2011-04-05

Some Thoughts On Fructose...

I've read and heard about some of the evils of fructose and how it can be detrimental to health and fitness along with any body composition changes you want to make... Here's some thoughts from an article that I've found... Just some more information for you to digest...

"Unlike glucose, which the body stores in various tissues for use as fuel, fructose is sent to the liver for processing. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California-San Francisco, has shown that it causes a buildup of fats there, triggering a host of health problems including diabetes, gout, and heart disease. Most worrisome, Lustig says, it can lead to insulin resistance, a hormonal snafu that makes you feel hungry even when you're full. "The way fructose is metabolized leads you to want to eat more," he explains—no great revelation to anyone who's ever slain a pint of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting.
Prior to 1900, about 4 percent of America's calories came from fructose, while today's teens get roughly 12 percent of their calories that way. Since sugar and corn syrup are equally efficient as fructose delivery vehicles, the obvious conclusion is simply that we're consuming too many sweets. As for the HFCS-vs.-sugar smackdown, you might as well debate whether whiskey is healthier than rum. "In high-enough quantities, they're both poison," says Lustig.
Some nutritionists have even argued that fructose should be regulated like a drug. Good luck with that. In 1986, around the time the beverage industry switched over to corn syrup, the FDA convened a task force to assess various sweeteners—including sugar and HFCS. It concluded that sugars "do not have a unique role in the etiology [origin] of obesity," and the issue of regulation hasn't come up since. (The report's lead author, Walter H. Glinsmann, is now a paid consultant for the Corn Refiners Association.)
Being against sweets "is like being against Christmas," Lustig concedes, but the Big Gulp portions and child-oriented marketing are bad news; Similac now sells a heavily sweetened infant formula, and a 2005 study linked obesity in Harlem toddlers to WIC-subsidized juice. A new study in the journal Obesity suggests that some beverage makers may even be using souped-up HFCS formulas. University of Southern California researchers analyzed sweet drinks from L.A. markets and fast-food joints, and found several (namely bottled Pepsi, Coke, and Sprite) with fructose-to-glucose ratios approaching 65/35—a result yet to be replicated widely.
Lustig recommends that the average adult consume no more than 50 grams of fructose per day—about five Mrs. Field's chocolate-chip cookies—and preferably not all at once. A 20-ounce soda containing 37.5 grams of fructose is "going to be a shock to the liver if you drink it all in one sitting," he says. Ideally, your fructose should come with plenty of fiber, which slows its entry into the bloodstream. One place where the two are ingeniously packaged together: an apple. Talk about a throwback."

Heres a link to the article:

http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/03/fructose-sugar-hfcs

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