My understanding is that naturally occurring fructose found in whole fruits is accompanied by fiber, vitamins, and minerals, which help mitigate any negative effects of fructose when consumed as part of a balanced diet.
However, it sounds like we should maybe be avoiding excessive amounts of certain fruit. See: A Definitive Guide to Fructose Content in Fruit [1]
There was a recent episode from Diary of a CEO with a cancer expert. He seems to have some really sound advice. One particular take away for me was his finding that when the body enters a ketogenic state due to fasting the body produces defences that eat up cancer cells [2]
> One particular take away for me was his finding that when the body enters a ketogenic state due to fasting the body produces defences that eat up cancer cells
“We did indeed see that the ketogenic diet suppressed tumor growth — but we also saw, surprisingly, that it promoted tumor metastasis,” says Gu. “That was really a shock to us.”
Going to go out on a limb here and say you probably shouldn't get any scientific advice about nutrition -- or really any scientific advice at all -- from anyone on Diary Of A CEO.
It would still be net beneficial for anyone consuming industrial fructose to switch to fresh fruit of any kind. However, yes, if you’ve already withdrawn added fructose in processed foods and drinks from your diet, you could certainly optimize further on which kinds of fresh fruit you consume. It won’t make any difference if you still drink fructose soda, though.
I thought levels of fructose weren't as important as other qualities, like fiber content. For example, Dates are often referenced as a good fruit option due to the high fiber content but that guide doesn't mention fiber at all and has dates in the high fructose category. This seems like standard operating procedure in anything dietary where it is more about a specific aspect of the food and less about communicating well rounded advice.
The rankings are a little off... I mean, you don't eat one prune, or one apricot. You tend to have a few, and that would put them right up next to, say, an apple, in the "medium" ranks.
That's the same as that "Serving Size" trick on nutrition information guides where the "serving size" is 5 potato chips instead of the entire bag.
Fruit has changed dramatically over the last Century. I imagine there was a time when it was much smaller, less sweet, and only available seasonally. In this new world, we have 24/7/365 access to as much and whatever we want.
There are Cherries along with every type of fruit you could want at Costco today and it's December.
Diary of a CEO should not have the proxy-BBC approval Steven enjoys. He regularly has quacks and misinformation pedallers on there shamelessly, and his willingness to fall under their spell demostrates concerning levels of naivete or (worse) willing negligence for engagements sake.
> "one way in which high levels of fructose consumption promote tumor growth is by increasing the availability of circulating lipids in the blood. "
Glad to see more research on this. Until recently, people trying to sound the alarm with regards to high fructose consumption (mainly high fructose corn syrup) have been dismissed.
Excess fructose consumption increases tryglicerides, uric acid. Just uric acid alone causes a lot of issues, from heart disease to erectile dysfunction(inhibits NOX), even before gout starts. The range that's considered 'normal' has changed over time, but I feel it's too high.
Note that fruits are unlikely to be an issue (except perhaps as fruit juice). Most people don't eat enough of them and they have plenty of nutrients that are beneficial.
EDIT:
> “Interestingly, the cancer cells themselves were unable to use fructose readily as a nutrient because they do not express the right biochemical machinery,” Patti said. “Liver cells do. This allows them to convert fructose into LPCs, which they can secrete to feed tumors.”
Forgot about this. Non alcoholic fatty liver disease has been on the rise for a while now, and it's mostly the high fructose corn syrup again.
It should be pointed out that contrary to what many people assume, "high-fructose" does mean that it has more fructose than sugar. Sugar is 50% fructose, and many widely used HFCS formulations contain less fructose than sugar (e.g. the 42% fructose formulation used in most processed food). Even the formulation used in soft drinks is only 55% fructose, marginally more than sugar.
If you replace HFCS with sugar in your diet it is basically a no-op in terms of being healthy and in many cases will increase your fructose intake.
I was recently diagnosed with fatty liver disease. The liver-related numbers in my blood work were slightly elevated. An abdominal ultrasound confirmed it.
