Fructose intake linked with body weight: study
Not all calories are digested equally, and those derived from fruits and vegetables, called fructose, could lead to weight gain at a greater rate than calories from other sources, says a new study. “Given the dramatic increase in obesity among young people, it is important to consider what foods are providing our calories,” says research director Justin Rhodes.
The researchers worked with two groups of mice for two and a half months. One group was fed a diet in which 18% of the calories came from fructose. To compare, teenage boys in the US are thought to get 15% to 23% of their daily calories from fructose. The other group of mice was fed a diet in which 18% of their calories came from glucose. “The important thing to note here is that animals in both the experimental groups had the usual intake of calories for a mouse,” says lead author Catarina Rendeiro, a postdoctoral research affiliate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Urbana, USA.
Since both the groups consumed the same proportion of calories from sugar, the only difference was in the kind of sugar they were eating, says Rendeiro.
Researchers observed that the fructose-fed mice got lazy, and gained significantly more weight than the glucose-fed mice. “Contrary to glucose, fructose bypasses certain metabolic steps that result in an increase in fat formation, especially in adipose tissue and the liver,” he says. The paper was published in the journal, Scientific Reports.
Another recent study suggests that the brain may respond differently to glucose and fructose. Those researchers presented their work at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology annual meeting in December, in Arizona, USA, and found that fructose intensified the feeling of reward that comes from the brain, which makes you want more food.