Both the Institute of Medicine and the American Diabetes Association Say, “Enjoy Your Fructose (Fruit Sugar)!”

Sorry, sugar is sugar, whether from fruit or not. And if the “fruit sugar” is actually high-fructose corn syrup—from GMO corn at that—and quaffed down in endless sodas, it just gets worse.
A recent meta-analysis published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings confirms this yet again. It notes that both the Institute of Medicine and the American Diabetes Association publish guidelines that allow up to 25% of calories from added fructose. The authors note that “[the] intake of added fructose at such high levels would undoubtedly worsen rates of diabetes and its complications,” and add that “there is no need for added fructose or any added sugars in the diet.”
Even one soda a day will take its toll on your weight and your health. Research presented at an American Heart Association conference estimated that sodas and sugary drinks are responsible for 183,000 deaths worldwide each year—133,000 deaths from diabetes, 44,000 from heart disease, and 6,000 from cancer. Nor does it solve anything to switch to artificially sweetened sodas. They just introduce a different set of problems.
These are facts. And yet industry-supported studies are five times more likely to find no link between sugary drinks and weight gain. Such “junk science,” which seems to be all that the Institute of Medicine and the American Diabetes Association is willing to believe, is responsible for making countless Americans even sicker than they already are.

13 comments

  1. I have to wonder how much money the Institute of Medicine and the American Diabetes Association took from drug companies to publish this trash.

  2. Even the USDA manual on nutrition states that the minimum requirement for carbohydrate consumption is apparently ZERO. Eat more fats including heart healthy saturated fats. All the slow death food and Rx drug cartel posers need to be fed the new GMO “fish” (more eel than fish) to show us how safe all their crap really is…

    1. Not sure what crap you read but the manual states this:
      “The requirements for carbohydrates are based on the average minimum amount of glucose that is utilized by the brain. Because brain size remains fairly constant after 1 year of age and approximates adult size, the EAR and RDA are identical for all age and gender groups after age 12 months, except pregnant and lactating women. The recommended amount also prevents ketosis, which is a rise in keto acid production in the liver to provide the brain with an alternative fuel in times of low glucose availability.”
      There are long-term negative effects from utlra low carb or ketosis diets. It’s simply an unnecessary risk unless you’re diabetic or have seizures.

  3. I think we have to be careful about what we say about fructose. When we eat organic fruit, most of the sugar we eat is fructose, which one can assume is quite “safe.” (After all, we have centuries of proof). However, high fructose corn syrup is processed. It is very possible that foods with HFCS in it are dangerous, but not raw fruit. I remember seeing an analysis of HFCS which found mercury and other toxic chemical elements in it. It is not easy to find trace elements if 1) we are not even looking for them, and 2) they are found in a food sample at levels too low to be detected, but which may accumulate over time and cause serious toxicity. If HFCS is found in every processed food we eat, we will get a total amount every day that is well over “trace” levels. There has been research that showed rats, when fed a laboratory-made food grade of fructose had difficulty processing it and produced substances that made them look as if they were diabetic. But again, we do not know if it is actual fructose or trace chemicals from its processing, that caused the problem. It may be extremely difficult to produce a fructose additive that is not contaminated at all.
    This is not meant to defend IM and ADA, because they do tend to be extremely simplistic in their methods and conclusions, as have most of the medical studies trying to show “evidence” from meta-analyses and observational studies, when they cannot be used to support any recommendation from non-experimental studies. All they do is raise red flags that should require experimental testing to show what so many want them to show.

    1. “When we eat organic fruit, most of the sugar we eat is fructose,…”
      that would be true only if all our carbs came from fruit;
      people should get plenty of peas, greens, and cruciferous,
      not just fruit.

      1. This is very true, but the point I was making was that fructose is probably not the problem that people keep saying about it.

  4. Lustig is a bit of a huckster. The rats used in studies have a very, very low threshold of tolerance for excess carbohydrates compared to humans, which is why it is easy to demonstrate negative effects from excess fructose or glucose in rats.

    1. he doesn’t just use rat studies;
      our nation has been one live fructose experiment.

    2. Even if that were true, and I don’t know that it is, does it change the fact of the liver pathway for the differents substances? And, even if true,
      it shows negative effects with both substances, so you point is?

      1. Point is unless you’re mainlining HFCS, there’s not enough of a difference between sucrose and HFCS to just pass the latter off as a smoking gun explanation for the obesity crisis. It’s still calories in, calories out. There’s no easy demon to point the finger at to avoid self-responsibility.

        1. People that are not cooking their own food ARE practically mainling HFCS. It is ubiquitous. And no, HFCS is not the whole story on obesity and morbidity, but it is a large part. One last thing, ‘calories in, calories out’ was disproven many years ago. One hundred and fifty calories of apple and 150 calories of Mars Bar IS NOT the same thing. And on that note, I am disengaging from this conversation. Have a good day and enjoy your HFCS.

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