The danger in that glass of orange or grape juice

This could be one of the most important health alarms sounded in a very long time.

Researchers in California have uncovered a single food ingredient that may be causing some of the most serious modern health plagues.

It’s the biggest reason you end up on insulin, or heart drugs or counting calories for the rest of your life.

When you eat it, the damage is almost instant. But if you know which foods to avoid, your body can start to heal – and faster than anyone ever imagined.

The new “F” word

Jean-Marc Schwarz’s pilot study only ran for 18 days. But that was long enough to see both the damage fructose causes and how quickly it can be reversed.

Schwarz found that it’s actually the daily dose of fructose we consume – and not overeating — that’s destroying our health and increasing our weight.

That’s certainly refreshing news if you’re weighing and measuring every single bite you take.

Research participants in Schwarz’s study were all given a certain number of calories from fructose. And they all suffered the same disastrous effects.

The fructose was converted to fat right away. Worse still, it caused an almost instantaneous increase in liver fat.

Fatty liver disease is a potentially life-threatening buildup of fat deposits in your liver. It’s been called “America’s silent epidemic” and rates among adults have doubled over the past two decades.

And the worst part is that you may be sending a repeated fructose shock to your liver without ever realizing it.

We all know drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), like soda, aren’t good for us. But many seemingly healthy fruit drinks are loaded with fructose — and your liver doesn’t care if the fructose comes from a Big Gulp or a glass of apple juice.

In fact, Schwarz points out that the fructose jolt you’ll get from many so-called 100 percent fruit juices is similar to what you’ll find in soda.

And while fructose is damaging your liver and expanding your waistline, it’s boosting your chances of developing type 2 diabetes.

Previous research has found that countries that consume the most fructose (like the U.S.) have diabetes rates that are 20 percent higher than countries that don’t. And those results held regardless of obesity rates.

And to think that fructose is often recommended to diabetics because it doesn’t cause a blood sugar spike!

The good news is that, while fructose attacks your body quickly, the damage can be undone in a short period of time. Schwarz found that just nine days of a low-fructose diet was all it took to start reversing the bad effects.

So along with dodging all foods and beverages that contain HFCS, here are four ways to stay safe from a dose of damaging fructose:

• Always check fruit juice labels for fructose – even the 100 percent pure varieties such as orange or grape. But remember that eating fruit itself is still OK. The fiber in fruit delays the absorption of fructose so your body digests it in a different – and healthier – way.
• Be on the lookout for crystalline fructose, which contains around 99 percent fructose.
• Beware of juice boxes that claim the product is lower in sugar. That’s often a telltale sign that the product has fructose. Since fructose is much sweeter than sugar, it takes less of it to sweeten.
• Avoid using agave syrup, even the healthy-looking organic kinds. Agave is practically 100 percent fructose, and will give you the same jolt as if you were pouring HFCS over a food or beverage.

Source:

“Study shows sharp differences with introduction, withdrawal of fructose, David Gorn, April 2, 2015, California Healthline, californiahealthline.org