Three fruits to eat with less than 5 grams of fructose per 100 grams of fruit as recommended by sugar researcher, Kimber Stanhope, PhD, are:

• strawberries
• peaches
• cantaloupe

Three fruits to avoid because they contain higher levels of fructose are:

• bananas
• apples
• mangos

Kimber Stanhope, PhD is a researcher from the University of California at Davis, who has done studies comparing the effects of consuming glucose vs fructose, and who was interviewed on ReachMD.com.

Fructose and glucose cause the same amount of weight gain and same amount of fat gain notes Kimber Stanhope, PhD, a researcher from the University of California at Davis, who has done studies comparing the effects of consuming glucose vs fructose, who was interviewed on ReachMD.com.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: If you limit your sugar you decrease your chances of developing cancer?

Lewis Cantley, PhD: Absolutely.

Cantley, a Harvard professor and the head of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center, says when we eat or drink sugar, it causes a sudden spike in the hormone insulin, which can serve as a catalyst to fuel certain types of cancers.

Lewis Cantley: What we’re beginning to learn is that insulin can cause adverse effects in the various tissues. And of particular concern is cancer.

Why? Nearly a third of some common cancers—including breast and colon cancers—have something called insulin receptors on their surface. Insulin binds to these receptors and signals the tumor to start consuming glucose [which allows it to grow].

Lewis Cantley: Every cell in our body needs glucose to survive. But the trouble is, these cancer cells also use it to grow. So if you happen to have the tumor that has insulin receptors on it then it will get stimulated to take up the glucose that’s in the bloodstream rather than go into fat or muscle, the glucose goes into the tumor. And the tumor uses it to grow.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So far be it for people to realize this ‘cause sugar is everywhere, but you’re saying this is one of the most addictive substances possibly that we have?

Eric Stice, PhD: It certainly is very good at firing the reward regions in our brain.

Eric Stice says by scanning hundreds of volunteers, he’s learned that people who frequently drink sodas or eat ice cream or other sweet foods may be building up a tolerance, much like drug users do. As strange as it sounds, that means the more you eat, the less you feel the reward. The result: you eat more than ever.

Eric Stice: If you overeat these on a regular basis it causes changes in the brain that basically it blunts your reward region response to the food, so then you eat more and more to achieve the same satisfaction you felt originally.

Lewis Cantley’s research team is working on developing drugs that will cut off the glucose supply to cancer cells and keep them from growing. But until there’s a breakthrough, Cantley’s advice? Don’t eat sugar. And if you must, keep it to a minimum.

Cantley, a Harvard professor and the head of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center, says when we eat or drink sugar, it causes a sudden spike in the hormone insulin, which can serve as a catalyst to fuel certain types of cancers.

Lewis Cantley: What we’re beginning to learn is that insulin can cause adverse effects in the various tissues. And of particular concern is cancer.

Why? Nearly a third of some common cancers—including breast and colon cancers—have something called insulin receptors on their surface. Insulin binds to these receptors and signals the tumor to start consuming glucose [which allows it to grow].

Lewis Cantley: Every cell in our body needs glucose to survive. But the trouble is, these cancer cells also use it to grow. So if you happen to have the tumor that has insulin receptors on it then it will get stimulated to take up the glucose that’s in the bloodstream rather than go into fat or muscle, the glucose goes into the tumor. And the tumor uses it to grow.

“The chances are good that sugar is a bigger part of your daily diet than you may realize which is why our story tonight is so important,” Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted on the television show ‘60 Minutes’ on April 1, 2012.

“New research coming out of some of America’s most respected institutions is starting to find that sugar, the way many people are eating it today, is a toxin and could be a driving force behind some of this country’s leading killers, including heart disease.”

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: What are all these various diseases that you say are linked to sugar?

Dr. Robert Lustig: Obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease itself.

Lustig says the American lifestyle is killing us.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And most of it you say is preventable?

Dr. Robert Lustig: Seventy-five percent of it is preventable.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Is it worse than just table sugar?

Dr. Robert Lustig: No. ‘Cause it’s the exact same. They are basically equivalent. The problem is they’re both bad. They’re both equally toxic.

