more sugar: sucrose vs glucose & fructose: Simple-sugar effects aren’t necessarily simple

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Simple-sugar effects aren’t necessarily simple, animal study suggests

At least in mice, eating sucrose may not be equivalent to dining on

glucose plus fructose.

By Janet Raloff

April 13th, 2011

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/72741/title/Simple-sugar_effects_aren\

%E2%80%99t_necessarily_simple,_animal_study_suggests

WASHINGTON, D.C. New mouse data suggest that even among seemingly

identical sugars, how they are delivered can exert subtle metabolic

differences with long-term impacts on vitality -- and lifespan.

It’s comparatively easy to identify a substance that is acutely toxic,

causing immediate sickness or death. More challenging – but also

important – is recognizing whether dietary or environmental exposures

compromise long-term health and fitness. Scientists at the University of

Utah in Salt Lake City have developed a mouse assay to probe for such

chronic risks, ones that might diminish lifespan or an animal’s ability

to win a mate....

But Ruff says one thing is suspicious. These early deaths started to

occur in the females fed fructose-plus-glucose at about the time they

were pregnant with their second litter. This was also just after they

started to nurse their first babies. “So they’re under acute metabolic

stress,” Ruff observes. And it appears that something about the

separated-sugars diet compromised the moms’ vigor, relative to

sucrose-reared neighbors.

That’s concerning, he adds, because the dual delivery of simple sugars

in their diet somewhat mirrors the delivery of carbohydrates in

high-fructose corn syrup (aka corn sugar), where its component sugars

are delivered individually, Ruff says, not as sucrose with a little

fructose bonus....

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n%E2%80%99t_necessarily_simple,_animal_study_suggests>

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