What Is Fructose?

To understand fructose, you have to understand sugars. Fructose is a type of sugar. More specifically it is a type of sugar called a monosaccharide which is from the Greek monos: single, and sacchar: sugar. This means fructose is a simple sugar, composed of one organic molecule.

There are other monosaccharides besides fructose; like glucose, galactose, xylose, and ribose. All of these sugars are the simplest carbohydrates (organic compounds consisting of only carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen with the last two in a 2:1 atom ratio).

In nature, monosaccharide molecules are often found joined together in things we eat like rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes where the simple sugars are stored in long chains that we call starches. As humans, we have the ability to break down starches and use them for energy. This is why popcorn is served at the movies: because we can break down the starch into simpler sugars for the cells in our body. More importantly, the sugar our cells need is glucose (not fructose).

So what is glucose? Glucose is just another monosaccharide, but it turns out to be a very special one for living things. Glucose is the ubiquitous fuel used by almost all organisms from bacteria to humans. Glucose is the primary source of energy for our brain and our muscles. It’s the fuel that you use to think and to move.

Every carbohydrate we eat must be converted to glucose in order to be useful. Glucose is often called ‘blood sugar’ because it is the sugar that is in your blood. Fructose, on the other hand, cannot be used by your brain or muscles. They don’t have the cellular machinery to burn it. It turns out that to metabolize fructose, our livers have to perform several complicated chemical processes on it. This puts the same strain on your liver as consuming alcohol. But it also short-circuits our natural hunger suppression signals and creates a host of metabolic problems like insulin resistance, obesity, and elevated LDL cholesterol.

Nature is full of things we cannot digest. Monosaccharides are also found in things we don’t eat like cotton, wood, and grass where the simple sugars are chained together into something called cellulose, a complex sugar that only ruminants and certain insects can digest. This is why they don’t serve sawdust at the movies. Our digestive system simply doesn’t have the enzyme to break down cellulose.

Fructose is found in nature in things like honey, fruits, and berries. In its natural state, tied up in fibrous fruits and berries, or in a hive of angry bees, fructose consumption would never pose a serious threat to humans. We simply wouldn’t be able to consume enough.

The fact fructose is indeed found in nature is used as the primary rationalization for putting high fructose corn syrup in so many of the unnatural processed foods we eat. It goes something like this: “Well, fructose is found in nature, so it must be safe, right? So therefore, putting high fructose corn syrup in foods should be safe.” But that logic is flawed. Just because something is found in nature does not make it safe. Nicotine is found in nature, but it is behind the addiction of smoking. Salt is found in nature, but too much causes high blood pressure. Poison Ivy is found in nature, but most of us would never consider touching it, let alone ingesting it.

This is really a matter of common sense. Anything ingested in a high enough quantity can kill. Even water. That is why the definition of a poison looks like this:

Poison: any substance that can impair function, cause structural damage, or otherwise injure the body.

There are two main reasons fructose is used commercially in foods and beverages:

1. It is cheap
2. It tastes sweet

Commercial fructose food additives are now primarily the product of the corn growing industry. Genetically modified corn is what is used to make high fructose corn syrup. This corn is unfit for direct human consumption so it is put through a complex mult-stage chemical process to extract the starches. The starches are then treated with enzymes and other chemicals to produce corn syrup which is then put through yet more processing to distill it.

The genetically modified corn is cheap to grow and harvest because special human-designed genes in it make it resistant to insecticides and herbicies. These genetic modifications are also patented and only licensed growers may use the seed.

Something else to consider is that the U.S. government subsidizes the corn industry which will be the topic of another article. When we discuss the corn industry in detail, we’ll show why it is so cheap to produce corn.

Fructose, to the human tongue, is also very sweet tasting. On a relative scale of sweetness, with table sugar being 100, fructose rates at 173. It is therefore 1.73 times as sweet to us as table sugar.

So what happens when something is cheap and sweet? The answer: it gets put in almost every processed food to make it more appealing than the competitor’s. And this virtual arms race for our dollars at the grocery store, at restaurants, and at the soda fountain, has resulted in the average human diet being alarmingly high in fructose. So high, in fact, that fructose is now poisoning you, me, and our children.

So what is fructose? The answer is: fructose, as consumed today, can be regarded as a poison. It is a poison in disguise, a sweet disguise. Fructose is the major contributing carbohydrate to the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic in developed countries (and those beginning to adopt U.S. style processed foods).

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