The fructose killer

If you follow my blog, you probably know that I tend to watch a lot of food shows.  Food Inc was a great documentary; Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, Village on a Diet...  They all carry the same message:  People today eat too much processed food.  And it's killing us.

That's what happens when you mix economics with food.  The producers are forced to make it cheaper by adding crap to it.  It's just not cool.

I was with a certain someone at a Doctor appointment the other day.  We were discussing fatty livers and the Dr said that there seems to be a real epidemic of fatty livers recently.  Fatty liver, although it can be kept in check with diet and exercise, can lead to nasty things like cirrhosis of the liver if left untreated.  It is typically associated with obese people or people who drink far too much alcohol.  But the Dr said that she has seen an increased number of cases in relatively healthy people, and no one seems to know why.  This, of course, put us into conspiracy mode: maybe it's pollutants?  Maybe it's radiation in the food supply?....


Maybe, it's fructose.  That's right, that ingredient that you see on 90% of the packaged food you put in your grocery cart.

I was searching the great google gods for articles linking certain medical conditions (specifically high uric acid and fatty liver) - I was in search of a possible link between the two and found this article published by 'the Heathly Eating Club (whoever they are):


http://www.healthyeatingclub.org/info/articles/body-shape/fructose.htm

They're very convinced that the amount of fructose we eat is severely affecting our health - including increased uric acid, high blood pressure, gout, diabetes, fatty liver.....  When you take fructose out of fruit, (where it naturally occurs), and put it into a chocolate bar, or pop, or any number of packaged foods, your body has trouble dealing with it and ends up storing it as fat in your liver (among other things).

Bingo.

Not only that, but their view is that it would be easy for a seemingly healthy person on a 'low fat' diet to suffer these diseases if they are still consuming processed/refined foods because:

 A low fat diet containing processed sugar-dense foods is really a high fat diet because fructose (in sugar) behaves like a fat. We were not designed to eat a lot of refined sugars, we're supposed to be eating our carbohydrate, particularly our fructose, with high fibre in unprocessed foods like fruit and vegetables.

Not that I think that "too much fructose" is the one and only magical answer.  I'm not even sure of the authenticity of the Healthy Eating Club website; after all, I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said, "the problem with quotes on the internet is that it is very hard to verify their authenticity."  But it's a good place to start.  And it makes sense.  Fat, sugar and salt are as addictive to the human body as crack - and just like a drug addict, too much of the thing you love will eventually kill you.

There's really no excuse these days for the way we treat our bodies.  We are the most unhealthy society in the history of the world!  Our life expectancy is shorter, SHORTER, than that of our parents.  We are inundated on a daily basis with tips for healthy living, with ways to eat better, with reasons to exercise, and yet we continue to sit around filling our faces with fat and sugar and salt because it tastes good and there's very little effort required.

Personally, I'd like to live for another solid 50 years or so, and it'd be nice to be healthy while I'm doing that.  If cutting out (or at least cutting back on) fructose will help to accomplish that goal, then I'm all in.  You?