Why everybody needs to relax with their fructose-hate

"If you want to lose weight, don't eat any fruit – it's full of sugar."

From the gym to the café to the school run, everybody is talking s--t about fruit. Specifically, the naturally-occurring sugar in fruit known as fructose, which has been blamed for all of our weighty woes.

But is chomping down on a few apples really the reason why we're all collectively loosening our belts – or is it simply another victim of our obsession with "clean-eating"?

It's clearly the latter, says Dr Alan Barclay, Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) spokesperson and accredited practising dietitian.

"The sugar fructose has been the subject of considerable media attention, most of which has been negative," says Barclay in a DAA statement.

"Focusing on a single 'dietary villain' is easy, but the concept has major flaws. You don’t need to avoid sugars (or fructose) completely for good health, but it’s sensible to limit intake of foods which contain added sugars, and also provide little or no nutritional value."

What fructose actually is

Before you start researching how a slice of pear could suddenly turn you into one (and no doubt there's a Google search that will tell you that), it's important to know what fructose actually is.

Although it's derided as a form of sugar, fructose is actually a type of carbohydrate found in many different kinds of fruits, fruit juices, some vegetables and even honey. It's essentially the ingredient that makes all of those foods taste sweet.

Here's where is gets interesting: when fructose is combined with glucose, it forms what we know as "sucrose", or table sugar. Metabolically, when we consume fructose as a naturally occurring compound in fruit, it comes with whole variety of nutrients (including fibre) that effect how our body feels and reacts.

When we consume fructose as an ingredient that's been added to foods that didn’t previously have it (like sweets and lollies), our bodies react differently because it isn't accompanied with all of those nutrients, and it’s usually found in a much higher dosage.

If that all sounds pretty damn confusing, it is – but Barclay believes there's a simpler way to approach it.

"Like most nutrients or food components, the quantity we eat or drink is key," says Barclay.

"Most of the research looking at the effects of fructose has used very high doses of pure added fructose – much more than what people would typically eat."

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Most Aussies don’t even eat enough fruit to worry about the fructose

Let's for a moment put aside the idea that excessive added sugars are making us fat.

We almost certainly know that is the case – and though most people have no idea how much added sugar they're consuming, a vast number of the population can objectively identify that sugary treats like a can of coke or a chocolate bar is not what you should be eating every day.

Despite this, many people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and totally avoiding fruit thanks to its fructose content – but Barclay says that most of us don’t even eat close to the amount of fruit salad you would need to go beyond the recommended limits.

"To be harmful to health, people would need to eat at least 50g of pure fructose on top of their regular diet," says Barclay.

"The reality is that few Australians eat pure fructose, let alone in the amounts required to cause adverse health problems."

In fact, Australians eat so few fruits that it's literally making us sick. It's estimated that just a paltry 5.5 percent of Aussies eat the recommended two servings of fruit a day, and this along with our lack of veggies leads to a multitude of knock-on effects including chronic disease.

"Many Australians need to eat more fruit, which contains naturally-occurring sugars including fructose and glucose, along with important nutrients like fibre, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients," says Barclay.

"In fact, the dietary fibre in whole fruit helps to fill us up, which prevents us from eating too much. So we only obtain a small amount of fructose from fruit, which is not going to blow the fructose budget."

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Focus on 'added sugars' in processed foods

For many dietitians, if there's one thing you take away from the fructose debate, it's working out the difference between naturally-occurring sugars in foods that go from farm to table, and "added sugars" put in our food to make it taste sweeter.

"The key issue in Australia is 'added sugars', rather than fructose," says Barclay. "A total avoidance of fructose, as recommended by some anti-sugar crusaders, is unnecessary."

As it turns out, with the exception of some sneakily-marketed diet foods, spotting which products have added sugars is actually quite easy, and only requires a little common sense.

"The Australian Dietary Guidelines specifically recommend limiting intake of foods containing added sugars such as confectionary, soft drinks, fruit drinks, cordials, vitamin waters, energy drinks, sports drinks, biscuits and cakes," says Barclay.

These delicious foods, which take up much of the space in our shopping trolleys, are also taking up much of the space in our "sugar budget", and the statistics are pretty concerning.

"Sadly, recent figures indicate that Australians are consuming nearly a third of their daily energy (or kilojoules) form discretionary foods, which includes foods containing added sugars," says Barclay.

"And 75 per cent of 9-18 year olds currently get more than 10 per cent of their kilojoules from added sugar, but fail to consume even the minimum recommended quantities from other core food groups such as fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, milk, cheese or yoghurt."

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