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Fructose Linked to Obesity, Diabetes 115

Posted by samzenpus from the fruit-sugars-bad-for-you dept.
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."
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Fructose Linked to Obesity, Diabetes More

Fructose Linked to Obesity, Diabetes

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  • Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Funny)

    by baldass_newbie ( 136609 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @10:20PM (#14314251) Homepage Journal
    That I welcome our Fructose Overlords.

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

  • Corn Syrup... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @10:23PM (#14314262) Homepage
    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.

    • Free market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <(ude.tniophgih) (ta) (40rcneps)> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @10:28PM (#14314288)
      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 (Score:4, Informative)

        by MrSnivvel ( 210105 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @11:18PM (#14314564) Homepage

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

      • Re:Free market (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 )
        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?

        Interesting. For what it is worth, the Hawaiian sugar cane business has been decimated, all the large suger cane plantations went out of business during the 90s - prior to that it was a major cash crop there (the most profitable one was and still is pakalolo). So, somehow the price supports were not enough for that portion of the industry.
        • i'd imagine they could have been what killed the industry, if they can't supply enough for the demand, price will go up, and the companies wanting it will probably look at something else (in this case fructose). This will cause the demand to spike down rapidly completely decimating the industry because all the sudden they have little to no demand. I have yet to find cookies that use real sugar in most supermarkets, its usually either a substitue sweeteneer (like Splenda, yuk), or fructose. the price supp
        • Probably because sugar has been demonized for so long. Everybody moved to artificial sweeteners, which can be REALLY bad for you, or things that didn't have sugar in them. I remember an exercise in elementary school where we were to classify foods into wise, occasional and unwise snacks based on the position of "sugar" in their ingredients lists. Naturally the ones that had "corn syrup" instead of "sugar" got listed as wise snacks.

          Fructose isn't bad for you either -- in fruit. Yeah, drinking corn syrup

      • Re:Free market (Score:3, Informative)

        by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 )
        Based on what I've seen and heard, the price you pay for pop in the store has little to do with the manufacturing cost and much more to do with market forces: they *can* charge you $X, so they do. As such, if the sugar-based pop is more expensive, it's much more likely to be either a scale issue, a transportation issue, or just another market issue.

        If I remember correctly, a pound of sugar is a couple bucks. (I might not be remembering right, though.) That's about 2,200 grams of sugar for around two dolla
        • If I remember correctly, a pound of sugar is a couple bucks. (I might not be remembering right, though.)

          A 25 lb bag of sugar at Wal-Mart is $10. That's $0.40/lb.

          40 grams cost 3.5 cents. At 40 grams per 12 ounce can, a 2 liter should have 225 grams of sugar. That would cost 20 cents.

          • 40 grams cost 3.5 cents. At 40 grams per 12 ounce can, a 2 liter should have 225 grams of sugar. That would cost 20 cents.

            I pay between $1 and $2/2l bottle, so that's an extra 10-25% cost. What do I care about that? I'll make it up by buying less food.

      • Re:Free market (Score:2, Insightful)

        by nathanh ( 1214 )

        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:

        • Corporations are artificial government creations that are granted special rights that often superseded the rights of the individuals that work there and consume their products.

          This is another example of government interference in the market place. Smith would not have approved of the special citizen rights granted to corporations. If there is not an individual accountable for the actions of the business then who do you arrest when a business kills someone?

          If you want to get a quick understanding of Adam Smi
      • Dublin Dr. Pepper (in Texas) still uses pure cane sugar. And the stuff is the nectar of gods!

        High fructose corn syrup tastes like shit, and it's in nearly everything we (Americans) eat... but it doesn't have to be. The Dr. Pepper bottling company that makes Dublin Dr. Pepper can't make enough to meet demand, and still the price of them is reasonable.

    • Re:Corn Syrup... (Score:4, Informative)

      by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @10:37PM (#14314340)
      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... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Otter ( 3800 )
        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.

    • Re:Corn Syrup... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pierre ( 6251 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @11:19PM (#14314570)
      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

      • it's converted into fructose because customers want fructose.

