Scientists Discover No Benefit in Replacing Fructose with Glucose

Fructose is the sugar widely blamed for obesity. It has been suggested that glucose should replace fructose in commercially prepared foods, but researchers at Saint Michael's Hospital in Toronto have found there is no benefit in doing so.

Fructose is a simple sugar found in honey, fruit, vegetables and other plants, but it is the basis of high-fructose corn syrup. Glucose is a simply carbohydrate found in plants. When the two combine they form sucrose, or table sugar.

The findings of the study revealed that when the portions and calories of fructose and glucose are the same, neither does more harm than the other. More results of the study can be found in the February edition of Current Opinion in Lipidology.

 Dr. John Sievenpiper is a researcher in the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre at Saint Michael's Hospital and one of the authors of this study. He used data from previous research trials and compared the effects of fructose and glucose against several health risk factors.

"Despite concerns about fructose's link to obesity, there is no justification to replace fructose with glucose because there is no evidence of net harm," he said in this EurekAlert! article.

According to the study, fructose did not exacerbate insulin production, fat levels in the blood stream or markers of fatty liver disease (FLD) any more than glucose did. And although fructose was found be a factor in increased cholesterol and postprandial triglycerides, it showed benefits over glucose in other major risk factor categories, such as promoting healthy body weight, blood pressure and glycemic control.

Analysis of fructose and glucose is fairly extensive because of prominent health issues, specifically obesity, that are increasingly affecting people who eat commercially produced foods. But despite the in-depth research, Dr. Sievenpiper believes that overconsumption is the number one leading cause of obesity, and not the type of sugar that is found in these foods.

"Overall, it's not about swapping fructose with glucose," he said, in the same EurekAlert! article. "Overeating, portion size and calories are what we should be refocusing on - they're our biggest problems."