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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating
Associated Press ^ | Jan 1, 2013 4:04 PM EST | Marilynn Marchione and Mike Stobbe

Posted on 01/01/2013 9:37:10 PM PST by Olog-hai

This is your brain on sugar—for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn’t register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It’s a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight. …

Scans showed that drinking glucose “turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food,” said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, “we don’t see those changes,” he said. “As a result, the desire to eat continues—it isn’t turned off.” …

(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Food; Health/Medicine; Science
KEYWORDS: fructose; glucose; hfcs; junkfood; monosaccharides; obesity; overeating; sugar

1 posted on 01/01/2013 9:37:20 PM PST by Olog-hai
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To: Olog-hai
Interesting. I don't have a munchies problem with sugar, but artificial sweeteners make me want to eat the legs off the dining room table.
2 posted on 01/01/2013 9:48:42 PM PST by fatnotlazy
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To: fatnotlazy

Fructose is at the root of a lot of controversy. Modern HFCS has proportionally more fructose in it than does the older sweetener sucrose, or table sugar. It might be less satisfying than sucrose to some. Other controversial claims is that, nonintuitively, it packs on measurably more pounds than the same calories of sucrose.


3 posted on 01/01/2013 10:10:24 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)
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To: Olog-hai
One thing to consider is that there is a reason that food producers add both SALT and SUGAR/fructose to just about EVERYTHING.

It's not as if sugar is cheap. There is an OVERWHELMING REASON for them to do so.

There is very little doubt that they add them to make you consume more.

If they didn't produce the desired effect, they wouldn't spend the money to add them.

4 posted on 01/01/2013 10:44:38 PM PST by UCANSEE2 ( If you think I'm crazy, just wait until you talk to my invisible friend.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Usually fructose does not occur naturally in an isolated form (that is, not without glucose), and sucrose (table sugar) consists of glucose and fructose chemically bound to each other. Fructose without glucose to balance it out seems to be what causes trouble here . . .


5 posted on 01/02/2013 3:09:33 AM PST by Olog-hai
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To: UCANSEE2
There is an OVERWHELMING REASON for them to do so.

Yep. Look at all the high fructose corrn syrup that's used in just about everything. If you can stand it, look at the Monsanto/GMO corn/USDA relationship. It will make incest look respectable.

6 posted on 01/02/2013 4:00:29 AM PST by tbpiper
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To: HiTech RedNeck; Olog-hai

Do either of you know the difference between fructose as mentioned in this article and fructose in the form of say an apple or berry? I wonder as the only ‘sugar’ I eat is in the form of an apple, berry, or lemon or veggies (limited amounts of course). I wonder if the fiber limits some of the negative reaction in the body vs the fructose used in article. Thoughts?


7 posted on 01/02/2013 8:43:45 AM PST by GOP Poet
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To: GOP Poet

Not sure. There is one chemical used in manufacture of HFCS that does not appear in natural sugars, that being xylose isomerase, a non-animal enzyme that converts the glucose in normal corn syrup to fructose, not all of which would be d-fructose (naturally-occurring) but a great deal would be the sweeter l-fructose. Sugar isomers do react differently in body chemistry; some are even toxic.


8 posted on 01/02/2013 9:04:48 AM PST by Olog-hai
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To: Olog-hai
These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity.

Because the manufacturers discovered they could save money by sweetening with HFCS instead of sugar because HFCS tastes much sweeter.

I have been saying for a long time that there was a link between the increase in obesity and the rise in the use of HFCS.

9 posted on 01/02/2013 7:18:51 PM PST by upchuck (America's at an awkward stage. Too late to work within the system, too early to shoot the bastards.)
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To: fatnotlazy
"but artificial sweeteners make me want to eat the legs off the dining room table"

Exactly the plan of the producers of this stuff - it's "mind control" through chemical ingestion when you break it all down. I swore it off Jan 1.

10 posted on 01/03/2013 5:34:44 AM PST by wesagain (The God (Elohim) of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the One True GOD.)
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