        Really? I can't think of anyone who has gone out of their way to get a fructose-sweetened product over one sweetened with another kind of sugar. Of course, when *every* mainstream product uses high-fructose corn syrup, there isn't much in the way of choice. Fortunately there are specialty stores and smaller brands that do use other kinds of sugars, but you have to make a special effort (and sometimes spend more) to get those.

        I always assumed th

        • it's converted into fructose because customers want fructose.

          Really? I can't think of anyone who has gone out of their way to get a fructose-sweetened product over one sweetened with another kind of sugar. Of course, when *every* mainstream product uses high-fructose corn syrup, there isn't much in the way of choice.

          I'm guessing that the "customers" that the earlier poster is referring to is the food manufacturing industry and not us end consumers down at the supermarket.

          I don't think it should come

        • Don't forget we are starting with corn starch in this example. So the customers in question have the choice between dextrose, maltodextrose, ethanol, or fructose. Given that menu, they chose fructose.

          There is also the question of who the customers are. They are not the consumers, who would go out of their way for a real sucrose product, but are, in fact, the food marketing companies. If fructose products can undercut the sales of sucrose products, they will win the market, regardless of the minority tha

      • Fruits and vegetables contain a micture of dextrose, saccharose and fructose.

    • Re:Corn Syrup... (Score:3, Informative)

      by orasio ( 188021 )
      And Brazilians and (in a much smaler scale) Uruguayans, too, because we could sell you cane, and employ people in poor areas.
      We make cane sugar here. Using corn for sugar is a waste.
      You need fertile fields to make corn, and it's a good crop to feed people.
      Sugar cane grows in the worts fields, needs much less care, doesn't need you to use your fertile lands that could be used for actual food, and so is much less expensive to produce.

      Here in Uruguay, Pepsi is sweetened with sugar cane, and Coca-Cola, with cor
      • The US overproduces so much corn that some people burn it to heat their homes.

        Cutting HCFS demand would probably lead to more of it being burned as motor fuel (ethanol). This is a wasteful process with a very poor EROEI; the most optimistic calculations thus far show that you need at least 6/10 of a gallon-equivalent of other fuel to get a gallon of ethanol out (and the usual figure is more like 3/4).

        This is one of the reasons I wrote this rant about ethanol [blogspot.com] (and also a FAQ entry [blogspot.com] on it).

    • Yeah, cane sugar rocks?
      Or you guys could stop eating sugar, I guess most artificiall sweeteners are better, I didn't ate them for quite some time but then I started, a very recent (2004 or so) study suggest you might actually increase cancer risks with aspartame (the old mentions of this where only bullshit.) and I think you could get some urine blader(spelling) troubles from acesulphame-k (spelling..). Best thing is of course to don't consume those either, you can go a long way only from eating often and g
  • Kool Aid is much cheaper than pop and doesn't make you belch. Maybe it's healthier, too, because it uses table sugar (sucrose).

    • Re:Kool Aid (Score:3, Informative)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 )
      Careful here, sucrose is broken down in the body to roughly equal parts of glucose and fructose.
    • > Kool Aid is much cheaper than pop and doesn't make you belch. Maybe it's healthier, too, because it uses table sugar (sucrose).

      And at Only Pennies a Glass, you can't afford not to drink it.

    • Or whatever other type of sugar you want! You can still by Kool Aid packets, which don't have sugar added to them.

      Sucrose is broken down into equal parts fructose and glucose so it's not that great. But, you could substitute any kind of sugar alternative you want though. Like a mixture of sugar alcohols. Some Xylitol for healthy bones and teeth. :)

  • Long Term Data? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anti_Climax ( 447121 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @10:29PM (#14314293)
    I'd be interested to see how the prevelance of obesity and diabetes compares against the average intake of fructose in americans over the last few decades. Perhpas it would strengthen that "casual relationship" they've found.
    • Breaking news! Sugar makes you fat, and can lead to Diabetes! Also apperently if you feed animals sugar, as opposed to what they normally eat they rapidly put on weight.

      I'm sure there is actually interesting work actually being done here on the Uric acid pathway, but the headline inspires a yawn, and the summary is just a place for the submitter to air his personal economic pet peive.
    • I'm not sure if there's stats here about how fructose intake (and sugar intake in general) have increased, but the CDC has a site about obesity trends [cdc.gov] that has a PowerPoint presentation you can download to see how obesity has sharply risen in the past twenty years.

