many dead and dying who believed the phony science on tobacco. The same is true of fructose; keep going the way we are and the same health catastrophe is being repeated.

David Gillespie, Australian lawyer and author, says that any processed food showing more than 3% sugars should not be purchased or consumed. He has responded to recent discussions about sugar tax; his ABC interview can be found at:-
http://www.abc.net.au/radio/brisbane/programs/mornings/david-gillespie/8265480
See also his web pages at:-
http://davidgillespie.org/product_list/
http://www.howmuchsugar.com/

Below is a screen shot from Dr Robert Lustig’s talks. His email address is available on the internet and anyone who wants scientific references to his work should contact him.

Dr Lustig is definitely not alarmist. You may think he is pessimistic, however he has seen things get very much worse since he has been scientifically studying the issue.

Sugar is toxic to the human body, Dr Lustig and his scientific colleagues have “causal medical inference” which substantiates this (see his video “Fat Chance: Fructose 2.0”).

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It sounds to me as if we need a “Fructose” measurement on food labeling, as well as a sugar warning!

Is there sufficient scientific evidence to support such a warning on our labels?

If so, perhaps Choice could look into more descriptive “sugar warnings” or certainly “fructose measurements” as well. The consumer certainly needs to be made aware of all the possible ingredients that may compromise our health.

Your ideas Brendan?
Cheers Natalie

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Hi @njfking,

At the moment, not all scientists and researchers agree, but the majority (including the World Health Organisation) think that the problems occurring are not specific to fructose. From the meta-analysis:

“The fructose moiety is singled out to be the primary driver for the harms of sugars due to its unique endocrine signal and pathophysiological role. However, this is only supported by ecological studies, animal models of overfeeding and select human intervention studies with supraphysiological doses or lack of control for energy. The highest level of evidence from systematic reviews and meta-analyses of controlled trials has not shown that fructose-containing sugars behave any differently from other forms of digestible carbohydrates.”

Dr Lustig is the main proponent advocating a focus specifically on fructose, especially High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which is commonly added to foods in the US and is at the centre of his research. However, in Australia, we rarely see HFCS as an added sugar and the composition of added sugars is different than in the USA. Here are some articles about added sugar in Australia and artificial sweeteners.

Regardless of the source and composition though, added sugars may still contain fructose and for some this is the core of the problem, if not the only problem. In theory, if CHOICE were to ignore the above and successfully target fructose specifically, then food manufacturers would likely start doing things like altering sugar cane output (though processing or GMO) or limiting added sugar to other sources of sweetener. Again, from the meta analysis above:

“A lesson we can learn from the fat paradigm is that there can be unintended consequences of focusing singly on one nutrient. When saturated fat was deemed harmful, the industry responded by producing low-fat products, with no resultant appreciable calorie change, as in these products calories from fat were replaced with calories from other sources, e.g. starches and other sugars like maltodextrins. The public perception changed as ‘low-fat’ products were deemed ‘healthy’, and a concomitant increase in availability on the supermarket shelf likely led to the overconsumption of such ‘low-fat’ products. Not surprisingly, the expected reduction in cardiometabolic disease with the ‘low-fat’ food was not seen, and instead, we saw an unprecedented increase in incidence of overweight/obesity and diabetes.”

So, rather than go down that same road, CHOICE is focusing on labelling for all added sugar, which will also encompass fructose and the harm that it causes. It’s not to say that we disagree with the notion that fructose is a problem, but we consider that it’s not the only problem. In fact, it would likely be much easier to pick a single target such as fructose and advisable from a PR point of view, but we do not believe this would achieve the best health outcomes in the long run.

I think we’ve also addressed the ‘fructose is poison’ claims earlier in this thread, but to reiterate, the organisation does not take this position in the contemporary sense of the word (as this could be construed to indicate that fruit is also poison or at least somewhat poisonous, as fruit contains fructose). This normally leads into a ‘whole diet’ discussion, which is of course very important, but the focus here is added sugars.

