Fructose And How It Can Affects Our Health
Sugar is a sweet and soluble carbohydrate that is placed in many processed foods and found naturally in foods such as fruits. In tropical areas of the Earth, near the equator, sugarcane stalks are planted. After 12 to 18 months, they are crushed and harvested for their sweet juice. They are then processed until crystals are left behind. These crystals are known as raw sugar, or sucrose. High-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, is another form of sweetener found in many sweetened beverages, desserts, and sugary cereals. Both high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose contain smaller glucose and fructose sugars in equal amounts. They are said to be chemically equivalent as well. According to Dr. Robert Lustig, an American pediatric endocrinologist, too much fructose consumption has been linked to diseases such as metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and fatty liver disease. He believes that only added sugars, which are the high levels of sucrose and HFCS, found in processed foods and sugary drinks are bad for us. He states that sugar found naturally in whole fruit and milk are good for us.
The fact that sugar is found in so many of the processed foods that we consume explains the dramatic increase of obesity rates in America over the past 20 years. Obesity rates of children have risen as well. Drinking large amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages has been linked to the rise in childhood obesity. On average, Americans consume 200 to 300 extra calories every day. The cells in our body use glucose as a source of energy. Glucose can be easily stored even when large amounts of it is ingested when we consume processed foods. Our cells cannot use fructose to make energy, so it ends up in the liver. The liver is then unable to break it down into energy or store it, so it becomes citrate. Citrate is the material for fat molecules, also known as triglycerides. An excessive amount of triglycerides in the blood can cause cardiovascular disease. The citrate that stays in the liver can lead to insulin resistance. This can cause type 2 diabetes. Consuming too much fructose can also lead to inflammation and high blood pressure. Dr. Lustig’s “toxic-sugar” theory is criticized by many experts. The fact that he is not a fructose researcher and most of his research follows children who are overweight are only some of the many reasons his ideas are denounced. He focused mostly on overweight children in the scientific papers he published, which is too narrow of a demographic. This can create confounding variables. In reality, overweight children can introduce bias because they already have a higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
People of different ages, gender, and weights should be used when testing the effects of fructose. He also did not generate his own experimental data based upon the scientific method. He only has one original scientific paper on the subject of fructose, which is based on only government-generated data. David Katz, an American Physician, says that taking such an extreme position and condemning fructose is wrong. John Sievenpiper, a nutrition scientist and researcher, has examined numerous fructose studies. He concluded that fructose does not cause the health problems that Lustig states they do. Sievenpiper claims that Lustig sensationalizes the effects of fructose and the models he creates are just hypotheses. Researchers have observed that the animal models that Lustig bases his hypothesis on are unreliable too. In these studies, researchers gave the animals three times the amount of fructose than the highest amount that humans consume. Carbohydrates are also processed differently in animals as well. Before the lecture that Dr. Lustig gave, only two mentioned fructose. Although Lustig’s theory garners a lot of criticism, there are many who support it. George Bray and Barry Popkin observed that the increase of obesity rates correlated to the increase in how much sugar we consumed. They think that these factors attribute to negative way our bodies metabolize fructose. Other research studies showed that adolescents and children who drank sodas, juices, and other sugary beverages are linked to obesity. Researchers Kimber Stanhope and Peter Havel conducted a study that observed overweight or obese people who consumed 25 percent of their calories from fructose, while another group consumed 25 percent of their calories from glucose, over a ten-week period. This caused their triglyceride levels to increase, and their insulin sensitivity to decrease. In animal studies, giving the animals higher levels of fructose lead to the development of metabolic syndrome.