      The site Ban Trans Fats [bantransfats.com] also has the data for 1985-2001 on the web page I just linked so that you can see the maps without PowerPoint. It's insane. In 1985, the fattest states had overweight people making up 10-14% of their population. About ha

    • Perhpas it would strengthen that "casual relationship" they've found.


      The link is CAUSAL not CASUAL. Casual is very different from causal. Causal means causes. Pretty strong meaning there.

  • Typical attitude (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @10:42PM (#14314361)

    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!"

    • You missed the "and we can change what we eat" part.

    • Re:Typical attitude (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22, 2005 @04:50AM (#14315793)
      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.
      • Whole Foods (organic grocery chain) makes it a -lot- easier for me. I was shocked when I discovered about a year ago that I could not find any bread -without- corn syrup at the local grocery. When I looked at Whole Foods, I couldn't find any bread -with- corn syrup. It's rather nice being able to ignore the labels when shopping and know that whatever I grab will probably be healthy, corn-syrup free and taste great. (and be expensive, sigh) I've lost 30 pounds this year.
        • I wish I could buy bread at Whole Foods, but anything I buy from there just doesn't last for me. Even if I make two sandwiches every day, the loaf goes bad before I finish. I also don't like the way they freeze bread. I end up buying Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat bread. It uses brown sugar for the sweetener (which I don't see the use of) and no corn syrup.

          Truly natural, organic bread just doesn't last long enough for me. You really do lose weight cooking everything for yourself with all-natural ingredi
          • Very good point about 'preservation'.

            I've actually had some organic produce items last about 2-3 times LONGER on the shelf than the other stuff. A lot of organic stuff doesn't have as much preservatives, so there are lifetime concerns. The Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat you buy is among the best. I'm a sucker for Martin's Potato Roll bread, tho :)

            I've had great success with the Martin's bread shelf life. I've had organic apples in my fridge for 4 days without dying, versus 3 days with the others which sh
            • Good god, where do you buy your apples? I don't think I ever bought any apple that lasted less than a week and a half, organic or not. They usually last longer (if I don't eat them earlier that is)
          • I lost weight because of portion control. But less oil/butter/rice/pasta/bread was the biggest help. You can eat a ton of mushrooms, veggies, steamed carrots, and a fair amount of meat without inhaling calories, and I found a salad I don't get bored with. (Lots of salt and pepper, and a drizzle of expensive olive oil)

            Since I started putting bread in the fridge, I've had no problems with it going bad quickly. After a couple weeks the bread will go stale.

            To another reply, apples last forever in the fridge.
          • Don't know how it is where you live, but in Hawaii, all bread seems to go bad within a week because of the humidity. I solve the problem by putting the bread in the refrigerator. I guess most things can be preserved if you can figure out how to do it.
      • Agreed with both parents. An idea that just hit me, usually in the u.s. metro areas there are stores that cater to the recently immigrated population... hmm soy milk is really starting to sound good when it's not coming from the mob trough.
      • I am not in the USA so wouldn't know, but couldn't you just eat more organic foods? they do still have 'stuff' added but they have LESS added than their relevant equivalents. Although in Britain buying organic means paying more for products that may have travelled further to reach the shelf.
        • I dunno what the problem is. I eat vegetables, an occasional piece of fruit, a bit of chopped meat in a salad or soup once a week and then rice or sugar-free bread for carbohydrates. Sometimes a piece of cheese, good stuff like fresh mozzarella, or some soy stuff. I've been the same body fat ratio for my entire adult life (15 years). There's virtually no preservatives or crap in what I eat. I can get what I need from most any grocery store, and my last bloodwork came back from the doctor with everythin
      • Thankfully places like Whole Foods exist for some of us. For an elite few in North Carolina, we have Earth Fare [earthfare.com]. Earth Fare was one of the first to ban anything with high fructose corn syrup from their shelves.

