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Breaking down sugar – glucose and fructose

Appears in
Wholesome

By Sarah Graham

Published 2017

  • About
When we talk sugar consciousness, the main culprits that we should be taking into consideration (because they’re the kinds that we’re consuming the most) are glucose and fructose. Glucose can be absorbed and used by all of the cells in your body, which means that it can be broken down fairly quickly and used up fairly effectively (though, as with everything, too much is not a good thing either).

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.

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