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Glucose, Fructose and Sucrose: What’s the Difference Between
These Sugars … and Which is the Worst for Your Health?
The sugar in your soda and other favorite
sugary treats may all go down sweetly, but a
groundbreaking new study found they act very
differently once in your body.
It may all taste equally sweet, but the type of sugar
you eat matters big-time for your health.
The three main types of sugar in question are:
1. Glucose: made when your body breaks down
starches
2. Fructose: the sugar found naturally in fruits
and widely used in the form of high-fructose
corn syrup
3. Sucrose: table sugar
Researchers from the University of California, Davis
compared refined glucose and refined fructose
consumption among 32 overweight or obese
people and found they resulted in very different
health changes.
After drinking either a refined fructose- or glucosesweetened
beverage that made up 25 percent
of their daily calories for 12 weeks, both groups gained a similar amount of weight. However,
those drinking the fructose-sweetened beverage experienced an array of other unhealthy effects,
including:
• An increase in visceral fat, the kind that embeds itself between tissues in organs
• Less sensitivity to insulin, one of the first signs of diabetes
• Increased fat production in the liver
• Elevated LDL (bad) cholesterol
• Increased levels of triglycerides
People who drank the refined glucose-sweetened beverage, meanwhile, experienced no such
changes.
"This suggests that in the same way that not all fats are the same, not all dietary carbohydrates
are the same either," Peter Havel, professor of nutrition at the University of California Davis and
lead author of the study told TIME magazine.
When glucose is consumed, a set of reactions occur in the body allowing it to be used as energy,
and production of leptin, a hormone that helps control appetite and fat storage, is increased.
Meanwhile, ghrelin, a stomach hormone, is reduced, which is thought to help hunger go away.
When refined fructose is consumed, however, it "appears to behave more like fat with respect
to the hormones involved in body weight regulation," explains Peter Havel, associate professor
of nutrition at the University of California, Davis. "Refined Fructose doesn't stimulate insulin
secretion. It doesn't increase leptin production or suppress production of ghrelin. That suggests
that consuming a lot of fructose, like consuming too much fat, could contribute to weight gain."
And as this most recent study pointed out, it may cause other dangerous side effects as well.
Most Sweets Contain Refined Fructose or Refined Sucrose
This news may compel you to begin searching for glucose-sweetened versions of your favorite
desserts and sodas, but most sugary products are made with either refined sucrose or fructose,
often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.
Sucrose is made of 50% fructose and 50% glucose, whereas high-fructose corn syrup can be either
55% fructose, 45% glucose, or 42% fructose, 58% glucose.
What this means is that you’ll be hard pressed to find products sweetened with glucose, and may
risk the side effects discovered in this study no matter which type you choose.
"This study provides the best argument yet that we should either decide to consume less refined
sugar-sweetened beverages in general, or that we should conduct more research into the
possibility of using other sweeteners that may be more glucose-based," Matthias Tschoep, an
obesity researcher at the Obesity Research Center in the University of Cincinnati, said in TIME.
The Refined Fructose-Diabetes Connection
According to Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of
Public Health, long-term consumption of sugared drinks, which are typically sweetened with
high-fructose corn syrup, may double your risk of obesity. Part of the risk is simply from the extra
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