Fructose Linked to Obesity, Diabetes

Engineer-Poet writes "Eurekalert announces that researchers at the University of Florida have demonstrated a link between fructose consumption and metabolic syndrome (a precursor of adult-onset diabetes). In part, it makes you feel hungrier than you should be. This is particularly bad for Americans, because sugar price supports have created a market for fructose as a substitute in almost everything. Dr. Richard J. Johnson says, "If you feed fructose to animals they rapidly become obese, with all features of the metabolic syndrome, so there is this strong causal link. And a high-fructose intake has been shown to induce certain features of the metabolic syndrome pretty rapidly in people." Eating fructose causes a rise in uric acid in the bloodstream. Uric acid in turn blocks the action of insulin, which regulates metabolism (including uptake by fat cells). Elevated uric acid levels can eventually cause features of metabolic syndrome, including high blood pressure, obesity and high cholesterol. The good news is that the action of uric acid can be blocked with drugs, and we can change what we eat. If enough of us boycott fructose and corn-syrup products, the market will respond."

Comments

Free market

[77Punker]

This is all just another reason that the free market should be left to do its job without politicians mucking in it. My dad used to run a few soft drink factories and he would've liked to use real sugar, but it would be impossible to do so because it's too damn expensive.

Go to the store (in the USA) and find a soft drink made with real sugar. Now look at the price tag. Odds are it costs twice as much as its corn-syrup and diet competitors, just for the cost of sugar alone! Where's the freedom, both for the business and the consumer?

Re:Free market

[nathanh]

This is all just another reason that the free market should be left to do its job without politicians mucking in it.

Yeah, damn politicians, always mucking with the free market. They should leave it alone and it would work just like Adam Smith describes here:

Classical free market economic theory originated with Adam Smith and David Ricardo in the early days of the Industrial Revolution (late 1700s, early 1800s). It was intended to apply under certain conditions and certain conditions only, namely:

(1) All business was small-to-medium sized and entrepreneurial (not corporate). -- http://www.gwb.com.au/gwb/news/economic/280198.htm l

Wait a minute. Did Adam Smith's free market only work for non-corporate business? So what happens when society is infested with corporations, some of them being multi-national corporations? I wonder what else Adam Smith had to say:

(2) The free market was defined as a market of potentially unlimited numbers of these small/medium sized businesses, competing on a more or less equal footing, in a market which newcomers could freely enter, and in which none could control prices.

Hrm, but how could you stop a corporation with monopoly power from controlling prices? You'd almost need to have a larger and more powerful organisation that represented the will of the people. An organisation that had the power to punish corporations for attempting to control prices. I wonder what you might call a large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people? What other fascinating insights did Adam Smith have with regards to the free market:

(3) The economy was national; capital must not flow freely across national borders or the theory did not hold (Ricardo)(5).

Wow, that's a mighty big limitation on the allegedly "free" market. It's almost as if the free market doesn't work when considered in a global scale. I suppose you'd say that Adam Smith's theory didn't work in the event of globalization of the free market. Fortunately that large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people would surely stop capital from flowing freely across national borders. What more can Adam Smith teach us about the free market!

(4) The market had to be supervised by a sovereign government which (a) protected the public interest (b) made sure all businesses played by the rules (c) provided a stable currency, and (d) ran public utilities, which were regarded as not profitable for private enterprise.

Well fuck me dead with a barbed wire back scratcher. It seems Adam Smith supported the idea of a sovereign government - that was the word I was searching for to describe that large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people - to ensure that the free market ran smoothly.

But what the hell would Adam Smith know about a free market. I am intrigued by your ideas that politicians should stop "mucking" with the free market and I would like to subscribe to your (non-union child labour produced) newsletter.

Re:boycotts are useless

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Think about it: That's the same thing.

"Holy crap, I won't buy that!" is the same as "Holy crap, I'll buy something different!"

Re:Corn Syrup...

[Otter]

I totally concur, and would add that an additional effect of putting sugar in nearly everything is that the North American palate has now shifted to demand increasing sweetness in absolutely everything.

Cutting back on fructose because a couple of studies in rats with a link to "metabolic syndrome" (which the FDA is still reluctant to call a real disease) may not be a bad thing but cutting back on processed foods in general would probably be more effective.

I agree exactly. But we disagree with the article.

[Futurepower(R)]

I agree exactly. But the article linked by Slashdot and the second article to which I linked is saying that fructose is bad, period. The entire animal kingdom has a history of tens of millions of years of eating fruit. And now fruit is poisonous to some degree? Something is wrong somewhere.

The entire reason plants invented fruit is to encourage animals to eat it and drop the seeds somewhere where another fruit tree will grow. Is this alliance suspect?