Is fructose really that bad?

Here are links to a couple of papers about fructose:

Fructose consumption as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18395287

Fructose overconsumption causes dyslipidemia and ectopic lipid deposition in healthy subjects with and without a family history of type 2 diabetes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19403641

[[MORE]]Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Humans Is Associated with Increased Plasma Endotoxin and Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor 1 Concentrations and with Fructose Intake
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/138/8/1452

Here’s a comment by Dr Kurt Harris about fructose:
http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/7/16/calorie-restriction-partial-restoration-not-enhancement.html

Large amounts of fructose (Fru) is one of the elements of our current (neolithic) diet that deviates substantially from the EM2 we evolved under. For a variety of reasons, Fru functions as a metabolic poison and is much worse than glucose.

Excess Fru raises your triglycerides, can cause inflammation in your liver, and causes insulin resistance independent of insulin levels. Big boluses of Fru are sometimes not digested completely. This can cause bacteria to grow in your upper bowel which is not good.

Look at Fru like cigarettes - if you smoke one cigarette a week it will probably not hurt you. The problem is not the one smoke, it is the reinforcement of the desire that leads you to smoke the whole pack.

If you can keep total carbs at 10% and some of that is sucrose, that may not be a problem. But, people like fruit because its sweet, and if you tell them fruit is healthy, they tend to eat a lot of it.

Fruit is not healthy, it is something that tastes good that you can tolerate in small amounts.

The vitamins in sweet fruits can't hold a candle to other foods. The "antioxidants" are probably more than balanced by Fru itself, which is actually an "oxidizing agent"!

As Kurt says, small amounts of fruit are OK.  As with all toxins or poisons, the issue is the dose; if it’s small enough, and if the body is given enough time to heal between doses, then it’s not a problem.  That’s also part of the logic behind only eating fruit in-season.

Another point about sweet tasting foods: even if they are sweet because of artificial sweeteners, they will still provoke an insulin response.  That’s even true for toothpaste.

Although liver disease as such isn't widespread, type 2 diabetes and obesity certainly are--and their underlying cause may be related to liver damage.  According to an MD I work with, elevated liver enzymes are very common with type 2 diabetics (also with Syndrome X), and that is generally a result of having a fatty liver.

What about honey, which is high in fructose?  Due to its carbohydrate content and sweetness, it also has a significant insulin-releasing effect.

Having said that, my great-great-uncle ate the stuff by the gallon and swore that it cured every illness under the sun—yet he lived well into his 90s (one of the oldest of my male relatives).

Of course, anecdotal information proves nothing, but even so I suspect that the jury is still out on the full range of health effects of honey.  I don’t eat much of it myself, but I do eat a little; I treat it like fruit, to be used occasionally, and only in relatively small quantities—as opposed to HFCS or cane sugar, which I avoid entirely.