Oh no!! It’s the fruit making us fat.

According to today’s Daily Mail, the natural sugar in fruit is playing havoc with the nation’s waistlines.

Fructose, the natural sugar found in fruit, has been found to make people fatter around the tummy than glucose. According to the Mail, this ‘intra-abdominal fat’ is the most harmful type and is linked to serious problems such as diabetes and heart disease.

The fruit sugar is used to sweeten a huge number of foods including fruit juice, jam and (in syrup form) loads of processed foods. And of course fruit sugar is present in, er, fruit. But despite our facetious headline, it’s still worth chomping down on fresh fruit as the health benefits outweigh the sugar content.

Scientists at the University of California in the US studied 33 overweight adults for two weeks while they ate a diet that was 30% fat, 55% complex carbohydrates and 15% protein.

For the next 10 weeks they ate a diet where a quarter of their energy came from either fructose or glucose. Both groups put on the same amount of weight (3.3lbs) but in the fructose group, the weight gain was around the middle – the most dangerous place. They also had increased levels of cholesterol.
Intra-abdominal fat wraps around internal organs and cases pot bellies.

Dr Havel, who led the study, said:

“The question is what is the amount of high-fructose corn syrup or normal sugar you need to consume to get these effects?”

The research suggests that calorie-counting is less important than paying attention to the type of sugar a food contains.

The study was paid for by PepsiCo, who have piped up gleefully to point out that they don’t use fructose in their drinks. Hurrah for them, money well spent.

Image: kevinrosseel