        Harris Teeter, also isolated to the mid-southeast region, has a growing selection of organic products as well as their own "HT Naturals" line. I vote with my wallet and buy 99% of my stuff from the organic lines. "No ecosystem is without waste", however, so some things I buy aren't organic, but I
    • Fucking Redcoats, with their coats that are all red and walking in formation with their damn inaccurate muskets.

      i think shows the perception of the world we live in where "drugs fix everything" not that "americans like to eat" but interpret anyway you want you fucking redcoat (seriously Yank??)
    • Suppose that magic pill X and ascetic self-denial Y (excercise, refusing food, etc) have identical health-promoting effect. That's quite plausible, given sufficiently knowledgable science. Why do people constantly hate on X and praise Y? The only functional difference is that X is pleasant and Y isn't. Thus I conclude, what we have here is no more and no less than the old puritan idea that pleasure is sinful and pain is holy. It's not the fat or the fructose you hate, it's the burger.

      • Because there has been much more study of exercise and diet than there will ever be of any such magic pill.

        Even after 100+ years of its wide-spread use, we still don't know all the side-effects of Aspirin [wikipedia.org]. Why should we expect that any new miracle cure offered by the pharmaceutical industry will offer us a simple, side-effect-free solution to over-eating?

        • "Why should we expect that any new miracle cure offered by the pharmaceutical industry will offer us a simple, side-effect-free solution to over-eating?" - why shouldn't it?

          Note that dieting is hardly free from side-effects! There are long and short term risks to health even without "overdosing" and going anorexic. Even more so from fad diets. My friend got gout from doing the low-carb diet; that's incurable. Similar disclaimers apply to excercise. When they say "consult your doctor first", they mean it!

          Bas

          • "Why should we expect that any new miracle cure offered by the pharmaceutical industry will offer us a simple, side-effect-free solution to over-eating?" - why shouldn't it?

            Well, for starters, because science-wise we hardly know anything about how the body works. A lot of current pills are on the order of dragging a screwdriver around on your motherboard to see what makes your computer behave better. Very, very crude. And probably with lots of side-effects, most of which may be too subtle for us to n

            • Sweet! I'll get out there and bag a mastadon on my way to the office this morning.

              Mmm, tasty mastadon burgers.

              • Exactly. Meat good, but you better run around for a while to simulate actually having to go catch it. I don't mean jogging. Vegetables good, but go for a good walk every day to simulate having to go work in the fields. Sugar good, but don't forget to simulate having to fight for it, and chew on a stick for a few hours to get the effect of having to chew it out of the cane.
  • Glycemic Index is a measure of how fast/high blood sugar (dextrose) rises after a given food is consumed. IIRC, fructose is 36 on the scale that uses white-bread=100 (dextrose=131).

    I'm not saying the study is wrong, but it does beg the question -- what would be different with dextrose overdosing? BTW, I don't believe that high-fructose corn-syrup is more than ~30% fructose (bal dextrose).

    • I'm not a biologist, but I suspect the answer is that these are two fairly unrelated effects, in two different metabolic pathways.
    • The study which mentions fructose linked to obsesity and diabetes aren't that "new", I've heard it a while back (months, not years), since then yet another study have shown NO link between GI and insuline response (and similair things), when you counted out a bunch of factors you ended up that it's as simple as to high energy intake lowers insuline response, no matter the source.

      GI is way to overhyped aswell, eat more of raw food and less of processes, don't care if it's fructose (from real fruit that is ev
    • One possible reason for this which I've heard about is that yes, blood sugar levels raises slow of fructose, but that is because it has to be broken down in the liver before if can reach the blood and if the liver aren't full of carbs it's likely to just stay there instead. And then the reason that it skips two of the regular carb steps then metabolised so the body doesn't react on it like it does with other carbohydrates.
    • The GI measures glucose levels in the blood since insulin used by cells to stuff glucose through their cell membranes. The problems from diabetes come when glucose gets stuck in cell memberanes and becomes sorbitol. Fructose, however, is metabolized differently and has different effects on the body. Most fructose isn't converted to glucose, which is why fructose has a very low GI.

      You can read more about how fructose is metabolized in the body and its potential negative effects here [westonaprice.org] and here. [drkaslow.com]
  • So as someone with incredibly high (I'd even go at far as saying overactive) metabolism and who is way underweight because of it, should I start loading my diet with lots of fructose and corn-syrup so I actually gain a little mass?

    Or will this eventually make my heart stop, or cause me some other unwanted health issues?
    • Eat more. If you make a concerted effort to increase your portion sizes, you'll gain weight.

