[hristov]

This article shows how the fructose industry is defending itself. Mostly by confusing the issue.

The thing about fructose is that it is not by itself poisonous. The problem only comes about for refined fructose, such as that found in cane sugar and HFCS. In those cases, fructose overwhelms the liver and gets processed by wrong pathways which result in all kinds of problems. But if you eat fructose in the form of fruits and vegetables, your body has to take a while to break the fructose out of the fruit and vegetable cells. Thus, your liver only gets a steady trickle of fructose instead of a flood of it. As a result, the liver can process the fructose correctly. Furthermore, if you eat fructose with fiber, molecules from the fiber help the liver process more fructose correctly.

Knowing this, it is not difficult to construct an experiment that shows that fructose is not harmful. All you have to do is feed your subjects the correct form of fructose (i.e., fruits and vegetables). The experiment where subjects ate large numbers of apples and were perfectly ok was quite telling.

The other defense of the sugar industry is that it is not the sugar, it is the overeating. However, refined sugar causes the overeating. One of the results of processing fructose the wrong way is that the liver does not produce the hormones that are supposed to inform the brain that you are full. Thus, refined fructose causes overeating of sugar and anything else you happen to be eating with your sugar. Personally I know I eat much more fries if I eat them with ketchup and I will eat much more steak if I eat it with steak sauce.

The fat people and diabetics are being blamed for eating too much and lacking willpower. They may be partially to blame, but it is very hard to make the correct decision when your brain's own sensory mechanisms are being hijacked and tricked. It is very hard to stop eating when you are constantly hungry. But if you cut down on the sugar you will not be constantly hungry, and then you may find that you do not even need that much will power to cut down on your calories.

[stevep98]

In one of Lustig's videos he talks about fructose from fruit juice. He says if you want fruit juice, eat fruit. The problem comes when you drink a glass of apple juice. That's the juice from about 8 apples. Now, instead of the juice, try eating 8 apples. It's just not really something someone's going to do, it's so much work to grind through all that food. But a glass of apple juice is easy.

[temp453463343]

"Personally I know I eat much more fries if I eat them with ketchup and I will eat much more steak if I eat it with steak sauce."

Not to detract from your other excellent points but:

1 - it makes it easier to eat more because it's less dry. If you eat a bunch of fries with nothing it will turn into a huge lump in your stomach and you won't want more.

2 - insoluble fiber in apples slows fructose absorption, but a hunk of fatty meat does not? Fat slows absorption through the intestine.

3 - Vinegar is supposed to suppress appetite. Eating a pickle when your hungry will 4/6 times make you feel a lot less hungry.

[iopq]

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...

[jacques_chester]

No, you don't understand. It's a conspiracy. Big Sugar. Cooked up in a lab, they probably cut it with cocaine and old vinyl records played backwards.

It can't possibly be something simple and emergent like "HFCS is cheap" and "people like sweet things".

[pvnick]

I think you pretty much restated the point of the article in slightly more condensed terms. Eat sugar in moderation and you'll be fine. Eat too much and you'll run into problems. The point you added is that sugar -> less full -> overeat, which is possible, but not the point being debated.

[dredmorbius]

It's not merely the quantity, but the rate of assimilation, including gastric emptying, which matters.

So, yes, qualitatively there is a difference not only between eating an apple and a glass of apple juice representing 8 apples, but even when you're juicing a single apple, because that fructose hits your bloodstream immediately.

Useful if you're a bonking cyclist or a runner who's hit the wall. Not so much if you're leading a sedentary lifestyle.

[pvnick]

You didn't specify the effect you're talking about, you were very hand-wavey and just said "matters," which is so broad and general that you could be literally anything. I'm talking about calories. Whether you drink 500 calories of apple juice or eat 500 calories of apples you're still taking in 500 calories [1]. So insofar as caloric retention is concerned, no, that does not "matter."

[1] http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance...

[dredmorbius]

you were very hand-wavey and just said "matters"

Affects insulin levels, insulemic effects etc.

The point is that quantity alone is not sufficient consideration, quality also must be taken into account.

I could be arsed to dig up a bunch of references, but frankly I'm not ego-attached to this issue right now. That said:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=effects+of+gastric+emptying+on+ins... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=effects+of+insulin+levels+on+morta... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=effects+of+insulin+levels+on+fat

... might give you some interesting starting points.

What matters when you ingest those 500 calories is what they're allocated to, and there endocrine responses (as well as body store availability) does matter.

500g of carbohydrate dumped in the bloodstream of an individual with depleted skeletal muscle and hepatic glycogen stores will have a different response (glycogen uptake in these tissues) than in an individual whose glycogen stores are already saturated (conversion to triglycerides and storage as fat).

Gastric emptying and rate of release matters as you're consuming roughly 15-25g of carbohydrate hourly in your brain (and a few more grams in other tissues). So that an ingested bolus of 500g cho released over the course of 5 hours is going to _largely_ simply result in uptake to tissues with an existing demand, rather than lipogenesis.

No, you can't say fuck you to thermodynamics, but you can dance the funky chicken around it.

[darkarmani]

Your link talks about the thermic effect of food. The TEF of apples vs apple juice is definitely different. But maybe that's what your are saying -- calories aren't the important piece?