Does FAT make you FAT?

We are thin by design and if we are eating the diet that our system is designed to use (one dominated my foods that are compounds of glucose or converted to glucose, the insulin (for carbs and proteins) and CCK (for fats), feedback loops will keep us thin. We eat only when we are hungry and thus store minimal body fat. Our body has been designed by million of years of evolution to count and control our energy intake so that we will stay at the optimal body weight

Glucose is your fuel
When we eat fat or protein, our upper intestine releases a hormone called cholecystokinin (CCK) which tells the hypothalamus to suppress hunger and make us feel full.

Eating fat does put fatty acids in your arteries, but your body can tell when you have had enough fat and stop you eating more. However, your body has no control over fructose and yet it is just as effectively pumping fatty acids into our arteries. What’s worse, is that because fructose is invisible to your appetite control, it allows you to eat just as much fat as you normally world, and then eat as much fructose (which becomes fat) as you can shove into your gob.

Dr Key’s found that eating table sugar increased the amount of LDL cholesterol (the ‘bad’ cholesterol) in the blood. Additionally, he found that all circulating fats (TCGs) generally increased. There is a lot of supporting evidence linking TCGs to the clogging of arteries which may increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke. In short, fructose may increase the amount of fat you have circulating in your bloodstream. Something that Dr Yudkin had been saying since at least the late ‘70s.

The science of it all
GLUT (Short for glucose transporters) 2 proteins can absorb glucose and fructose and they are just as good as sucking fructose into the cells as they are glucose. But because the pancreatic cells have none of the enzymes needed to use fructose, they are pushed straight back out again. Once the fructose gets into the liver, they find fructokinase waiting. Fructokinase does not need insulin to start going to work and hence starts converting it to ATP (adenosine triphosphate - the everyday highway of our body; it stores and transports energy immediately and rapidly). Fructose can be absorbed by the liver twice as fast as glucose and gets quite a head start too because it doesn’t have to wait for insulin to fire it up.

The gut will process as much fructose as we put into our mouths with no known limit.
When fructokinase creates ATP, it bypasses the step in the glycolysis process that is controlled by PRK-1 (which stops us getting fat on glucose). When too much ATP is produced (by eating too much fructose), PRK-1 switches off and stops the process….and then basically gets converted straight to fatty acids(creating vast amounts of circulating fat acids…including LDL cholesterol- the bad cholesterol). Small quantities of fructose don’t have any serious effects.

When we eat carbohydrates, proteins and fat, insulin and CCK tells us when to stop eating, and insulin and PFK-1 control the use of the glucose (which stops us getting fat). There are no equivalent controls for fructose.

As far as our pancreas is concerned, fructose calories are invisible. It only takes 2.5 calories to convert 100 calories of fatty acids into body fat. It takes 23 calories (10 times as much energy) to convert 100 calories of protein or glucose into body fat. Fructose skips the fat creation control mechanism in the liver (PRK -1) and is directly converted to fatty acids (and then body fat) without passing through either of our major appetite control gateways (insulin or CCK). Fructose is also invisible to our built in calorie counter ( the hypothalamus). We can eat as much fructose as we can shove down our throats and never feel full for long. Every gramme of fructose that we eat is directly converted to fat. There is seriously no questions to the obesity epidemic when you get to know these simple facts. It is impossible not to get fat on a diet infused with fructose.

Fructose bypasses all of our appetite control systems and jumps an important step in our metabolism that would ordinarily stop our arteries filling up with circulating fat. Eating fat still puts fat in our arteries, but we have a built in control to stop us eating too much fat, plus healthy fats are an anti-inflammatory for our system. Nothing like this exists for fructose.

Did u know: Australians are eating 22.5kg of fructose (by 21st century) and yet only 130 years ago we were eating less than zero kilos of added fructose.

The biggest killer in Australia today is cardiovascular disease (CVD). It is almost completely as a result of blocked arteries. These blockages are formed from the exact fatty acids created in the overabundance of the consumption of fructose (as stated above).

One of the known effects of insulin is that is causing the arteries to dilate in healthy people which normally causes the lowering of blood pressure. However, when a person’s blood is filled with excess fatty acids, they become insulin resistant, resulting in arteries not dilating in response to insulin.

Fructose consumption results in insulin resistance even when maintained for only short periods of time. The rapid increase in circulating fat caused by the fructose inhibits insulin’s ability to instruct cells, that require energy, to take the glucose our of the bloodstream. Eventually, the body cannot make enough insulin to remove the glucose, and the body starves in a sea of food.
Insulin resistance is the preliminary phase of type 2 diabetes and when a person is insulin resistance, their blood sugar levels remain higher for longer than would be expected after eating a meal. If insulin is left untreated it eventually develops into diabetes, where the blood sugar levels remain too high despite how much insulin is produced. Dr Thorburn in 2002 confirmed that is was the huge increase in circulating fatty acids induced by the fructose that caused the insulin resistance.
Accumulating of fat in the arteries starts happening from the very first gramme of fructose (or fat) consumed. 50 to 60 years of continuous fructose feeding leads to a high likelihood of a heart attack or stroke. Plus the accelerating of fructose consumption that we have all been apart of will accelerate this process, making heart attacks and stroke start from a younger age.

The group of diseases and symptoms associated with heart attacks, stroke, type 2 diabetes and NAFLD (the accumulation of fatty acids in liver cells that cause enlargement of the organ), are called metabolic syndrome. All of these conditions relate directly to a single source - increased circulating fatty acids…and we know that fructose is converted into circulating fatty acids.


Dr Yudkin noticed that there was a high correlation between obesity and the likelihood that a person would end up suffering from some types of cancers. There are 5 types of cancers that account for 90% of all new cases. It is known that melanoma is caused by too much sunshine and too much smoking causes lung cancer. The other three cancers (bowel cancer, great cancer and prostate cancer have a direct correlation with sugar intake. Scary stuff!

Also, two recently published large studies have shown a strong link between a diet high in fructose and the likelihood of developing pancreatic cancer. The researchers have been able to demonstrate that the risk of getting pancreatic cancer is related to the amount of sugar in the diet. People who added sugar to food or drinks at least 5 times a day were at a 70% greater risk of getting this cancer and people who ate fruit jams at least once a day also ran a higher risk - they developed the disease 50% more often than those who never ate them.