FRUIT sugar may sound harmless, but recent research in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology confirms the life-threatening risks posed by the large amounts we consume these days – essentially because of its role in weight gain.
Fruit sugar, or fructose, is often found in processed foods, where it is mainly derived from corn starch.
Through evolution, our intestines have adapted to digest fructose in the quantities obtained from fruit. However, the larger amounts in commercially processed fruit juices and other foods swamp the natural mechanisms and are absorbed, moved to the liver and turned into fat.
This is one of the reasons why, in recent years, there has been an ever-rising incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is now thought to affect one in three adults in the UK.
When severe, it develops into an even more worrying condition, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. This can in turn lead to severe scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), and an increased risk of liver cancer.
But it’s a different story with coffee. A separate analysis of recent studies has given us clear evidence that coffee drinkers are 39 per cent less likely to develop cirrhosis, and consuming greater amounts of coffee (more than two cups a day) increases that figure to 47 per cent.
This is thought to be because, when it’s digested, chemicals in coffee are converted into paraxanthine, a compound that slows the growth of scar tissue (seen in cirrhosis). Two other chemicals in coffee, kahweol and cafestol, may also help prevent liver cancer.
The upshot of this is that it’s time to cut back on the fruit juice and smell the coffee instead.
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