      I was 155 a year ago, and I'm 185 now. It's just a change in the mind, and a certain amount of adaptation of your stomach (which varies the point at which it registers 'full' depending on how much you've been eating lately)

    • Re:What about the underweight? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rocjoe71 ( 545053 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @11:40PM (#14314668) Homepage
      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? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Matt Perry ( 793115 ) <perry.matt54@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Thursday December 22, 2005 @01:41AM (#14315225)
      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 [wikipedia.org]. Not a fun thing to try to pee out of your system.
    • The chances that you do really have an "incredibly high metabolism" are very slim, you more likely just eat to little even if you don't think that. And gaining loads of fat weight by eating crap won't help that. Just start to eat more real food on regular hours and more often.
    • So as someone with incredibly high (I'd even go at far as saying overactive) metabolism and who is way underweight because of it

      A sizeable number of american women are so underweight that their hair is falling out and their menstrual cycle is interrupted.

      However, I don't think I've ever met a single underweight american man, ever, in my entire life. We've reached a point where many americans have their perceptions so badly warped that they think that 185 lbs. is normal for a six foot tall man, when in real
      • I'm six foot tall, and every single time I maxed an army physical fitness test, I weighed right around 185. The military physical fitness standards assumed possible overweight for a six foot tall male started at about 192 for 18 year olds, and about 200 lbs. even for 30 year olds. Even that's just 'possibly' overweight, not guarenteed. At those numbers you tape the individual and do a body fat calculation to get a percentile instead of just relying on the scale, and some cases would tape above the mil spec
  • Fructose is the sugar in fruit. Is it intended that you don't eat fruit?

    Science if frequently arduous and sometimes boring. But over-selling is not an answer.
    • Fructose [wikipedia.org] facts. It seems that people who eat fructose should be careful that they get enough copper [wikipedia.org].

    • Fructose facts (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 )
      Corrected Link:

      Fructose [wikipedia.org] facts. It seems that people who eat fructose should be careful that they get enough copper [westonaprice.org].
    • Well, fruit has a whole bunch of nutrients to go with the fructose. It's one thing to eat a fruit-sized portion of fructose with the fruit -- it's another to extract another 30% from alternate sources and eat it with refined carbohydrates.

      Think of it this way: your body needs a certain amount of sodium to function, but if you eat too much, it'll cause you problems.
      • 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?
        • Are you surprised? Everyday some bullshit study comes out trying to tell everyone what is good and bad for you. Eggs have been eaten for thousands of years. Then they decided it is no good for you, people started eating the whites only, or switching to fake eggs. FAKE EGGS??? What the fuck is wrong with people who by into this bullshit. The study was most likely funded by the Egg-Beaters parent company in an effort to increase sales. Then finally someone not on the take and with some credibility studied the
        • No, it's not "poisonous", but your body doesn't handle it all that well if you get excessive amounts. Might even be so that together with other sugars (as in fruit) the body can handle it but not as good if it's ONLY fructose.
    • Fructose are called "fruit sugar" here in sweden, but that doesn't mean all sugars in fruits are frucose. Fruits contains a mixture of frucose, saccharose and dextrose. Also one fruit doesn't contain that many carbohydrates and often you spread the intake over the day, they also do contain some nutrients of value which softdrinks and candy doesn't, and also nothing says the whole product must be bad becaues one of the ingredients are. To stop eating fruit are just retarded, just stay away from processed foo
    • As per the subject, fruits have a lot less sugar than you think. [geocities.com]

      The problem is that the average American eats a lot more sugar than they used to. [jacn.org] Americans eat an estimated 20-34 teaspoons of added sugar in the food and drink every day. [mendosa.com] While you probably shouldn't be chugging apple juice all day, it would be a far sight better for you than chugging Coke all day. However, there's no need to avoid whole fruits whatsoever. Go wild.
    • Fructose is the sugar in fruit.

      Well, that's not EXACTLY accurate, but close enough.

      Different fruits have different mixtures of sugar. Peaches, for example, are primarily sucrose (plain old "table sugar") naturally as I recall.

  • No more half-gallons of orange juice every couple days. Better lay off the egg-nog, too.

  • If enough of us boycott fructose and corn-syrup products, the market will respond.

