Fructose: The Sugar of Choice for Cancer Cells

(Aug. 3) -- All sugars are not created equal, according to new research that's established fructose as the food of choice for hungry, proliferating pancreatic cancer cells.

And the finding offers more than just a new clue to understanding, and maybe curing, cancer. It's also bad news for most Americans, who devour more fructose, much of it via high-fructose corn syrup, than ever.

The sugary compound -- derived from glucose and fructose -- is found in soft drinks, packaged cookies, cereals and other grocery store mainstays. The average American consumes nearly 60 pounds of HFCS a year.

What exactly did the study find?

A team out of the University of California, Los Angeles cultivated cancer cells in a laboratory setting and fed different batches of cells fructose or glucose.

The cells metabolized the sugars differently. While sugar of any kind offered sustenance, fructose played a key role in the proliferation of cancer cells. That means the cancer spread more quickly on a high-fructose diet.

Their study is published in the medical journal Cancer Research.

How might this affect cancer treatment and prevention?

If scientists can develop a drug that blocks a cancer cell's ability to metabolize fructose, they might be able to halt the spread of the disease.

As far as prevention is concerned, the UCLA team is calling for less HFCS in the American diet.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," Dr. Anthony Heaney, the study's lead author, said in a statement.

Interesting! So why the controversy?

Because sugar is sugar, at least according to influential food and beverage lobbyists like the American Beverage Association and the Corn Refiners Association, which don't want to see the government clamp down on the use of HFCS.

The American Beverage Association, for example, has already successfully defeated several moves to tax soft drinks. (The ABA has also previously described HFCS as "demonized in the world of blogs [and] tweets.")

The Corn Refiners Association has also been quick to defend one of its flagship products. Earlier this year, the group called into question the results of two other high-fructose corn syrup studies that linked the substance to obesity and liver scarring, respectively. The organization has called the conclusions put forth by the UCLA research "premature and potentially misleading."

What's a soda-swilling reader to do?

If you're worried about cancer, or diabetes, obesity and even heart disease, it can't hurt to consume less HFCS.

Aside from the findings of this study, HFCS is often used in foods that are highly processed, packaged and carry little nutritional value.

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EDITOR'S NOTE:

The original version of this story carried a headline that could be read as implying that high fructose corn syrup was the focus of the UCLA study; instead, the study used pure fructose, which, as the researchers noted, is an ingredient in HFCS. This post has also been updated to include the Corn Refiners Association's response to the findings.