I saw a couple of teasers on the web, heard a few seconds of a report on the radio, and over the past day or so, this is what I gleaned: Fructose is a particularly high-energy fuel for the growth of cancer cells.
When I dug into the coverage, what I found was quite different.
Here was David W. Freeman in the health blog on CBSnews.com:
Afraid of fructose? You may have good reason to be, as an alarming new study shows that the popular sweetener can fuel the growth of cancer.
We’ve heard plenty in recent years about high-fructose corn syrup being a special threat for the development of obesity. This, however, struck me as far more dangerous.
Here, however, is what I did not find in Freeman’s story: Glucose apparently also fuels cancer cells. That intelligence comes from a UCLA press release announcing the findings. UCLA researchers apparently found that fructose can fuel cancer cells–just as glucose can. Fructose is not a super fuel for cancer; it’s merely another one.
And not for all cancers; the study dealt exclusively with pancreatic cancer. Freeman’s expansive “fructose can fuel cancer” is way off base.
The demonization of high-fructose corn syrup by the food writer Michael Pollan and many others over most of the past decade has failed to note something I found mentioned in several of the stories yesterday and today: Table sugar, which I thought was sucrose, is roughly half glucose and half fructose–exactly the same proportions found in high-fructose corn syrup. That comes from NYU food scientist Marion Nestle, as quoted in a Salon post by Francis Lam.
So what gives? If the corn syrup is identical to table sugar, why are we beating up on fructose?
But that’s not today’s story. Today we’re concerned with why fructose is getting beaten up over cancer.
Lam’s story tries to advance the fructose story, and he does not mention the word “glucose” in his post. Again, he has completely missed the substance of the story.
Cameron Scott on a San Francisco Chronicle blog had my hopes up, with a lede that said not only that pancreatic cancers “use fructose to fuel their growth,” but that, “contrary to conventional wisdom, cancers processed fructose differently than glucose.” Sadly, that’s the last we heard of glucose.
Maggie Fox did a much better job in her Reuters story. She was the first I found to make clear up front that pancreatic tumors use fructose and glucose to grow, but use them in different ways. And then she leaps off the anti-fructose bandwagon to talk about the dangers of sugar of any kind–not just fructose. But she makes a distinction that is unclear to me: “Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate.” Wouldn’t “thriving” include “proliferating”? Glucose keeps them alive but fructose makes them divide? I’m guessing.
Kaye Spector of the Cleveland Plain Dealer writes that cancer cells feed easily on fructose–but fails to say the same is true with glucose.
There must be a few out there, but I could not find a print newspaper story on this newsy subject. (Spector’s piece appeared to be a blog item, but might have also appeared in the paper.)
And while we’re assigning blame, let’s put a good share on the UCLA press release. It quotes the researcher, Dr. Anthony Heaney, as saying that “the modern diet contains a lot of refined sugar including fructose, and it’s a hidden danger implicated in a lot of modern diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and fatty liver.”
So is glucose, isn’t it? Why, again, the focus on fructose?
It’s possible that Heaney is saying that fructose is worse than glucose, but I can’t tell from the press release. The release does, however, enlighten us with this gem:
In the case of fructose, the pancreatic cancer cells used the sugar in the transketolase-driven non-oxidative pentose phosphate pathway…
I’m not sure, but I think my son Henry’s Transformers include one called Transkelotor.
I hope it’s not dangerous–and thanks, UCLA, for putting me on alert!
– Paul Raeburn
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