Does High-Fructose Diet Damage Liver Mitochondria?

Have you ever thought what would happen if your body stopped burning fat? Whatever you eat goes into your body and turns into glucose and energy, which is very important for our body to work. If you do not use all the energy that you eat throughout the day, then the body stores this glucose by converting it into fat, so that it can be burnt and converted into energy again when needed. The mitochondria present in the cells of the liver carry out the process of fat metabolism, hence they are also called the powerhouse of the body.

What if your liver stops burning fat? 

Fat will accumulate in your body making you obese. Hence, a big reason for obesity is that your liver is not able to burn fat properly. Recent research has shown that if you take a high fructose diet (a diet that has a high amount of fructose), your liver's fat-burning power may be weakened and the liver may slowly get damaged. This research has been published in a journal called 'Cell Metabolism'. According to this research, while glucose is good for your liver, fructose is very bad for your liver, and both are different forms of sugar.

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What is a high fructose diet?

Now the question arises that what are high fructose foods? So the answer is, fructose is a type of sugar, which is found in fruits, vegetables and natural sweeteners. But fructose found in fruits and vegetables is beneficial for health. Artificial fructose is used in many other sweet items, which are very harmful to health and liver. Here we are telling you about some popular high fructose foods. If you want to keep your liver healthy and avoid obesity, then the intake of these high fructose diets should be reduced or stopped altogether.

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• Soda drinks and cold drinks
• Packed juice
• Toffee, candy, jelly
• Sweet yoghurt
• Frozen junk foods
• Fruit jam and tomato sauce
• Ice Cream
• Sports drink
• coffee cream
• Snack foods
• Salad dressing

What do the experts say?

Harvard Medical School professor and researcher C. Ronald Kahn says, "Fructose increases fat around the liver, just as high calories increase the diet. The most important thing we find from this research is that diets with very high fructose should not be eaten. While diets containing glucose are beneficial for the liver as they speed up the process of fat burning. So instead of fructose, you should eat diets containing glucose."

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