Starch for sugar swap aids liver fat

Just nine days of cutting out fructose — the kind of sugar found in soft drinks, fruit juices and most processed foods — led to an unprecedented reduction in liver fat, a condition strongly linked to Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a new Bay Areabased study shows.

Scientists at Touro University in Vallejo and UC San Francisco recorded a 20 percent drop in liver fat in children and adolescents they studied. The scientists say the results offer a strategy that could slow the soaring global increase in chronic metabolic diseases.

The findings appear today in the journal Gastroenterology.

“Our study clearly shows that sugar is turned into fat, which may explain the epidemic of fatty liver in children consuming soda and food with added sugar. And we find that fatty liver is reversed by removing added fructose from our diet,” lead author JeanMarc Schwarz, a professor at Touro University and UCSF, said in a statement.

The researchers said the prevalence of fatty liver disease in adolescents has more than doubled in the past 20 years and is thought to cause a number of disorders by increasing insulin resistance, which dampens the body’s ability to control blood sugar, leading to Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

Studies show that sugar consumption among Latino and African-American teens is about 50 percent higher than that of whites and Asians, so the researchers recruited obese non-diabetic children and teens, ages 9 to 18, from those two ethnic groups.

In the experimental diet, the calories from fructose were replaced by glucoserich, starchy foods. Experts say glucose, found in grains and some vegetables, is the body’s main source of energy. It can be turned into energy in all of our cells.