Breaking down sugar – glucose and fructose

Fructose, on the other hand, can only be processed, or metabolised, by our livers. It’s also addictive and twice as sweet as glucose. ‘Humans don’t produce fructose and throughout evolutionary history have never consumed it except seasonally when fruit were ripe. In the last century, we’ve gone from eating less than two pounds a year, to eating 132 pounds a year of added sugar,’ writes Sarah Wilson in Simplicious). A build-up of fructose in our systems means an overload on the liver, which in the long term can have dire consequences – everything from fatty liver disease to type II diabetes and lots of nastiness in between. High-sugar diets are also linked to increased risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and more. Pancreatic cancer is said to use sugar as fuel.