By Hana Roslan

Although fructose was predicted to become a solution for diabetic patients in the early 90s because of its negative insulin response, recent research has shown that people on high fructose diets can still be linked with obesity.

This was said by nutrition specialist at the Health Promotion Centre Nelson Dennis who spoke about fructose diets in an interview with The Brunei Times.

"When we talk about fructose, I like to talk about obesity," he said.

He said that in the United States and some Western countries, it has been shown that the "typical" food that they eat contain a lot of high fructose.

An individual gets to a point where they have high fructose diets because they don't eat "natural" foods, he said.

"They are always eating from the can, taking carbonated drinks which contains what you call high fructose corn syrup," he said.

Speaking on the difference between glucose and fructose, he said that fructose does not metabolise in the same way as sugar.

"Sugar causes insulin response which is bad for diabetics, but fructose doesn't affect them that way," he said.

When he was studying his Bachelor's degree in Food Science and Nutrition, Dennis said that he thought that fructose was going to be one route that all diabetics can eventually take because of its non-existing insulin response.

Fructose transfers to livers to be processed, he said, and the liver is one of the main seeds of metabolism.

"What it does though, is that it's still a kind of sugar that releases energy, so it kind of metabolises in such a way that the liver converts it into fat which is also not very good for you," he said.

What type of fat you have is equal to how healthy you are, he said.

"This particular fructose is bad fat," he said.

He also said that another way fructose is bad for diabetics is that it doesn't help them realise that they have eaten enough.

Studies in the US have also shown that sugar makes you want to stop eating as well as inhibits and reduces hunger.

"Once you start taking fructose, the systems gets a little messed up because you are hungry all the time and don't know when to stop eating," he said.

"This can be bad for diabetics because although there are no calories, it messes up your satiety centre and doesn't tell you that you have had enough to eat," he said.

With obesity as an epidemic at the moment, he said that fructose and obesity will be even more complicated in the future.

"The obesity situation will worsen and that I have seen research as recent as 2002 to prove this," he said.

He added: "There are a lot of studies but we don't know what's going to happen in the next few years, but what we're saying is that the situation is bad now because we are taking too much fructose and glucose and fructose added with glucose, is a recipe for disaster."

However, he said that fructose contained in fruits are naturally low, and that the ratio between fructose and glucose in a fruit is not remarkably significant.

"Eating three portions of fruits per day is okay," he said.

For non-diabetics in Brunei, he said that eventually "everyone should be on a diabetic diet".

"Interestingly enough if you are living in Brunei that has a high prevalence of diabetes, everyone should be on a diabetic diet,"he said.

He said that if one in three children in the US were predicted to already have risk factors for diabetes, this would mean that in 10 years a third might have diabetes.

"That means two thirds of Americans should be on a diabetic diet in the first place," he said.