There’s a weird idea that eating sugar causes diabetes.
But sugar consumption does not cause diabetes.
As I’ve shown you in the past, in fact, people who consume a lot of sugar are less likely to get diabetes.
Some forms of sugar even fight inflammation.
And inflammation is associated with CAUSING diabetes.
Sugar may help prevent or treat diabetes.
So now the next thing that people are always thinking is that fruit sugar (fructose) is bad for you.
They’ve been told that the obesity epidemic is due to high fructose corn syrup.
I’m not a big fan of high fructose corn syrup.
Although I will sometimes get soft drinks containing it without too much bother.
And one reason I think it’s not bad is that it contains a lot of fructose.
Fructose is really getting a bum rap.
So they gave four groups of people each different beverages containing certain types of sugar.
- Fructose
- Glucose
- Artificially-sweetened (no calorie) water
- Orange juice
Then they drew blood and saw what was going on in their blood.
It turns out that plain glucose causes more inflammation.
Free radicals increased in the group that was drinking the glucose water.
And also, something called inflammatory cytokines were higher in the glucose drinking group than the other groups.
Cytokines are a protein that cause more inflammation and oxidative stress.
As the researchers point out,
obesity is characterized by an excess of oxidative stress and inflammation.
The researchers found that the orange juice doesn’t cause inflammation the way that glucose does.
They theorized that it might be the vitamin C in the orange juice that made the difference.
But they found that it wasn’t the ascorbic acid (vitamin C) that was lowering inflammation when people drink orange juice.
There are other compounds in orange juice that may be responsible for bringing down inflammation.
Clearly, therefore, the two major flavonoids in orange juice might mediate the suppression of glucose-induced free radical generation.
Orange juice contains hesperetin and naringenin that may reduce free radicals and inflammation.
But the other surprising finding is that the fructose group also had lower inflammation.
Since fructose is a major sugar in fruits and other vegetable products, it would be worth investigating the potential anti-inflammatory effect of food products rich in fructose.
The truth is that orange juice is good for you.
And fructose is good for you.
So go have a Coke.
After you have a glass of orange juice.
There are tremendous benefits to fructose and orange juice.
One could just be a major calorie source for you, and perhaps it should be.
Citations
Orange Juice or Fructose Intake Does Not Induce Oxidative and Inflammatory Response
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17384340
See this for more on Orange juice and see more on Natural remedies, and for more information see effects of Healthy living.