The general recommendation is not to consume too much sugar for health reasons. But apparently, of all real sweeteners, the mixture of fructose and glucose – also known as sucrose – is particularly harmful. Swiss researchers want to have found this out in a study with differently sweetened lemonades.
Excess sugar can increase obesity and the likelihood of various health problems. This also includes the risk of developing fatty liver disease. And apparently the most common type of sugar – sucrose – is particularly harmful to the liver.
Sucrose (household sugar) – what is it actually?
Whether it is made from sugar beet, sugar cane or sugar palm, whether it is brown or white, industrial sugar is always sucrose. We know that from a very detailed discussion on the subject with the nutritionist Prof. Dr. Nicolai Worm. Sucrose consists half of glucose (also known as grape sugar) and half of fructose (= fruit sugar).
You can read the full post (“Should we all give up sugar completely?”) here.
Increased risk of fatty liver
Swiss researchers have now looked into the concrete effects of different types of sugar on health. According to this, sucrose is twice as harmful to the liver as other types of sugar. Employees from various departments at the University Hospital in Zurich want to find out. The reason for this is that the combination of fructose and glucose significantly stimulates fat production in the liver.
Also interesting: Children can get fatty liver disease
Study with differently sweetened lemonades
The study is published in the Journal of Hepatology. 126 generally healthy adult males participated. They were randomly assigned to one of four groups.
Three of the groups of subjects had the same task: they were to drink around one liter of lemonade every day for a period of seven weeks. All the sodas had the same amount of sweetener added, 80 grams. However, the type of sugar used was different. The lemonade for group one was sweetened with pure dextrose, that for group two with fructose. Group three’s lemonade contained sucrose, which is a mix of the two.
Group four acted as controls and were not given any soda pop.
result
The study authors found evidence of early fatty liver in the subjects who had consumed 80 grams of sucrose a day with their lemonade. They explained this by saying that the household sugar fed in should have increased fat production within the liver. They also want to have observed this effect in the fructose group, but significantly less than in the sucrose group.
Glucose, on the other hand, is said to have had no effect on the liver. Likewise, nothing was noticed in the control group.
Also interesting: «Ever since my father had a brain tumor, I’ve been sugar-free»
Upper limit for daily sugar consumption
The first signs of fatty liver can also exist in people where you might not expect it from a purely visual perspective. Simply because they are not (yet) overweight. It is therefore fundamentally important not to exceed certain limits for daily sugar consumption.
Depending on the amount of movement
The maximum daily sugar consumption ultimately depends on how much you exercise. This explains to us ecotrophologist Uwe Schröder from the German Institute for Sports Nutrition. You can find the relevant article (“Symptoms that show that you eat too much sugar”) here.
In the case of activities that are primarily sedentary, it should not be more than 50 grams of sugar per day. This assessment is in line with the official recommendation by the World Health Organization (WHO).