Is Fructose dangerous? More dangerous than sugar? I get asked that question often. Fructose is rapidly climbing the lengthy list of Delicious Diet-Destroying Food Ingredients We Should Avoid. Soon, it will join gluten, monosodium glutamate, and trans fats on a shorter list: Delicious Diet-Destroying Food Ingredients We Would Be Happy to Avoid If We Knew What the Hell They Are.
Should you avoid fructose? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
What is Fructose?
Fructose, the primary ingredient in high fructose corn syrup, is the natural sugar that makes fruits and some vegetables sweet. Fructose isn’t more dangerous than sugar; it IS sugar. If you stick to reasonable portions of fruits and vegetables, raw or lightly cooked, you can eat it with every meal. Fruits and veggies hold their fructose inside cell walls made from a tough coat of cellulose. They break down slowly, so the fructose dribbles out in tiny doses. Tiny, delicious, and harmless.
But this is America, where “tiny, delicious, and harmless” isn’t a description, it is an invitation – to convert ‘tiny’ into ‘supersized’, ‘delicious’ into ‘overwhelming’, and ‘harmless’ into ‘deadly’. Why? Profits. Any food that is supersized and overwhelmingly delicious will generate mammoth profits, and when money is being brought to the bank in wheelbarrows, no one cares about the ‘deadly’ part.
Too Much Fructose is Dangerous
Regardless of the sweet reassurances from food processors, fructose really can be deadly – more deadly than other sugars, such as glucose. Fructose is a major cause of non-alcoholic liver disease, which is an ugly way to die decades before you should. It’s also a major contributor to chronic metabolic disease, the underlying cause of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. As little as three cans of sugary soda a day can gradually cause irreparable damage to the liver, pancreas, and other organs. Finally (and possibly most insidiously), since fructose is metabolized only by the liver, it doesn’t fill us up the way that other sugars do. It leaves us hungry, which means that we keep eating.
Fructose is a simple sugar, one of several monosaccharides. However, it offers several advantages to processed food manufacturers: it is abundant, cheap, and very sweet – twice as sweet as glucose, its essential, slightly less toxic cousin. It’s the major component of high fructose corn syrup and is found almost everywhere, from the obvious: fruit juice and desserts – to the surprising: bread, tomato sauce, and low-fat everything. (Remember: low-fat food means high-fat you.)
Food Manufacturers Create an Addiction
Fructose wouldn’t be a problem if manufacturers used reasonable quantities, but they don’t. They add mega-doses of the stuff to almost every processed food imaginable, including canned soup, frozen entrees, deli meats, etc. They know that the more they add, the more addicts they will hook on their products. I’m serious: sugar is weakly addictive. It isn’t heroin but eventually, it will hook you. And the deeper the addiction, the more sugar-laden processed food a person will buy.
Want proof? Try to find an obese person who doesn’t love and crave sugar. You can’t. You will find very heavy people who do not like salty foods, bitter foods, sour foods, fermented foods, etc., but you will rarely find an obese person who doesn’t like sugar. It stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain that narcotics satisfy. Do you have an obese friend whose main weaknesses are pizza and pretzels? Some frozen pizza and pretzels have more sugar than salt, and the sweetest tasting sugar is… fructose.
The damage fructose causes is well understood: the liver metabolizes it as if it was alcohol. By the time fructose hits the liver it has effectively become alcohol, having been transformed by the body much as yeast transforms sugary grape juice into wine. A small portion is stored in the liver as fat, which gradually weakens the liver’s ability to function properly. One result: the pancreas produces too much insulin, which causes weight gain and high blood pressure. As years go by, the effects may cascade into diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
And now things get… touchy.
Do Our Bodies Need Fructose?
Fructose is metabolized in just two places in the body: in sperm cells, which use it for energy, and in the liver, which doesn’t need it. The sugar we need is glucose, which is used by every cell in the body to create energy. Fructose is sweeter than other sugars, but it is useless, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous to your health. It is the Eric Trump of sweeteners.
That said, should you avoid fructose or avoid all sugars? It’s a serious, hotly debated controversy, and the experts are divided into two camps. One side believes that since fructose is destructive to the liver, it is worse than glucose. The other side says that the studies are inconclusive and that all carbs are capable of damaging the liver. There’s an excellent, non-technical discussion of both sides of the debate in a Big Picture Science podcast – just skip through the first five minutes, which I’m pretty sure were designed to get slow-witted high school students to stop sexting.
Is Fructose Dangerous?
Both sides have good science behind them, and while the ‘Fructose is the biggest evil’ camp seems to be winning, I don’t care. The manufacturers of processed foods decide how much sugar to use in their products based on elaborate taste tests, not after consultations with cardiologists. Asking food manufacturers to decide which is healthier, fructose or glucose, is like asking Hannibal Lecter which is healthier, Girl Scout cookies or Girl Scouts.
The fructose argument is overwhelmed by the fact that every sugar additive can make us fat. Any type of added sugar. Fructose may indeed be worse than the rest, but so what? The others are close behind. Also, if you remove additives containing fructose from your diet, every type of added sugar will be gone. Honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, etc. – all are loaded with fructose. What’s left – fruits, vegetables, proteins, dairy, whole grains (not whole grain flour, whole grains), and no processed foods – define a perfect diet. It’s also the diet I’ve recommended for years.
Added Sugars are never healthy
You may be eating coconut sugar, brown rice sugar, Sugar-In-The-Raw, or some other ‘natural’ sweetener because you have read they are healthier than sugar. Sorry, they are not. Yuppie sweeteners may have a few additional minerals or other nutrients, but not enough to help your undernourished pet turtle. Certainly not enough to help a human being. The exotic sweeteners are all sugars, and they are all loaded with fructose.
To me, the debate about the evils of fructose vs. the evils of all sugars is like the question about the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. There may be an answer that is technically correct, but who cares? The answer won’t make us wiser. Or thinner, or healthier.
The only thing that counts is this: refined sugar – every type of refined sugar – is slow-acting poison. If you want to improve your life, avoid it passionately, the way that Hannibal Lecter would avoid tofu burgers. You’ll do fine.
LINKS:
Can you eat fruit on a low-carb diet?
Does Fructose Make Us Crave High-Calorie Foods? Maybe — But It May Not Matter.
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