Original Story Link http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/4/895.full

George A Bray from Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana State University wrote an article located at nutrition.org (Link above) about how bad fructose is on the human body.  He starts off the article reminding the reader that the intake of soft drinks with high-fructose corn syrup as risen in parallel with the obesity rate and points out this suggests a relation. Lastly he hints on the risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Fructose consumption in the United States has increased a lot between 1970 and 2000. And further more between 2000 and now but this article seems to only look at up to 2000.  In the article an individual’s intake of sugar in 1994 to 1996 was in the daily range of 79 g. The top consumers of sugar was as high as 178 g a day.  He further points out that 500 years ago before the development of the sugar industry the only fructose the human diet was exposed to was that of honey, dates, raisins, molasses and figs and a lot less in fruits. Milk has no fructose neither does most vegetables and meats. So most humans had very limited exposure to fructose.

In America most exposure from fructose comes from refined products and not fresh fruit. Soft drinks being a very large contributor of it.  He continues on to go through the details of fructose in the body and how it’s metabolised. Also goes into detail of some of the effects from fructose such as the production of uric acid which causes increased blood pressure, the formation of LDL. The conclusion of the article basically sates the relation of bad health and fructose cannot be ignored and that more evaluation is needed.