Fructose, also known as fruit sugar, works like a fat in the body and has been implicated by US research as a significant cause of obesity.

Professor Robert Lustig is a paediatric endocrinologist at University of California, San Francisco. He has done extensive work in obesity research with children.

In an interview on the ABC Radio Health Report he discussed the effect fructose (or fruit sugar) has on the body Link.....

He emphasised that fructose is not like other types of sugar. Fructose is generally metabolised in liver and is harmful in two ways. It does not suppress the hunger hormone that is produced in the stomach. This hormone is known as ghrelin. Normally when the stomach is empty, ghrelin levels are quite high which makes you feel hungry. When you have eaten and the stomach processes the food the ghrelin levels drop and you feel full.

Unfortunately fructose doesn’t affect ghrelin and therefore cannot suppress hunger. So when children consume a drink with lots of fructose in it, it doesn’t stop them feeling hungry. This produces weight gain.

The second part of this is that fructose adversely affects the liver. Even though it is a carbohydrate fructose works like a fat when broken down in the body. Fructose and fat go straight from the blood stream to the liver and are not regulated by the hormone insulin. Whereas this is different to glucose, which is controlled by insulin when it goes into the liver. It is stored as a glycogen, which is an energy-storing form of glucose and is not harmful to the body. Fructose is metabolised differently. The process of metabolism of fructose is more toxic to the body and it can cause what is known as “fatty liver disease”. In this condition fat accumulates in the liver causing inflammation and liver disease.

One of the points made is that we should avoid drinking excessive quantities of sucrose i.e. table sugar which is in many drinks and is composed of glucose and fructose. This research is still relatively new but is concerning.

Certainly also when consuming sugars we should try and do it with fibre i.e. we should try to eat fruit rather than drink liquids containing sugars particularly fructose or sucrose – this includes limiting juices! More information from the University of California, San Francisco is here: Link....

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Next month we will provide information on “glycaemic index” and “glycaemic load” and what they mean for weight loss.