Liver problems have historically been caused by excessive alcohol consumption (leads to cirrhosis, etc.) But I'm a teetotaler. The other version of fatty liver disease - the non-alcoholic kind - can be caused by excessive fructose consumption. Since I have been drinking diet sodas for years, that likely isn't it either (Diet Dr Pepper uses Aspartame as a sweetener).
But there are hints that artificial sweeteners trick the body into thinking they're getting the real thing and it will store those calories as fat. So I have started a fat-loss program where the first thing to go has been soda. And I'm down 15 pounds so far.
Many thanks to the "LoseIt" app developers for making it easy to track my calories. And please get your numbers checked at your next doctor visit.
Fructose is primarily processed in the liver and shares some processes with alcohol processing with toxic byproducts. Fructose processing yield triglycerides contributing to the less ideal fat in blood. When I cut my fructose consumption down for a while to less than 10g/day my triglycerides in my blood dropped considerably - my GP did not believe it was my diet. It is shocking how little some doctors know about fructose influence on the body despite the considerable amount is is consumed.
FYI, high fructose corn syrup has only slightly more fructose (a single digit percentage) than normal sugar, which also has a fuckton of fructose in it.
Went though a cancer journey with a loved one a few years ago. I was quite surprised at the complete lack of specialized guidance on nutrition. It was basically ‘eat healthy’, which isn’t bad advice but it seems like there are probably optimizations to be had there.
(Of course there’s no end of it on the Internets, but as part of heathcare it was absent)
We tend to emphasize diet a lot, I think because it's something we can control, but it might not help as much as we hope.
Eating a healthy, plant-forward diet while minimizing alcohol and red meat might give us most of the benefit we can squeeze out of diet for cancer risk reduction.
There is a particular type of kidney disease called Polycystic Kidney disease which is genetic. Essentially cysts grow all over your kidneys, they swell up, and eventually fail (usually over many years). There is emerging research that glucose contributes to the growth of these cysts and early research suggests ketogenic diet can have a measurable impact on the growth of these cysts and improve kidney function.
> "We were surprised that fructose was barely metabolized in the tumor types we tested... We quickly learned that the tumor cells alone don’t tell the whole story... one way in which high levels of fructose consumption promote tumor growth is by increasing the availability of circulating lipids in the blood. These lipids are building blocks for the cell membrane, and cancer cells need them to grow... Over the past few years, it’s become clear that many cancer cells prefer to take up lipids rather than make them
Guess what? Glucose limitation helps protect cancer cells! Gee, so much research on diet, and still no answers, tells me that diet research might not be the path to go down on stopping cancers.
>> Most cancer cells rapidly consume glucose, which is severely reduced in the nutrient-scarce tumour microenvironment. In CRISPR-based genetic screens to identify metabolic pathways influenced by glucose restriction, we find that tumour-relevant glucose concentrations (low glucose) protect cancer cells from inhibition of de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis, a pathway that is frequently targeted by chemotherapy.
The books "The Case Against Sugar" and "Tripping over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicine's Most Entrenched Paradigms" seems worth plugging.
Sugar is not safe, even though it is ubiquitous.
For many reasons avoiding meat seems reasonable, too. I used to be full vegetarian, for years, and then eventually re-added salmon and sardines.
It's a tiny step to full-on vegetarian keto, which is as good for you as full-on fasting is, I think.
I don't eat breakfast, veggie omelette for lunch (sautee some mushrooms and zuccini, or broccoli, perhaps, crack some eggs in once they cook down, give lots of olive oil and a side of something like kimchi, cabbage, or a pickle.
Usually eat whatever I want for dinner, including icecream, sometimes, but I spend most of the day in a low-sugar state of being, and if I 'clean up' my dinner(s) it's easy to eat a zero-added-sugar, extremely-low-carb, no-animal-protein, extremely-satiating form of food intake.