    Yea good luck with that one. I try to prepare as much of my food as I can myself, to eliminate HFCS, but it's not economically feasable for a single guy who wants to spend his free time doing something other than cooking and/or "protesting".

    I can't stand HFCS. I drink Diet Coke because the real thing started giving me heartburn when they dropped Cane Sugar.

    I can't realistically eliminate it from my diet until I can either aff

  • The problem is we're simply not designed to process the amount of sugar in the average north american diet (sugar, sucrose, fructose or othewise).

    Apparently the average american consumes around 150 pounds of sugar per year. That's a whole person worth of sugar each year. Now I'm sure that includes lots of sugar alternatives, but the point remains that sweetners have invaded almost all mass produced processed foods in the western diet.

    You can see the problem when you consider the diet of pre-industrial man.
  • The basis of Atkins diet is the drastic reduction of sugar in it's various forms from your diet. Practically, every word that ends with "...ose" (fructose, lactose etc) is sugar. Dr. Atkins started his campaign against the mass consumtion of sugars in cabonated drinks, refined carbohidrates, starches etc back in the 70's. This is one of the reasons that the interested industries did everything in their powers to stop his research and promoted a campaign of ridiculling his claims. I can tell you that after e
    • I've always have extreme difficulty keeping my weight down in spite of exercise and a "balanced" diet. When I hit 230 lbs and realized I was a good candidate for diabetes, I began a low carb diet. It worked pretty well for over a year, and I lost about 20 pounds. I'm pretty positive my body was somewhat insulin resistant, and a low-carb diet was the first diet that ever made me feel healthier.

      Then I decided to let it slide for a while as I made a big shift in my life and moved abroad. For two months I rever
      • Sugar is intended for our bodies to be a source of emergency energy, not a food staple. Fats, proteins, vitamins, amino acids, and minerals are essential for life; starches and sugars are not.

        This is absolutely not true. Glucose is required for many brain functions, and your body best metabolises sugars and starches. Though, it is true, what you say about not being required to _EAT_ sugars. Your body will happily produce it's own glucose from protein and fat.

        • "Though, it is true, what you say about not being required to _EAT_ sugars. Your body will happily produce it's own glucose from protein and fat."

          That is, of course, what I meant. There's no need to eat sugar so long as you eat enough protein and fat. (Heck, your body can even make glucose from alcohol.)
    • You're far better of following the South Beach Diet or just a simple Mediterranean diet. Atkins is way too heavy on saturated fats and tells people to shun healthy carbohydrates like fruits and whole grains. He's right about reducing sugar, but all my low-carb cookbooks I bought when on the South Beach Diet contain way too many unhealthy recipes that are just loaded in saturated fat and calories. I couldn't use 90% of them.

      Just use common sense and listen to what's been said by scientists for the past fe
    • The Atkins diet worked great for me. I lost about 50 pounds in less than a year. The big shocker was that it didn't cause problems with my gout. Everybody (except me) thought that it would make my gout worse, and I only expected it to stay the same, but it actually got better. Now I know why.... Fructose promotes uric acid levels. If only I'd known this back when I was first diagnosed!
  • I'm looking for the phrase "compared to", and I'm not seeing it. What was their control group? If it was rats recieving no sugar, for example, there's something seriously wrong with that study.
  • While pretty much every soda I've seen uses high fructose corn syrup, including Dr. Pepper, the original Dr. Pepper [dublindrpepper.com] using pure cane sugar is still being sold in certain stores. The most obvious locations being the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, TX, and the bottling plant in Dublin, TX. Check google for a store carrying this near you. In my opinion, it doesn't taste any different.
    • If you actually care about your health, stop drinking soda. Period. There's absolutely nothing good for you about it. From the phosphoric and carbonic acides to the caffeine to the overload of sugars, sodas are simply the worst thing in most American's diets.

      Drink water or maybe unsweetened tea if you must have caffeine. You'll find that fast food starts tasting unbearably sweet after a while once you stop being desensitised to sugars. (Seriously, McDonalds hamburger buns and Pizza Hut pizza sauce are

  • Bummer (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday December 22, 2005 @11:26AM (#14317646)
    News like that makes me want a coke (rum optional.)

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