except from article on dangers of Fructose

[shelley]

and high fructose corn syrup:

In medicine, the first alarms about the link between sugar consumption and heart disease were sounded by Yudkin in the late 1960s. At the time, he was chairman of the department of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London. Disturbed by inconsistencies in the evidence linking animal fats to heart disease, Yudkin began searching for another dietary factor.


An expert in carbohydrate metabolism, he initially focused on sucrose consumption. In laboratory and human tests, he found that sucrose increased blood levels of cholesterol, triglyceride, uric acid, insulin, and cortisol - all associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Sucrose also raised blood pressure and increased the fragility of blood platelet cells, making them more prone to clotting.


As dramatic as those findings were, the real surprise came when Yudkin substituted fructose for sucrose in his experiments. "The effects of eating sucrose in the quantities we eat are magnified with fructose. Fructose is the dangerous part," he said. In contrast, glucose did little more than cause cavities.


Although he has been retired for almost 20 years, Yudkin regularly publishes articles and letters about sugar and heart disease in the leading medical journals. In a phone interview, he was surprised to hear that fructose and HFCS had become common sweeteners in the United States. He said they were virtually unheard of in England, where overall sugar consumption has been declining.


Other researchers have confirmed Yudkin's findings, but sucrose and fructose are still recognized as generally safe by the Food and Drug Administration. Many widely used products, like sucrose, were grandfathered in as a safe product when food and drug regulations were created early in 1938, and the safety of fructose was assumed based on the perceived safety of sucrose.


"Fructose is part of the sucrose sugar. Sucrose is affirmed as GRAS (generally regarded as safe)," explained Judy Folke, a spokesperson at the FDA's Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Press Office in Washington,D.C. "Fructose is not GRAS, but it was treated under prior sanction because it had been used for so many years."


But the research suggests that, in retrospect, the FDA may have assumed too much.


For example, fructose has been touted for years as a safe sugar for diabetics because it doesn't trigger a rapid rise in blood sugar. That's true, but the cardiovascular consequences may outweigh the benefits for diabetics,who already face a higher than average risk of developing heart disease.


In a recent study, John Bantle, M.D., of the University of Minnesota sequentially placed 18 Type I (insulin-dependent) and Type II (noninsulin-dependent) diabetics on two diets. The only difference between the diets was that one contained carbohydrate as starch, which is digested as glucose, and the other contained carbohydrate as fructose.


When they consumed the fructose, the diabetics had fewer spikes in bloodsugar levels. Three of the Type I diabetics were able to reduce their insulin intake, a positive change. However, according to Bantle's report in the Nov. 1992 Diabetes Care, the diabetics' total cholesterol rose an average 7 percent, and their "bad" low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol rose almost 11 percent. The fructose increased their risk of heart disease.


But fructose doesn't play havoc with only the hearts of diabetics. Bantle noted the same effects in a study of 14 healthy volunteers who sequentially ate a high-fructose diet and one almost devoid of the sugar. While on the fructose diet, the subjects' total cholesterol levels increased by 9 percent and the LDL fraction increased by 11 percent.


"There is some data that if you consume a lot of fructose, you can get an increase in lipoproteins," Hannover told Natural Health. "A lot of this is mediated by consuming fructose with other carbohydrates. We recommend using a blend of carbohydrates - fructose may be the primary carbohydrate with glucose or more complex carbohydrates."


"I'm not trying to ignore the data," he added, "but I'm not trying to blow it out of proportion either."


There's another wrinkle. Add fructose to the typical American high-fat diet - as most people do - and the risk of heart disease increases even more. Sheldon Reiser, Ph.D., of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Md., studied 21 men eating two kinds of high-fat diets. The diets were the same except for the carbohydrate. One used simple starch, the other 20 percent fructose.


The cholesterol and triglyceride levels of all the men increased while they consumed the high-fructose/high-fat diet, but not while they ate a high-starch/high-fat diet. Ten of the men began the study with high blood levels of insulin - another risk factor for heart disease - and their cholesterol and triglyceride levels rose a whopping 30 to 50 percent.


Should people with moderate to high cholesterol reduce their intake? The answer seems apparent.


"They might benefit from that," Hannover conceded. "We presume you're under a doctor's care, and if you're not, you should be. If I had high cholesterol, it would be on the list of foods to avoid - not on the top of the list, but I wouldn't leave it off either, since there is some data to support this view."


Fructose and other sugars contribute to heart disease in yet another way. Dietary sugars increase what doctors call "spontaneous platelet aggregation", an unnatural tendency toward blood clotting. But according to a study published in the Aug. 1, 1990, Thrombosis Research, fructose promotes abnormal clotting much more than does any other common sugar does.


There's even more. Recent research by Forrest Nielsen, Ph.D., of the USDA's Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, N.D., found that fructose interferes with absorption of copper, an essential mineral needed to create hemoglobin in red blood cells.


"Copper is affected by fructose," Nielsen told Natural Health. "With a high intake of high-fructose corn syrup, people might show signs of a copper deficiency and may need to enhance their copper intake."


In addition, when five volunteers ate a diet with 20 percent fructose, their total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol shot up. But the combination of suppressed copper and high fructose also increased the number of free radicals, damaged molecules that contribute to cancer and aging.


Does Nielsen think fructose is safe? "I'm not going to damn fructose because in small amounts it's not a bad substance," Nielsen said. But he later acknowledged, "I'm not convinced it's completely safe."

[chardy]

Shelley, that is a fascinating article, thank you.

Im assuming that all references to fructose in the text are only referring to high fructose corn syrup and not the fructose found natually in fruits and some vegetables?

[shelley]

Partly - fruit has fructose, and to overdose on fruit is the same as overdosing any sugar - not a great idea. It's why I do not juice sweet fruits. I only juice citrus fruits and pineapple. And on a liver-cleansing diet I only eat citrus and berries.