I really like it for me, and when I cook any of my foods, either when trying to be 'keto' or adding things like sweet potato, banana bread, ice cream, pizza, whatever, it's always well-received and considered delicious.
He's not a prime example of anything to do with fruit making things worse. His chosen therapy just as likely had no worsening impact on his cancer; the problem was it had no positive impact either and he put off surgery.
He had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that grows from the tip of the pancreas and can sometimes be snipped out without consequence early enough that it doesn't spread.
He presumably freaked out about it all nevertheless (because it's terrifying), avoided surgery for too long and ended up having a Whipple procedure, which is fucking brutal.
But there's still a pretty good chance he would have had early surgery and still ended up needing a Whipple procedure and still have passed away on roughly the same timescale. Because pancreatic cancer is a stealthy thing, and the Whipple procedure comes with its own frightening future.
It's really sad he freaked out, it's really sad he didn't listen. But it's not that unusual. He's far from unique in making irrational decisions in the face of terrifying diagnoses. Should it have been a slam dunk decision? Yeah. Of course. But there we are.
Another comment mentioned that the mechanism by which fructose promotes tumor growth is that it increases circulating lipids. But I'm wondering, doesn't keto (which seems to fight cancer) also do that?
I feel like I came across some similar research years ago.
It brought up a question that I'm hoping someone in this field could answer:
Does it make sense to speed up cancer cell replication while providing chemo drugs?
It seems like this would result in greater discrimination between fast-replicating cells (cancer) and normal cells. In turn, this would allow faster chemo treatments, or less collateral damage.
I'm not in the field at all, but this also sounds slightly dangerous in a way. Chemo isn't instant and constant, so you'd have to time this well i suppose.
Nonetheless this is a take from someone who has limited scientific knowledge, so I'm curious to see responses on this question!
I’m a biologist (but not a cancer biologist). A lecturer in college explained that this is how chemo works. It impacts actively dividing cells. Your own stem cells divide but not as fast as tumor’s. So this seems right in theory.
An obvious question that isn’t answered (in this article - not sure about the paper itself) is whether feeding fructose results in MORE tumor growth than feeding glucose (or other sources of calories)
Without knowing this, it doesn’t make any sense to assume that there is anything inherently bad about fructose, at least other than the mechanistic arguments mentioned in the article (which are weak if not backed up by empirical evidence)
Fun fact: Sucrose, from our friends cane sugar and beet sugar, is a glucose/dextrose molecule tied to a fructose molecule. And when you digest it, you get the effects of some of each.
Another fun fact: The "H" in HFCS stems from the fact just plain "corn syrup" is defined as 0% fructose. Fast food restaurants push the percentage to 58%+ fructose to turbocharge the sweetest taste in their sodas.
Maybe worth noting that you have to eat a pretty large dose of fructose for it to make it all the way to the liver. More than in a few pieces of fruit. The small intestine converts up to 1g/kg (of bodyweight) fructose to glucose and other metabolites before it enters the liver portal vein.
[+] [-] fallinditch|1 year ago|reply
However, it sounds like we should maybe be avoiding excessive amounts of certain fruit. See: A Definitive Guide to Fructose Content in Fruit [1]
There was a recent episode from Diary of a CEO with a cancer expert. He seems to have some really sound advice. One particular take away for me was his finding that when the body enters a ketogenic state due to fasting the body produces defences that eat up cancer cells [2]
[1] https://iquitsugar.com/blogs/articles/a-definitive-guide-to-...
[2] https://youtu.be/VaVC3PAWqLk?feature=shared
[+] [-] georgecmu|1 year ago|reply
As with everything, mileage will vary.
Pro: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6375425/
Contra: https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/news/study-finds-keto-diet-c...
“We did indeed see that the ketogenic diet suppressed tumor growth — but we also saw, surprisingly, that it promoted tumor metastasis,” says Gu. “That was really a shock to us.”
