Fructose sounds healthy and natural – but is heavily criticized. Because more and more experts are calling fructose the biggest villain in the sugar family.
More dangerous than granulated sugar?
Fructose is naturally found in fruit, vegetables, and honey – but artificially produced fructose also ends up on many people’s plates every day, for example in ice cream or soft drinks. Crystal sugar also consists of half fructose.
While fructose used to be explicitly recommended for diabetics because it doesn’t cause insulin levels to rise as quickly, the good reputation has since disappeared: fructose is considered one of the most dangerous sugars of all. Those who consume too much fructose risk fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, among other things.
“Fructose can lead to a metabolic meltdown,” explains Dr. Detlef Pape, who, like many other experts, identified sugar as one of the main reasons for the increasing obesity worldwide.
Does fructose make you sick and fat?
“It is converted directly into fat in the liver, which then returns to the bloodstream and is stored in the fat deposits.” While our body uses glucose (grape sugar) as a source of energy, fructose causes inflammatory processes and can make us sick and fat. Above all, the particularly harmful visceral fat (internal abdominal fat) is promoted.
“Our body is simply not made for the amounts of fructose that we consume today,” says Pape. And the overconsumption is not due to the fact that so much fruit is eaten. Artificially produced fructose is a billion-dollar business. Soft drinks, ice cream, yogurts, and ready meals, for example, are sweetened with cheap and extremely sweet syrup.
“Especially the drinks are a problem for the figure,” says Pape. “Liquids don’t fill you up, and you simply consume drinks on the side without counting them in the calorie balance.”
