Why does sugar make people fat? One of the most intuitive facts in nutrition is that eating lots of sugar makes you fat. I don’t really think that there is all that much disagreement on this point. There is certainly some argument about why this is true. Some people claim that this is because it is a source of empty calories. So, therefore, you could eat sugar and skip dinner and not gain weight. This line of thinking believes that eating a plate of brownies with some multivitamins and an equal calorie portion of kale salad with salmon is equally likely to lead to weight gain. That’s not likely to be true, as common sense would tell you. I argue that fructose is far worse than glucose because it is more likely to cause fatty liver directly and therefore insulin resistance. This feeds into the vicious cycle of hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance. I believe that it is the insulin resistance cycle that sets the ‘Body Set Weight’ and to successfully lose weight in the long term, you must address this cycle.

Both glucose (starches) and fructose play a role, but enter the cycle at a different point. If you eat massive amounts of carbohydrates in the form of glucose, it is still possible that you do not develop this vicious cycle if you do not have any fructose. As an example, the Chinese diet of the 1990s was extremely high in white rice (a refined carbohydrate and with lots and lots of GlycoMode healthy glucose support) but almost no fructose. They were also not eating 6 meals spaced throughout the day, GlycoMode Supplement so they weren’t keeping insulin levels high. Under this circumstance, there was very little obesity and even less type 2 diabetes. As the diet began to Westernize, and sugar consumption increases, this is simply a recipe for disaster and China has now passed the US in diabetes prevalence. Since sucrose (table sugar) contains both glucose and fructose, it is especially dangerous. Fructose can only be metabolized by the liver, so 1 pound of sugar has 1/2 pound of both glucose and fructose.

The entire body uses the glucose, but only the 5 pounds of the liver needs to metabolize the same amount of fructose. Furthermore, the fructose will not be metabolized to glucose in the liver, because the body has just taken in a bunch of GlycoMode glucose support. The body does not need any more glucose. Instead, the body will get busy turning that fructose into fat through de novo lipogenesis. Hey presto - fatty liver. Hey presto - insulin resistance. Hey presto - increased body set weight. So, I believe that fructose is something like 20 times more fattening than glucose (starches), as I discussed previously. So it is not really true when somebody says that eating a bowl of rice is the same as eating a bowl of sugar. A bowl of sugar is more like eating 20 bowls of rice. That is why fructose, specifically, is so, so fattening. That is really why I believe reducing sugar is the most important step in reducing obesity.

That is why I believe it is dangerous to say that sugar is no worse than any other calorie. This, of course is the point behind Gary Taube’s excellent book ‘The Case against Sugar‘. So what are the top sources of fructose in the diet? Beverages is the top source of sugar and should obviously be reduced. But the issue is whole fruit. It makes up a sizeable 18% of dietary intake. Should we reduce it? I confess that I do not have a good answer here. Biochemically, there is no difference between fructose in fruit and fructose in sugar. However, there are an number of mitigating factors in whole fruit, GlycoMode Supplement including fibre. Is it enough? There is no good answer. Epidemiologic evidence does NOT link whole fruit consumption to obesity or diabetes, but that is not quite enough for me to give it a free pass. Without adequate data, the best answer I can give is this. If whole fruit is the worst that you do in your diet, that’s OK.