To move away from the fructose debate for a moment, what we were originally talking about is a manageable indication for the average consumer to make good dietary decisions at a glance in real-world scenarios (packed shopping aisle, screaming kids and so on) rather than try to list everything at once. This also doesn’t mean all ingredients shouldn’t be labelled somewhere, so that consumers can make informed choices (for example, so that those with, preferences, allergies or an intolerance can still get the info they need). We’re seeking feedback on the best ways to do this on this thread.

Hope that helps. We welcome continued debate on fructose, but we also ask that people refrain from re-posting the same information multiple times in the interests of keeping this as a space for meaningful discussion.

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There are many other chemicals in food stuffs which are potentially far more ‘toxic’ than fructose, and aren’t labelled with warnings.

For example, cyanide in the kernels of some stone fruit, phytohaemagglutinin in raw red kidney beans, oxalic acid in foods such as rhubarb leaves, arsenic in foods such as rice grown in high arsenic soils. alfatoxins in peanuts/peanut butter etc. There are also a wide range of foods consumed in the long term that have a risk of causing cancer or other health complications.

All the above aren’t labelled and if the FSANZ started labelling all foods, one would stop eating all together as there are risks in every food we eat either from its chemical composition, calorific value or ability to injest (labelling say peanuts as a choking hazard).

I can assume that the FSANZ (along with its international counterparts), recognise that in a balanced diet and in moderation, risks associated with the consumption of foods is negligable and therefore does not require specific labelling of potential risks. Imaging if one bought vegetable oil at the supermarket and it has a warning ‘half a mile long’ for the product as there is a risk of overconsumption…namely overconsumption of vegetables oils can lead to weight gain, obseity, liver function decline etc etc, long term consumption etc

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Thanks for your insight Brendan, I hope I have not stirred up a hornet’s nest by my post :wink:

Great to learn that High Fructose Corn syrup is rarely seen here in Australia, as it certainly does
not sound healthy!

Any type of manageable indication on packaging would be very useful, and the teaspoon illustration would
certainly be a quick and easy way of identifying the amount of sugar in a product, both added sugar and
“naturally occurring” sugars.

Thanks, Nat :slight_smile:

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Hiya phbriggs2000, thank you for your post.

You are certainly correct in your statements about label length warnings !! It would be an absolute nightmare
to have to pore over long lists of health warnings, and I would consider that a certain amount of knowledge and
consumer choice is important in the shopping items one places in the trolley.

I do like to be informed of exactly what is in the groceries I purchase and make an educated decision based
on my own common sense.

Thanks for your post.
Cheers Natalie :slight_smile:

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Hi Brendan,
I am afraid that you are not correct here. Firstly, Dr Lustig is in Australia now and will confirm what I have to say.
Even he acknowledges that Australia doesn’t manufacture HFCS (it is uneconomic as we have really cheap sugar cane). There is very little difference between our cane sugar (50% Fructose 50% Glucose) whereas HFCS in food additives is usually 55% Fructose 45% Glucose. Either way, it is the Fructose that is the problem. Dr Lustig shows that Fructose is processed by the body in the same way as alcohol. Alcohol consumed in excess is both a drug and a poison and will cause a whole heap of health problems (let’s forget about obesity for the moment). The amount of Fructose that is being consumed in the Western World now has reached the point where it is being consumed in excess, hence it is both a drug and a poison. It has been shown to affect the reward areas of the brain, and it has been shown to cause almost all of the medical problems shown by those who consume alcohol in excess.

In Australia, Cane Sugar is SO CHEAP that no manufacturer is going to waste money trying to use substitutes as not only are they more expensive, but they don’t WEIGH as much - the manufacturers want as much cheap weight in their products as possible.

Fruit is not Fructose, nor is it dangerous to eat. Not only is it almost impossible to eat fruit to “excess” but fruit contains complex fibre which means that the fruit is processed further down in the digestive system resulting in the fructose component doing far less damage. Cane Sugar (or HFCS) hits the liver almost immediately (like alcohol) and this is where most of the damage is caused.

Parents and all other members of the public must be able to look quickly at a label and see how much fructose is in that product. Honey and processed fruit is not good for you; often apple or orange juice is added to a product, or rasins - these allow the body to immediately access the Fructose - and the damage is done.