In the Framingham Heart Study, researchers collected data in two ways: Physician-administered questionnaire and a self-administered food frequency questionnaire. It is important that the researchers collected the data themselves because it shows that they are dedicated to and knowledgable about the subject that they are researching. The experimental design could be improved. Questionnaires can be unreliable because respondents may lie. To improve the experimental design, it would be better to have an experimental group drink one or more soft drinks every day over a set period of time. The control group would drink only water over the same period of time. These groups would consist of both overweight people and people who are average weight. At the beginning and end of the study, both of the groups blood glucose levels, triglyceride levels, blood pressure, HDL “good” cholesterol, and waist circumference should all be measured to observe if there is an increase or decrease. The researchers studied human subjects. The sample size was around 9, 000 people, which is large enough for the experimental group. There was not a control or placebo mentioned in the study. The duration of the first study was conducted over four years, while the duration of the second study was three years. The duration of the study was conducted over a long enough period of time and the experiment was not controlled. There are numerous opportunities for confounding variables to arise. Subject bias could have confounded the results because some of the subjects could have lied about their food and soft drink intake. In this study, there would be no way to know if there was a subject bias because the only way data was gathered was through a questionnaire. The study was not a blind nor a double-blind study. The subjects studied were humans, but nothing else was stated about them. The demographic of the groups studied were not was never stated in the article. Nothing specific was said about the population that was studied, so there cannot be any general conclusions decided about the long term effects of fructose consumption.
An article called “Tracing the Fate of Fructose” that was published in the Science Translational Medicine, a journal, and written by Kathleen A. Page states that research was conducted on mice to see how the small intestine and fructose metabolism are correlated. Jang, a researcher conducting the experiment, suggests that “the small intestine — and not the liver — metabolizes the majority of dietary fructose into glucose and organic acids”. Isotope tracing was used to follow both glucose and fructose in each mouse. The conclusion was that 90 percent of fructose was metabolized when eaten moderately. Fructose is only said to be directed to the liver when high levels are consumed. The researchers concluded that the small intestine plays a role in protecting the liver. They also observed how fructose affects mice when they are fed and when they are fasting. They found that mice who fasted and then consumed foods with high fructose levels seemed to have more fructose in their liver than mice who did not fast. In my opinion, this experiment does not support Lustig’s “Toxic-Sugar” Theory. The experiment argues that the small intestine can metabolize moderate amounts of fructose, while Ludwig believes that all fructose cannot be metabolized, and ends up becoming citrate in the liver. Although the study seems promising, it does not provide enough details to sufficiently prove Lustig’s theory wrong. The article written about the experiment does not include the same size of the mice study. It also does not state the duration of the study or the exact amount of fructose and glucose that eat mouse consumed.
The study was conducted on mice as well, so the way that the fructose is metabolized in mice may be different from how fructose is metabolized in humans. If this theory was proven to be true, then moderate consumption of fructose would not be as dangerous as people seem to view it. Global and local communities would have to look at other factors that could be causing the obesity epidemics. Another article that was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by George A. Bray and titled, “How Bad is Fructose?”, focuses on how fructose and other dietary factors affects 74 Swiss children ranging from 6 to 14 years old. Studies found that HDL-cholesterol was low, lipoprotein (LDL) particles were small, and plasma triacylglycerols were much high in overweight children. Small LDL particles are also said to be linked to cardiovascular diseases. From my viewpoint, the experiment conducted did partially support Lustig’s “Toxic-Sugar” Theory. The researchers suspected that LDL cholesterol and high fructose diets both play a part in causing cardiovascular diseases. The article states that high fructose consumption leads to the reduction of LDL particle size. Although, more information is needed to determine whether the theory is plausible, because the sample size is too small and the duration of the study is never stated. If this theory was proven to be true, then global and local communities would have to be wary of not only food that contain fructose, but also saturated fats, which contain LDL cholesterol, such as red meat and coconut oil.
In conclusion, although fructose is vilified by many doctors and scientists, there is still not enough evidence to prove that is actually as harmful as it is made out to be. Lustig makes many plausible points, but does not have enough evidence to back it up. Other researchers, who have conducted studies on the effects of fructose on the body, disagree with Lustig because they speculate that moderate amounts of fructose will have no negative effects on the health of an individual. Ultimately, much more research needs to be done to prove the relationship between fructose and various diseases like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease.
