subject: Does Fructose Really Triggers Cancer? [print this page] This week it's impossible to miss the headlines that fructose causes breast and pancreatic cancer. But does this really mean we have to pour our OJ down the drain and compost our dried dates and raisins, vowing never to approach the fruit aisle at the supermarket again?
What all the reporting is omitting is the reason why fructose is related with cancer. The simple reason is that sugar is not just used by cells. Sugar also becomes to be the backbone of DNA.
DNA is composed in part of incredibly long chains of ribose sugar. It's easier for those cells to make ribose from fructose than it is for them to make it from any other source. However, the process is not automatic.
The translation of fructose to pentose only happens when there are also fluctuations in an enzyme named transketolase. This enzyme responds to extra sugar, not necessarily by fructose sugar. It is not just the presence of fructose that activates the production of large amounts of ribose. It is also using too many carbs in general. There is a unexpected eagerness for the more natural cane sugar, or sucrose, but it is essential to put in mind that sucrose is a chemical combination of glucose and fructose. You can't avoid fructose by eating cane sugar.
But what does all this have to do with cancer, anyway?
In the proliferation stage of cancer development, cancer cells have to make lots of DNA so they can divide to create lots of cancer cells. Fructose does not cause cancer. It does not really "fuel" cancer. It provides the raw materials for cancer cell (and healthy cell) DNA. If
you consume tiny amounts of fructose, you don't trigger the massive production of ribose in cancer cells.
There is a distinction, of course, between high-fructose corn syrup and fructose from fruit. "High" fructose is not 100% fructose. It's also glucose, just in a different ratio than table sugar. The idea for using high-fructose corn syrup is that it doesn't dry out the same way that cane sugar does, and it is a clever explanation for planting many of corn, selling lots of seed and fertilizer and tractors, making a new product for hedge funds, and so on. Eating no more than about 15 grams (3 spoons) up to twice a day won't activate the nasty reactions that accelerate cancer proliferation, and eating a single piece of fruit earlier in the day and another piece of fruit later in the day won't, either.
Dunking a dozen doughnuts, on the other way, is sensibly a prescription for cancer growth. It is just Significant to remember that with fructose as with everything else, stay within a healthy limit. And it's probably best to avoid high-fructose corn syrup altogether, if only to send the hedge fund managers, GMO creators, and pesticide purveyors a lesson.