I must reiterate that it is not just the added sugar that is the problem, it is the TOTAL fructose in the product.
Also, please do not misquote Dr Lustig and I am not aware of any peer reviewed scientific paper which refutes any of Dr Lustig’s research.
Bruce Welch

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@njfking - appreciate your input, and no problems in regard to the fructose debate. We know it’s an issue that people are passionate about and we we appreciate the opportunity to discuss the CHOICE position in detail.

@jepc - thanks for sharing your point of view, I’ve expanded on my original comment to address your concerns regarding misquoting. As I’ve mentioned before, we appreciate the robust discussion that you’ve evoked here on the Community, and while it’s unlikely that we are going to perfectly align we everyone’s values at all times, we hope that our proposed solutions encompass as many different points of view as possible while supporting positive outcomes.

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“Naturally occurring sugars consumed as part of the “whole” food are generally considered healthy…”_
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Sugar is sugar and how it gets into the food you eat is of no importance. What does matter is the fructose content. Fructose is fruit sugar and is the villain in the obesity pandemic as well as a large number of other conditions. It is the only carbohydrate we ingest which is not metabolised as glucose, the universe energy fuel. Every gram over the 10g we need per day, goes directly to the liver where it is converted into fat which accumulates around the vital organs - belly fat. That said, fructose included in whole fruit is not as dangerous because the fibre in the fruit ameliorates its effects.
Australian authors David Gillespie and Peter Dingle, and international ones like Robert Lustig and John Yudkin,will provide interested readers with evidence in support of these statements. If you want to avoid the evils of fructose, do not buy any processed food with more than 2% “sugars” (about 1% fructose). Yogurt is OK to about 7% because of the lactose based content.

I endorse Johnn31’s comments.
Product labelling MUST show the percentage (ie gms per 100 gms of product) of Fructose.
Fructose is a poison and the only safe level to consume, other than in fruit is NIL.
The fibre in fruit (and different fruits have different amounts of fibre) ensures that the fruit is carried further down the gut before it is processed. Here it is processed as the human body always intended Fructose to be. If you take in Fructose in a form which allows it to be processed higher in the gut it acts as a poison to your system. This type of poison is slow acting and may take up to 30 years to show up or kill you; to this extent it is a bit like tobacco. And the “junk-food” companies are playing the same tricks that the tobacco industry played. By the time severe restrictions were placed upon it the damage was done and we are now all paying the price. Asbestos was another of those where industry glossed over the problems, made their money and then ran off laughing while the population suffer and pay the costs involved. I think Coal is going to be another, to say nothing of fracking.

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Copy from the related Sugar Labelling thread:

jepc>> …most dried fruits are so high in FRUCTOSE that you should not be consuming them.

jpec>>The fibre in fresh fruit (and different fruits have different amounts of fibre) ensures that this fresh fruit is carried further down the gut before it is processed. Here it is processed as the human body always intended.

This is a bit inconsistent- the only thing removed from fruit to make dried fruit is water. The fibre and sugars remain… so how is dried fruit any worse than fresh fruit?

In any case, I have eaten a large amount of both fresh and dried fruit all my life, and certainly for the easily remembered past 50 years, and reckon I’m still pretty healthy - not fat, low BP, low resting HR etc. No doubt the amount of exercise I do helps :slight_smile: I’ve just eaten about 150g of dried (home grown) apricots, after a 2 hour 50km mountain bike ride.

Also, suggestions that over 10g of fructose/day ends up as fatty deposits on the internal organs is rather alarmist, various refereed studies show that ~30-60% of fructose is converted to glucose, see tabulated results here:

Significant proportions are converted to lactate and liver glycogen as well. Eat too much of it, or any other sugar, fat etc, and you will put on fat deposits. Studies regarding the bad effects of fructose have generally been in subjects who have a high carb/sugar intake anyway, and as shown in various studies, it is hard to separate the effects of fructose from the overall high sugar intake.

Some non-alarmist reading matter:

Part of the conclusion from the 2nd reference:

While studies with combinations of fructose and glucose are consistent with a general effect of carbohydrate, fructose alone appears to have aberrant behavior and one might speculate that the system evolved to deal with the two sugars together, consistent with the general absence of pure fructose outside of experimental trials.

