Food Sweetener May Be Fuelling Childhood Diabetes

Mon, 14 Dec 2009
The sweetener fructose, an inexpensive sugar substitute added to thousands of processed foods and soft drinks, could actually be increasing childhood diabetes as well as the obesity crisis.

University of California researchers placed 16 volunteers on a strict, controlled diet with high levels of fructose, a corn derived sweetener.

After only 10 weeks, the volunteers had developed more fat cells around their liver, heart and other main organs and displayed signs of food processing abnormalities related to heart disease and diabetes.

A separate group of volunteers, who were also on a controlled diet without the fructose, did not experience the fat cell increase or the food processing abnormalities.

Both groups put on the same amount of weight .

Children are considered to be in a higher risk group as they are more likely to eat products with high levels of sweeteners over longer time periods.

The study leader, Kimber Stanhope, a molecular biologist, stated that this is the first evidence we have that fructose increases diabetes and heart disease independently from triggering weight gain,

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