Glucose and Fructose

According to an article published by Reuters and found on the website, rawstory.com, corn byproduct fructose literally fuels cancer cell growth a recent study finds. A team at the University of California, Los Angeles published their findings in the Journal of Cancer Research. The specific study or publication this research is in was not stated in the article so it is hard to verify any of these claims.

One quote from this article sort of sums up what the article is all about. Please read the entire article for the full context of this quote and all other information.

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. "Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different," Heaney's team wrote.

Agave Nectar - Fact Or Fiction?

On June 1, 2010, I posted a blog entry Agave Nectar, The High Fructose Health Food Fraud. While I realize that I'm no authority on this, I was blasted by a comment from various "unknown persons" citing absolutely no sources to back up what they were saying.

Now, I'm not saying they were wrong in what they said or that they were wrong to reply to me. Actually I am glad they did. However, I just cannot understand that if you are bashing someone for giving bad or inaccurate data, that this would be done by giving opinions instead of research and science based facts. Some sources of information would have been nice.

It boggles my mind for this and while I'm sure they have something to back up what they are saying, one would think that they would include this. For all I know, these people could be in the Agave industry and trying to spin things in their direction. Who knows? No one knows because they hid behind a screen name. It is anyone's guess who they are.

The thing is, it is very difficult to tell who is telling the truth in the Agave products. On each side, people are making statements as fact when they do not necessarily have anything to support them. The people against Agave probably have some very good points just as the people for this product. Like everything in the new age versus the main stream culture, gossip is disguised as fact.

Like I said - who really knows the truth. I don't expect the people that produce Agave to give the complete truth. I don't expect to hear it from the people who claim Agave is bad. But the one thing that is clear or seems to be clear on both sides of the issue is this is a manufactured product and if that is the case, than it is not a naturally occurring substance. If it isn't a natural substance than the health benefits have to be questioned in my mind.

I'm not going to sit here in this blog post though and tell you what to believe or what not to believe. You can google search this and see what conclusions you come up with. Maybe I should have added all of those search results in my post and then the people bashing me with their comments would have been more than happy. Who knows? And if people cannot do a search and check out information presented to them to draw their own conclusions, than there isn't much I can do about that.

So now it is up to you to read both blog posts and then do your own research to truly determine for yourself if Agave Nectar is fact or fiction. That's the best I can do in presenting information and making an argument because I doubt anyone will find the true answer in the information presented.

Some other articles online you may wish to read:

1) Agave Nectar: Good Or Bad?

2) Madhava - Agave Myth Buster

3) Dissecting The Agave Controversy


*For more articles, check out the Mind Body Thoughts Blog

Agave Nectar, the High Fructose Health Food Fraud

Agave Nectar, the High Fructose Health Food Fraud

Agave nectar is advertised as a "diabetic friendly," raw, and a "100% natural sweetener." Yet it is none of these. The purpose of this article is to show you that agave nectar is in reality not a natural sweetener but a highly refined form of fructose, more concentrated than the high fructose corn syrup used in sodas. Refined fructose is not a 'natural' sugar, and countless studies implicate it as a sweetener that will contribute to disease. Therefore, agave nectar is not a health building product, but rather a deceptively marketed form of a highly processed and refined sweetener.

Some statements and thoughts from the above referenced article. I have just highlighted some parts of the article, but please read the entire article because it has some very good information stated in a way that is very simple and easy to understand.

1) Found primarily in health food stores under the labels of Agave Nectar 100% Sweetener and Organic Raw Blue Agave Nectar.

2) The implication of its name, the pictures and descriptions on the product labels, is that agave is an unrefined sweetener that has been used for thousands of years by native people in central Mexico. But, as one agave seller explains, the agave nectar purchased in stores is neither of these traditional foods: "Agave nectar is a newly created sweetener,

3) The principal constituent of the agave is starch, such as what is found in corn or rice. The process in which the agave starch is converted into refined fructose and then sold as the sweetener agave nectar is through an enzymatic and chemical conversion that refines, clarifies, heats, chemically alters, centrifuges, and filters the non-sweet starch into a highly refined sweetener, fructose.

4) Fructose is not what is found in fruit. Commonly, fructose is compared with its opposite and truly naturally occurring sweetener, known as 'levulose'. There are some chemical similarities between fructose (man made) and levulose (made by nature), and so the synthetically refined sugar fructose was labeled in a way to make one believe it comes from fruit.

5) Saying fructose is levulose is like saying that margarine is the same as butter. Refined fructose lacks amino acids, vitamins, minerals, pectin, and fiber. As a result, the body doesn't recognize refined fructose. Levulose, on the other hand, is naturally occurring in fruits, and is not isolated but bound to other naturally occurring sugars. Unlike man-made fructose, levulose contains enzymes, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and fruit pectin.

6) Refined fructose is processed in the body through the liver, rather than digested in the intestine. Levulose is digested in the intestine. Refined fructose robs the body of many micronutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use. While naturally occurring fruit sugars contain levulose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains "free" (unbound), chemically refined fructose.

7) The reason why refined fructose is used so commonly as a sweetener is simple: it's extremely cheap in cost.


As you can see, there is some mighty good information in this article. While I've quoted a few of the spots in it, again, I urge you to take a moment and read the entire article.

I find it disturbing that high fructose corn syrup or the healthy touted agave nectar are so prevalent in our society. They are ingredients in food products that have no business including them. When I try to prepare meals from all natural foods and substances, I am always amazed at just how much better they taste, how much more vibrant the colors and overall, just how I feel from them.

Granted, we live in a fast paced society and it isn't always easy to grow all your own food, create everything from scratch and select the most healthiest ingredients. Yet, you can help yourself drastically by reading labels on food ingredients and getting to know more of what is in the stuff that you buy. And of course, the more you can grow in your garden and the more you can get away from processed foods, the better your life will be. We all know that of course but in our society where we live in an abundant supply of stores, we have gotten lazy and forgotten what really matters.

If we don't take care of our body, no one else will. We're only given one body and what we do with it is all up to us. It is our choices, our decisions and our awareness.