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Fructose is a tricker and not all that sweet!

by Medindia Content Team on Dec 7 2005 7:09 PM

After sucrose it is the turn of fructose to be blamed for obesity by a study in Florida. The study was conducted in the University of Flroda and the findings point that fructose present in fruits, honey and other natural sources might be the cause of obesity in subjects.

The trick is that Fructose makes beleive that the subject is hungrier than actually being and so the result is that consumption of food increases.

The study in animals have revealed that fructose has a role in a biochemical chain reaction that triggers weight gain and other features of metabolic syndrome - the main precursor to type 2 diabetes.

"There may be more than just the common concept that the reason a person gets fat is because they eat too many calories and they don't do enough exercise," said Richard J. Johnson, M.D., the J. Robert Cade professor of nephrology and chief of nephrology, hypertension and transplantation at UF's College of Medicine. "And although genetic predispositions are obviously important, there's some major environmental force driving this process. Our data suggest certain foods and, in particular, fructose, may actually speed the process for a person to become obese."

'If you feed fructose to animals they rapidly become obese, with all features of the metabolic syndrome, so there is this strong causal link,' Johnson said, 'And a high-fructose intake has been shown to induce certain features of the metabolic syndrome pretty rapidly in people.'

'We cannot definitively state that fructose is driving the obesity epidemic,' said Johnson. 'But we can say that there is evidence supporting the possibility that it could have a contributory role - if not a major role.'

'It may well be we don't need to cut out carbohydrates but just certain types of carbohydrates,' Johnson said. 'So this may be an alternative to the Atkins type of approach, which cuts out carbohydrates indiscriminately.'

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The study can effectivelycontribute in diagnosis and development of a diet that is perfect in all respects.


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