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

Let me be the first to say...

[baldass_newbie]

That I welcome our Fructose Overlords.

(BTW, anyone else skeptical of getting info from a Dr. Dick Johnson?)

Corn Syrup...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Take a look at the labels of just about any processed food product made today: Corn syrup. This is fructose.

Now if we could get the sugar lobbies to allow the lowering of cane sugar import tariffs, we might see healthier food.

Re:Corn Syrup...

[failedlogic]

I believe you are writing about the tarrifs from an American perspective. I believe most of your carbonated beverages (Pespi, Coke) use corn syrup. I live in Canada and our pop is made with Cane sugar.

I think the larger problem is the amount of sugar in food today. Pepsi and Coke have 40 grams of sugar per can. If people want to drink Pepsi or Coke I have no problem (I do on occasion), but this is way too much sugar. (This says nothing of the health risks of artificial sweetened version of popular soft drinks. I know plenty of people who react to Aspartame, I know I do).

Some processed foods also have corn syrup added: Salami, other cold-cut meats. Some packaged chicken also has some I believe (at least in Canada, depends on the 'brand' of chicken purchased).

When you combine the effects of the high-sugar North American diet and lack of activity with a high fructose intake you have a problem. If you eat within the food 'pyramid' and eat 3 or 4 fruit servings a day there is no harm.

When you combine the

Re:Corn Syrup...

[Pierre]

i used to work at a corn syrup factory.

all corn syrup is not fructose - in fact it's converted to fructose.

corn starch can be converted into many different forms of sugar. dextrose, maltodextrose etc.... heck we can make ethanol with it (yum).

it's converted into fructose because customers want fructose.

fructose in mass quanties may indeed not be good for you (fructose occurs naturally in honey, beets (i think) and probably in other places). i wonder if this is true of other sugars (sucrose, dextrose, etc...)

anyway point is corn syrup != fructose

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

[MrSnivvel]

Here are a few links for those who are unaware of the price supports the U.S. Govt. gives out:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0498d.asp
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3669
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108 &subsecID=900003&contentID=253294

Typical attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

The good news is that the action of uric acid can be blocked with drugs

Shouldn't that read: now we know the cause of the problem is fructose, we can avoid consuming too much of it?

Christ, typical fucking Yanks. "I'm fat, but instead of eating fewer double-happy-McLard-cheeseburgers, I'll take diet pills and throw up after eating!"

Re:Typical attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

As a skinny American who goes out of his way to watch what crap he eats, let me just say, it's not at all easy. The VAST MAJORITY of food in the grocery stores here is unfit for human consumption, and the labeling of this food is often intentionally deceptive. The goal of labels is not to inform consumers, it is to sell products, and the only agency responsible for regulating this, the FDA, is in the pocket of the food companies and rarely even enforces its own policies.

Since the actual content of food here is so non-obvious, it takes a huge amount of awareness, ingredient reading, and careful research about the contents of each common ingredient, just to monitor what toxins go into ones diet here. It's nowhere near as easy as just not going to McDonalds, when the vast majority of foods in the grocery stores are of identical content. This situation has grown progressively worse, starting around the 50s, scaling up in the 70s, and then skyrocketing in the last 10-20 years.

Re:What about the underweight?

[rocjoe71]

Well part of the issue they raise is that your uric acid levels will increase too, and that's not good for anybody-- unless you'd like a searing case of gout to go with your "bulking up"!

You know 15 minutes a day using a pair of 5kg/10lb. dumbells in a series of exercises can give you tone and make you look much more solid. 30 minutes a day and you can definitely put on some muscle mass. Keep the reps low and do a circuit of different exercises several times. You don't even have to do the exercise all at once, you can get 2-3 cycles done during the commercial breaks of most network TV shows. Plus lean muscle mass is going to be alot healthier for you than flabby fat that puts you at risk of heart disease/stroke as well as the already mentioned diabetes.

Re:What about the underweight?

[Matt Perry]

Or will this eventually make my heart stop, or cause me some other unwanted health issues?

If you start having too much uric acid in your bloodstream you might also start developing kidney stones. Not a fun thing to try to pee out of your system.