Trego's Mountain Ear

A few weeks ago, I wrote a summary of an academic paper describing the Fructose Survival Hypothesis. It’s a content heavy paper, with a lot of implications.

The easiest and shortest is that avoiding high fructose corn syrup is probably a very good idea. Slightly more nuanced, is that high quantities of fructose seem to put the body in survival mode, which is fine in the short term and harmful in the long term. As always, the dose makes the poison.

What does this “survival switch” do to you? Sort of puts your body in “bear gearing up for hibernation” mode:

• Makes you hungry (and you’ll have trouble getting full)
• Makes you more impulsive (binge eating has never been so appealing)
• Makes it easier to gain fat (and harder to lose it)
• Raises your blood pressure
• Causes insulin resistance
• Increases inflammation

The paper’s authors believed that long term activation of this survival switch would cause damage to the mitochondria, making many of the changes permanent. Short-term activation shouldn’t present a problem, and some changes can be expected to reverse themselves (especially if the damage is minor).

A more nuanced approach would be to avoid regular, habitual consumption of high amounts of fructose, but to acknowledge that the occasional indulgence is unlikely to cause permanent long term harm.