Downside of your fructose sweets

Not all sugars are created equal

Author

Kos Zharoid
June 18, 2025

Fruit smoothies are just candy bars in yoga pants.

They look healthy, they sound healthy… but your liver knows the truth. Let’s talk about what’s really inside that glass of blended betrayal.

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"Sugar-free" and "With fructose"

We see this phrase on the labels of "healthy foods".

Sometimes, a person eats several kilograms of fruit per day, drinks fruit smoothies, or chooses sweets with fructose, believing it's a healthy eating habit. The person thinks they will only get benefits in the form of vitamins from this. But that's not true!

Let's go deeper and make it easier to understand.

Fructose is a form of sugar. It is one of the main "natural sources" of sweets, found in many fruits, some vegetables, and honey.

FRUCTOSE is an isomer of GLUCOSE. With the help of enzymes, glucose can turn into fructose and vice versa. It has a chemical conformation with an open chain and is, therefore, much more reactive than glucose. That's why the metabolism of FRUCTOSE is different from the metabolism of glucose.

Fructose by itself isn't automatically bad; again, context matters. If fructose enters your body alongside fiber, vitamins and antioxidants (like it does in whole fruits), absorption is slowed down. This buys your mitochondria and liver time to process the sugar at a steadier pace, minimizing reductive stress.

Other components mitigate the effects of sugar - Fruit's water content also dilutes the overall sugar concentration, reducing the burden on your liver and pancreas. Meanwhile, phytochemicals such as polyphenols and flavonoids assist in managing free radicals - unstable molecules that can harm cells if not properly neutralized.

This protection means that the fructose in whole fruit enters your system in a gentle trickle rather than a forceful wave, giving your mitochondria time to generate energy in a balanced way without letting NADH accumulate excessively.

High amounts of fructose alone immediately impact your health - If, however, fructose arrives in a sweetened beverage or in a high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) form, you ingest a large amount very quickly.

Fructose is mainly metabolized in the liver, and its pathway is slightly different from glucose's path.

  • If we eat a little fructose <0.5 g/kg body weight (snacking on an apple after a meal), it turns into glucose in the cells of the small intestine.

  • If we eat a large amount (>1 g/kg) of fructose. In that case, it initially harms the intestines, then enters the systemic bloodstream (diffusely) and reaches the liver and cells.

Although there is already a lot of evidence of the harm of excess fructose, there are still MYTHS in society that:

  • Fructose is not sugar.

  • Fructose is good for people with diabetes.

  • Products containing fructose are healthier than those containing regular sugar. As a result, we see many sweets containing fructose, honey, agave, Jerusalem artichoke, dates, maple, and other syrups.

Due to these myths, we inflict significant harm on ourselves.

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Studies show that excess fructose is associated with increased risks of developing:

The problem with fructose is that it is not regulated by insulin and can stimulate the production of fats in the liver.

So, to summarize the above:

  1. Fructose is harmful only in excess. At a normal intake of 300-350 grams of fruits and berries per day, fructose is not harmful. Of course, it is better to prefer berries, as they are more nutritionally valuable for us, containing more fiber, flavonoids, and antioxidants.

  2. Excess fructose has been proven to be harmful and does not leave a chance to be healthy.

  3. Fructose-based products are not healthier than products with regular sugar.

  4. Fructose makes it harder to lose weight!

Let's look at the 4th conclusion in more detail.

Why does fructose make it harder to lose weight?

Almost everyone who wants to lose weight or watch their weight has the belief that fructose will not hinder this. They buy cookies, granola, or fructose-based bars when they crave something sweet.

Why shouldn't they do this?

It's not about the calories (by the way, fructose has the same calorie count as sugar), but about much more complicated hormonal regulation mechanisms.

Consuming fructose, unlike consuming glucose, leads to increased hunger and the desire to eat, because fructose:

  • Lowers leptin (the satiety hormone)

  • Lowers the hormone GLP-1/glucagon-like peptide 1 and consequently insulin secretion

  • Increases the hunger hormone ghrelin in the serum, which stimulates the activity of neuropeptide Y, increasing food intake

Increased fructose intake with food significantly accelerates the gastric half-emptying time compared to similar glucose intake, so we get hungry again faster.

In conclusion, fructose can be beneficial in moderate amounts in the form of whole fruits, berries, vegetables, and honey.

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