Since the 1970s, sugar consumption has gone down nearly 40 percent, but high fructose corn syrup has more than made up the difference. Dr. Lustig says they are both toxic because they both contain fructose—that’s what makes them sweet and irresistible.

When asked about the idea that overweight people merely need to eat less and exercise more, Robert Lustig, MD says in this 15 minute video interview, “I think that [message] is what has set us back so severely in this entire disaster [of increasing obesity] is this concept “Eat less, exercise more.”

“First of all, people can’t eat less, and people can’t exercise more,” Lustig continues.

Lustig says that he believes that there are biochemical forces driving people to overeat and under-exercise, and he believes that one of the major forces is excess insulin caused by excess fructose consumption.

Growing female rats given 24-hour access to water containing 8% high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in addition to water and given access to regular rat chow, gained 100% of their body weight in seven (7) months compared to a normal weight gain of 77% for rats given access to rat chow and water only according to a study from researchers at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Growing male rats given 24-hour access to water containing 8% high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in addition to water and given access to regular rat chow, gained 157% of their body weight in six months compared to a normal weight gain of 102% for rats given access to rat chow and water only according to a study from researchers at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Chronic stress and a high-fat, high-sugar diet decrease stimulation adrenaline receptors involved in burning fat and reducing appetite notes a recent paper.

“Another recent study, in humans [ by Frank et al, 2008 ], revealed that sugar is more potent than low-calorie sweeteners in stimulating brain areas related to expectation and satisfaction, thereby turning off the desire for more sweetness,” notes noted Tracy Hampton in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We thought that sugar and artificial sweeteners, which both activate sweet receptors in the tongue, would both activate the same pathways in the brain,” said principal investigator Walter Kaye, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Psychiatry, Hampton quotes in her article. “They turned out to not be the same,” [ Dr. Kaye ] added.

Overweight men and women given sucrose (sugar) supplements, provided mostly as beverages, gained an average of 3.5 pounds in two-and-one-half months compared to a weight loss of 2.2 pounds for a group of people given artificial sweetners according to a recent study.

Sugar may be addictive in some people according to a study done on rats from researchers at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Overweight men and women gained an average of 3.5 pounds in two-and-a-half months drinking sugar-sweetened soda compared to an average weight loss of 2.2 pounds for those drinking artificially-sweetened sodas according to a recent study. This is a difference of 5.7 pounds between the groups

Added sugar accounts for an estimated 15.8 percent of calories in the U.S., and almost half (47 percent) comes from soft drinks as noted in a paper from Harvard about sugar intake and weight gain.

When rats were allowed to choose between water sweetened with sugar (sucrose) or the artificial sweetener saccharin compared with intravenous cocaine, 94 percent of them chose the sweetened water to the cocaine according to a study from researchers at the University Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France.

Among children who were about 12-years-old, each additional serving of sugar-sweetened drink increased the risk of obesity by 60 percent, and increased body mass index (BMI) by 0.24 units according to a study by David Ludwig and others at Harvard University.

This was after adjusting for differences in height, diet, lifestyle and demographics.

“[A]dults who drink a soda or more per day are 27 percent more likely to be overweight than those who do not drink sodas, regardless of income or ethnicity,” according to a a report from researchers from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

The results were based on more than 40,000 interviews conducted by the California Health Interview Surveys.

“The consumption of HFCS increased > 1000% [10-fold] between 1970 and 1990, far exceeding the changes in intake of any other food or food group,” according to a paper by obesity researcher George Bray and others.

“In 2001 to 2004, the usual intake of added sugars for Americans was 22.2 teaspoons per day (355 calories per day),” according to a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.

According to their “most conservative estimate”, the average American older than 2-years-old consume 132 calories as high-fructose corn syrup according to a paper by obesity researcher George Bray and others.

The one-fifth of Americans 2-years or older who consume the most caloric sweeteners ingest an average of 316 calories per day according to a paper by obesity researcher George Bray and others.

“The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose,” notes a paper by obesity researcher George Bray and others.

[LIver] metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis [that is, the conversion of carbohydrates to fat].

“In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production,” they note.

“Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight, this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain.”

Comment: A recent study also found that fructose increases appetite, whereas glucose decreases appetite.

This is because fructose metabolism requires an enzyme that depletes ATP, the universal energy molecule, whereas, glucose increases ATP.