From the perspective of ideas in the popular media, however, there is little relation between fructose metabolism and ethanol metabolism and it is unreasonable to refer to fructose as a toxin.

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Oh dear oh dear!
There is no such thing as “Natural Sugar” any more than there is such a thing as “Natural Arsenic”.
Sugar is sugar and most dried fruits are so high in FRUCTOSE that you should not be consuming them.

It doesn’t matter where the sugar came from (“natural”, “unnatural”, “added” “fake” “kaffafee”) if it is Fructose it is poison and should not be present in processed food.

Product labelling MUST show the percentage (ie gms per 100 gms of product) of Fructose.
Fructose is a poison and the only safe level to consume, other than in fresh fruit is NIL.
The fibre in fresh fruit (and different fruits have different amounts of fibre) ensures that this fresh fruit is carried further down the gut before it is processed. Here it is processed as the human body always intended.

If you take in Fructose in a form which allows it to be processed higher in the gut it acts as a poison to your system. This type of poison is slow acting and may take up to 30 years to show up or kill you; to this extent it is a bit like tobacco.

The “junk-food” companies are playing the same tricks that the tobacco industry played. By the time severe restrictions were placed upon it the damage was done and we are now all paying the price. Asbestos was another of those where industry glossed over the problems, made their money and then ran off laughing while the population suffer and pay the costs involved. I think Coal is going to be another, to say nothing of fracking.

Yes there is such thing as natural arsenic. Arsenic occurs naturally in most soils, resulting from the weathering of parent materials/underlying geology which also contains arsenic.

Arsenic is also present in organic and inorganic fertilisers which when applied to soils, increases the levels above that which naturally occurs in that soil. Likewise from ground and surface waters containing natural forms of arsenic.

Arsenic can also occur from industrial processes resulting in land contamination when it is released to the wider environment from the process.

The US FDA has information on arsenic.

Also natural sugars exist.

Also, the human body makes sugars. Even if one does not consume any sugar…which is impossible unless one only lives on water, enzymes in fhe mouth and digestive tract convert starches into sugars. These being carbohydrase or amylase enzymes. These sugars when metabilised, are no different to those which are present in foods one consumes. An interesting exercise to do is to place a small amount (say teaspoon size) high starch food in ones mouth, chew it and leave it there for a few minutes or more. The starch will turn from tasting ‘floury’ to slightly sweet. This demonstrates the process of the enzymes breaking down fhe starch into sugar. This is something on of our lecturers at uni did as part of a pracs (from memory cornstarch was used) and was quick an interesting and easy experiment to do.

@gordon, the problem with dried fruit is not the dried fruit persay, it’s the ability to consume far more quantities of fhe stuff than would be the case if fresh hydrated forms of fruit are consumed. Take a small box of sultanas for example, like those used in children lunchboxes, there is a similar amount of fruit (and natural sugars, fibre etc) as a large bunch of grapes. But one doesn’t often sit down an eat a huge bunch of grapes in one sitting, but can easily do so with a dehydrated/dried form. This leads to overconsumption.

The same applies to fruit juices whereby a glass of juice may contain numerous more equilivant fruit than fresh fruit. One could drink say 3-4 oranges in 250mL glass but wouldn’t necessary eat the same amount of fruit in one sitting…leading to overconsumption of the fruits sugars and nurients.

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That’s true to some extent, and certainly could be a problem for people with a sedentary lifestyle. However, when our fruit trees are loaded, I have no trouble eating a kilogram of fresh cherries, plums or apricots in a day, without the ill effects those who don’t eat much fruit might experience :wink:

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True, but it is highly likely that you would have had a full feeling after eating a significant quantity of fresh fruit, most likely causing a reduction of food consumed at the next meal. Eating dried fruit one is still likely to consume the same amount of food at the next meal substantially increasing overall calorie intake for that day.

It is also worth noting that the calorie density (calories per unit weight) of dried fruit is number of times higher than fresh fruit as well.

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