Fructose revisited

Don't mess around, we're baking here!

Don’t mess around, we’re baking here! But what kind of sugar are we using?

I have spoken out against fructose in the past, so maybe it pleases the Light that I am now looking to eat more of it. In this particular case, I cannot recommend you follow my example. But I do have a reason for what I do. It is not just because the voices in my head tell me. ^_^

I am first going to sum up some useful facts about fructose. Then I will explain why it may be useful for me and a few others like me. Finally I will argue why most people should stay away from it.

***

Fructose is a sugar that appears naturally in honey, and in fruits (thus the name) together with glucose. (The proportion varies among different types of fruit.) It is easy to create from corn (maize) and therefore very cheap in the US, where it is widely used as a sweetener.

Where fructose appears in the intestines, it is absorbed into the blood and goes to the liver, where it is given a special treatment that no other sugars get. Unlike all other sugars, fructose can be converted to fat with very little loss of energy. More exactly, the liver converts it to triglycerids which are released into the bloodstream. Hopefully fat cells will pack these away, otherwise they may settle on the inside of your arteries and bad things are likely to happen.

Approximately 20% of the fructose is converted to glucose instead and ends up as blood sugar. This is much less than ordinary cane sugar, which ends up as 80% blood sugar. If you are a diabetic or pre-diabetic, this is definitely something to consider! (I am diagnosed with pre-diabetes, so this is relevant to me.) Fructose is also almost 50% sweeter than common sugar, so for the same sweetness you get about 6 times more blood sugar with cane sugar than fructose!

High-fructose corn syrup, which is the usual sweetener in soda etc in the USA, contains both glucose and fructose. Glucose becomes blood sugar directly, so you still get a spike in blood sugar when you drink it, and then a little later you get the fat from the fructose.

***

Most people with diabetes II (late-onset diabetes) or pre-diabetes are fat, to put it bluntly. Usually you can see this at a glance, but there are also some who have the fat stored mostly around their guts and kidneys where it is not so easy to spot. It is mostly this fat that contributes to diabetes. Fat on the hips and thighs is pretty much harmless, while the fat that is scattered around on your body under your skin is somewhat dangerous but not as bad as the gut fat.

In my case, however, things are a little different. I have another illness that means I can only eat small quantities of fat. After I stopped eating normal fat-rich food in spring 2005, I lost weight for several months. At the end I had lost almost 15% of my weight, and I was only moderately overweight before. The thinner I became, the hungrier I became too. This cannot be helped, after all, the body will try to preserve itself.

Since I could no longer eat fat, I ended up eating twice as much carbs instead.  (Carbohydrates contain half as much energy as fat, and in addition much of the energy is lost when the body tries to convert it to fat. Except for fructose, as I mentioned before, which is converted almost perfectly into fat.)

The constant intake of carbs means my body is always awash in sugar. (More complex carbs are broken down into sugar before they are absorbed into the blood.) So my high blood sugar is not because my fat storage is full and cannot store away the sugar: There is plenty of room for more fat, I am well below my natural weight. Rather, the blood sugar comes from constant intake of carbs, which I have to do:  If I stopped eating carbs as well as fat, I would starve.

However, since my problem is not too much fat, I could eat fructose. The liver would convert it into fat and only 20% would become blood sugar. This would solve the pre-diabetes problem. Furthermore, because of my exercise asthma I can not exercise at high intensity, where you burn mostly carbs. My exercise is mostly in the fat-burning range.  So once again, fructose to the rescue. As long as I exercise regularly, the fat from the fructose would be burned away before it had time to settle on my arteries. Probably.

*** 

 Most of you, however, eat fat. You may not actively seek it out, but you eat ordinary food: Cakes, bread with butter or margarine, mayonnaise, steaks, sauces, fast food, chips and milk chocolate among others. Even cookies contain quite a bit of fat. When you become sensitive to fat, you discover how much fat there is in food that does not even taste fatty. Anyway, you eat fat already.

I am not a fan of the Atkins diet, but one thing it got right (for most people) is that if you eat fat, your appetite for more fat will fall. You will still happily eat something sweet, though. I am sure most of you are aware of the “dessert stomach” phenomenon: You could not eat one more bite of sausage, but you will happily eat a plate full of sugary dessert. The thing is, if you use fructose for this, your body will get far more fat than it thought. Not a good idea. You already have plenty of fat without tricking your body into eating more of it!

Of course, if you have a treadmill at your office desk as some people here in Norway have recently, you can get away with it. But if you live a sedentary life and eat fat, stay off the fructose. Leave it to us who can’t get fat the normal way, OK?