Higher fructose consumers tend to have higher blood pressure. (PDF format)
To examine whether increased fructose consumption has contributed to rising rates of hypertension, Diana Jalal, MD (University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center and her colleagues analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2003-2006). The study involved 4,528 US adults 18 years of age or older with no prior history of hypertension. Study participants answered questions related to their consumption of foods and beverages such as fruit juices, soft drinks, bakery products, and candy. Dr. Jalal’s team found that people who consumed a diet of 74 grams or more per day of fructose (corresponding to 2.5 sugary soft drinks per day) had a 26%, 30%, and 77% higher risk for blood pressure levels of 135/85, 140/90, and 160/100 mmHg, respectively. (A normal blood pressure reading is below 120/80 mmHg.)
To put that 74 grams of fructose in context: You get about 11 grams of fructose in a medium sized apple. Will eating 7 apples a day harm you? Certainly it is better than eating 2.5 sugary soft drinks every day.
The health effects of fructose consumption have become a controversial topic. Robert Lustig most notably bashes fructose as a big cause of the obesity epidemic. But see Alan Aragon on fructose and be sure to read the exchange between him and Lustig in the comments.
Fruits have phenolics and other compounds in them that are probably good for your health. I'd really like to know how much fruits one should eat per day for optimal benefit. At what level of fruit consumption does fructose become a problem that outweighs the benefits of fruits?
| Share | | Randall Parker, 2010 July 01 11:02 PM Aging Diet Heart Studies |
William Davis, the famed cardiologist says that fructose is the number one cause of heart disease.
A good rule to follow is to not consume more than 25 grams of fructose a day, It makes no difference the source whether it be sugar or fruit. Most of the good compounds in fruit go to offset the bad effects of fructose. You are better off eating vegetables.
If it tastes good, it's trying to kill you.
It is self reported (not observed) and worth less than the pixel you've spent on it, anecdote is the correct term, not data.
Self-reported diet information is standard in almost all large studies of humans (NHANES for examples). Actually monitoring what people put in their mouths 24/7 is too expensive. And despite the noise (or even systematic bias) introduced by the use of self-reporting, researchers still get good (reproducible, robust) results. So unless you have something better to post maybe you should get off the high horse.
Now you know why Adam and Eve were told not to eat apples.
Were these study subjects consuming fructose, full stop, or high-fructose corn syrup? Big difference, obviously.
This would seem to be something that could be affected by the glycemic index of the food, with quicker acting liquid sugars having a larger impact on how the circulatory system responds.
Unfortunately finding a large enough population that gets all of their fructose from whole fruit is probably very difficult. At least in the US.
Soon, we'll find that cancer comes from listening to food experts and heart disease is exasperated by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time...
I have read on alternate sites that it is not so much fructose as High-fructose corn syrup. This adds lots of sweetening but also lots of calories. There has also been suggestions that is it somewhat addictive but I have not seen studies of that. I will say that in eliminating HFCS from my diet I have lost weight. Slow but definite.
I'd be willing to bet you'd see a substantial difference between someone consuming 70 grams of fructose by having a fruit salad for breakfast and several pieces of fruit as snacks throughout the day and someone consuming 70 grams of high fructose corn syrup.
Heck, the fiber in the fruit all by itself should have a significant effect on blood pressure, no?
From my experience, and it's funny reading this, recently I have had trouble with my blood pressure, and it seems to rise every time I eat something that is refined or manufactured with high levels of sodium OR fructose (high fructose corn syrup). I snack on apples daily to avoid high blood pressure and that seems to be working. That and unsalted nuts throughout the day. The simple answer for me is to just eat all things natural and in moderation. I eat chicken subs for lunch with all the veggies and snack on apples. And that does me right. If I go eat out at a fast food resteraunt just once or eat something from the vending machine, my blood pressure rises. Food for thought..
A diabetic, I test my blood glucose after eating to see what I should and shouldn't eat often. I can eat most berries and melons without problems. Apples, pears, peaches/nectarines = 1 or 2 a day, tops. I pass on grapes/raisins, dates, dried fruit in general.
Question for Cato, if he has time:
How do citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruit, etc.) affect you? Just wondering...you listed a lot of others and I can see how your conclusions would be valid - but was curious about citrus fruits.
I am not diabetic (though there is Type 2 in my family) and unsalted nuts seem to work great as far as staying healthy.
A study was done in 1966 that has not received the attention it deserves. Winitz and Adams researching diets for astronauts created a nutrition mixture and fed it under controlled conditions to a prison population in Vacaville,
CA. At one point the the prisoners complained that the diet was too bland. The researchers had been using glucose rather than sucrose. The changed back to sucrose to the approval of the prisoners. However their daily monitoring of the cholesterol levels of the subject population went up significanly with the sucrose. The diet was changed back to glucose and the cholesterol levels decreased. Back to sucrose and back up they went.
The difference between glucose and sucrose is FRUCTOSE. Sucrose (table sugar) is a disaccharide consisting of one molecule of glucose and one of fructose. The addition of fructose through the use of sucrose raised cholesterol.
I found this out a few years ago from an article by LInus Pauling. It is the only reference to the study I have been able to find on the web aside from the original article available from JAMA which I have not purchased.
Pauling's article is here: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/Nutrition.htm
The Jama article is here: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/196/6/35.pdf
Hopefully one of the commenters or someone else will be able to follow this up. I suspect it may lead to significant progress in understanding the effect of fructose on health.
BTW 4000 IU of Vitamin D/day significantly changed my cholesterol profile for the better as well as reducing my blood pressure back to where it was 10 years ago to 100-120/55-60 from 150-175/90-120 without meds. No longer taking isopril just Vitamin D.
Mike
p.s despite my handle I am not a doctor. I was a navy corpsman with Marines in Vietnam
From a biochemical point of view, the problem with fructose (and sucrose since it breaks down to fructose and glucose) is that it bypasses one of the regulatory steps in sugar metabolism.
This makes your body think you have more glucose than you should, which causes a number of reactions to try and bring the glucose down, which since it isnt really high causes more problems etc
Glucose is the gasoline of the body, and for proper functioning the glucose level has to stay within a narrow range, with many mechanisms constantly in play to keep it in that range.
Constantly eating fructose and sucrose (aka table sugar, cane extract) will continuously keep your body blood sugar level out of whack, with a number of consequences. including obesity and, as the article references, high blood pressure.
Common sources of high fructose/sucrose are fruits, honey, soft drinks and tomatoes.