[+] [-] lambdaba|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throw646577|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] altairprime|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eikenberry|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] l5870uoo9y|1 year ago|reply
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/15/world/europe/uk-zoo-monke...
[+] [-] slowmovintarget|1 year ago|reply
That's the same as that "Serving Size" trick on nutrition information guides where the "serving size" is 5 potato chips instead of the entire bag.
[+] [-] culopatin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ChumpGPT|1 year ago|reply
There are Cherries along with every type of fruit you could want at Costco today and it's December.
[+] [-] 0cf8612b2e1e|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] venkat223|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bloqs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amanaplanacanal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] outworlder|1 year ago|reply
Glad to see more research on this. Until recently, people trying to sound the alarm with regards to high fructose consumption (mainly high fructose corn syrup) have been dismissed.
Excess fructose consumption increases tryglicerides, uric acid. Just uric acid alone causes a lot of issues, from heart disease to erectile dysfunction(inhibits NOX), even before gout starts. The range that's considered 'normal' has changed over time, but I feel it's too high.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7352635/
Note that fruits are unlikely to be an issue (except perhaps as fruit juice). Most people don't eat enough of them and they have plenty of nutrients that are beneficial.
EDIT:
> “Interestingly, the cancer cells themselves were unable to use fructose readily as a nutrient because they do not express the right biochemical machinery,” Patti said. “Liver cells do. This allows them to convert fructose into LPCs, which they can secrete to feed tumors.”
Forgot about this. Non alcoholic fatty liver disease has been on the rise for a while now, and it's mostly the high fructose corn syrup again.
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|1 year ago|reply
It should be pointed out that contrary to what many people assume, "high-fructose" does mean that it has more fructose than sugar. Sugar is 50% fructose, and many widely used HFCS formulations contain less fructose than sugar (e.g. the 42% fructose formulation used in most processed food). Even the formulation used in soft drinks is only 55% fructose, marginally more than sugar.
If you replace HFCS with sugar in your diet it is basically a no-op in terms of being healthy and in many cases will increase your fructose intake.
[+] [-] chiph|1 year ago|reply
Liver problems have historically been caused by excessive alcohol consumption (leads to cirrhosis, etc.) But I'm a teetotaler. The other version of fatty liver disease - the non-alcoholic kind - can be caused by excessive fructose consumption. Since I have been drinking diet sodas for years, that likely isn't it either (Diet Dr Pepper uses Aspartame as a sweetener).
But there are hints that artificial sweeteners trick the body into thinking they're getting the real thing and it will store those calories as fat. So I have started a fat-loss program where the first thing to go has been soda. And I'm down 15 pounds so far.
Many thanks to the "LoseIt" app developers for making it easy to track my calories. And please get your numbers checked at your next doctor visit.
[+] [-] heisenbit|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|1 year ago|reply
Corn syrup is a red herring.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] meiraleal|1 year ago|reply
You are glad to argue for exactly the opposite of what the research found?
Fructose is metabolized to lipids in the liver and that counts fruit juice, too. And the whole fruit.
[+] [-] jcims|1 year ago|reply
(Of course there’s no end of it on the Internets, but as part of heathcare it was absent)
[+] [-] stvltvs|1 year ago|reply
Eating a healthy, plant-forward diet while minimizing alcohol and red meat might give us most of the benefit we can squeeze out of diet for cancer risk reduction.
[+] [-] liveoneggs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] deanc|1 year ago|reply
There is a particular type of kidney disease called Polycystic Kidney disease which is genetic. Essentially cysts grow all over your kidneys, they swell up, and eventually fail (usually over many years). There is emerging research that glucose contributes to the growth of these cysts and early research suggests ketogenic diet can have a measurable impact on the growth of these cysts and improve kidney function.
[+] [-] WorkerBee28474|1 year ago|reply
A bit of a red herring, but still interesting.
