From the Health Report - ABC Radio - very good article.
www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2007/1969924.htm
Dr Robert Lustig is Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco.
"The only organ in your body that can take up fructose is your liver. Glucose, the standard sugar, can be taken up by every organ in the body, only 20% of glucose load ends up at your liver.
In fact fructose, because of the way it's metabolised, is actually damaging your liver the same way alcohol is. In fact it's the exact same pathway, in fact fructose is alcohol without the buzz.
There's clear scientific evidence on the fructose doing three things that are particularly bad in the liver. The first is this uric acid pathway that I just mentioned, the second is that fructose initiates what's known as de novo lipogenesis.
Norman Swan: Which is fat production.
Robert Lustig: Excess fat production and so VLDL, very low density lipoproteins end up being manufactured when you consume this large bolus of fructose in a way that glucose does not, and so that leads to dyslipidaemia.
Norman Swan: And that's the bad form of cholesterol.
Robert Lustig: That's correct. And then the last thing that fructose does in the liver is it initiates an enzyme called Junk one, and Junk one has been shown by investigators at Harvard Medical School basically is the inflammation pathway and when you initiate Junk one what happens is that your insulin receptor in your liver stops working."
Overall: Fructose added to food is bad. Fructose in fresh food is fine; fibre is the key.