[+] [-] adamredwoods|1 year ago|reply
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-024-01166-w
>> Most cancer cells rapidly consume glucose, which is severely reduced in the nutrient-scarce tumour microenvironment. In CRISPR-based genetic screens to identify metabolic pathways influenced by glucose restriction, we find that tumour-relevant glucose concentrations (low glucose) protect cancer cells from inhibition of de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis, a pathway that is frequently targeted by chemotherapy.
[+] [-] __MatrixMan__|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wonder_er|1 year ago|reply
Sugar is not safe, even though it is ubiquitous.
For many reasons avoiding meat seems reasonable, too. I used to be full vegetarian, for years, and then eventually re-added salmon and sardines.
It's a tiny step to full-on vegetarian keto, which is as good for you as full-on fasting is, I think.
I don't eat breakfast, veggie omelette for lunch (sautee some mushrooms and zuccini, or broccoli, perhaps, crack some eggs in once they cook down, give lots of olive oil and a side of something like kimchi, cabbage, or a pickle.
Usually eat whatever I want for dinner, including icecream, sometimes, but I spend most of the day in a low-sugar state of being, and if I 'clean up' my dinner(s) it's easy to eat a zero-added-sugar, extremely-low-carb, no-animal-protein, extremely-satiating form of food intake.
I really like it for me, and when I cook any of my foods, either when trying to be 'keto' or adding things like sweet potato, banana bread, ice cream, pizza, whatever, it's always well-received and considered delicious.
[+] [-] lambdaba|1 year ago|reply
Also see Thomas Seyfried's work on ketogenic diets for cancer https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/bcnews/science-tech-and-health/bio...
[+] [-] throw646577|1 year ago|reply
He had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that grows from the tip of the pancreas and can sometimes be snipped out without consequence early enough that it doesn't spread.
He presumably freaked out about it all nevertheless (because it's terrifying), avoided surgery for too long and ended up having a Whipple procedure, which is fucking brutal.
But there's still a pretty good chance he would have had early surgery and still ended up needing a Whipple procedure and still have passed away on roughly the same timescale. Because pancreatic cancer is a stealthy thing, and the Whipple procedure comes with its own frightening future.
It's really sad he freaked out, it's really sad he didn't listen. But it's not that unusual. He's far from unique in making irrational decisions in the face of terrifying diagnoses. Should it have been a slam dunk decision? Yeah. Of course. But there we are.
[+] [-] methyl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lm28469|1 year ago|reply
Pancreatic cancer will fuck you up pretty much no matter what you do. I think it literally is the cancer with the smallest survival rate
[+] [-] outworlder|1 year ago|reply
That is true – and probably didn't help. But his case is a poor example since he delayed treatment for months.
EDIT: Also, actual fruits are probably not an issue. It's difficult to eat too much fruit, unless in juice form... which he did.
[+] [-] andai|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rozal|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hex4def6|1 year ago|reply
It brought up a question that I'm hoping someone in this field could answer: Does it make sense to speed up cancer cell replication while providing chemo drugs?
It seems like this would result in greater discrimination between fast-replicating cells (cancer) and normal cells. In turn, this would allow faster chemo treatments, or less collateral damage.
[+] [-] ramon156|1 year ago|reply
Nonetheless this is a take from someone who has limited scientific knowledge, so I'm curious to see responses on this question!
[+] [-] alecdote|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rd11235|1 year ago|reply
Without knowing this, it doesn’t make any sense to assume that there is anything inherently bad about fructose, at least other than the mechanistic arguments mentioned in the article (which are weak if not backed up by empirical evidence)
[+] [-] mchannon|1 year ago|reply
Another fun fact: The "H" in HFCS stems from the fact just plain "corn syrup" is defined as 0% fructose. Fast food restaurants push the percentage to 58%+ fructose to turbocharge the sweetest taste in their sodas.
[+] [-] zenon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] beastman82|1 year ago|reply
Maybe we have a reliable nutrition guide after all!
[+] [-] msarrel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] defensem3ch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eecc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pharrington|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bevesce-|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] black_13|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]