

Fructose and pancreatic cancer - tokenadult
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/08/fructose_and_pancreatic_cancer.php

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seldo
HFCS may not cause cancer, and this study is only the beginning of an
investigation into whether it might. On the other hand it _is_ shown to make
you obese, significantly faster and more dangerously than ordinary sugar:

<http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/>

So I've already cut it out of my diet. If doing so cuts my cancer risk that's
a nice bonus. But we already know that HFCS is bad for you and shouldn't be in
food.

~~~
Flow
Do you mean you stopped eating fruit? Or just stopped eating processed food
that contain fructose?

~~~
Mz
I believe HCFS = High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's something I avoid as well. It
is in most sodas. This is part of why I drink diet coke, even though the
artificial sweeteners in it have apparently been linked to brain cancer (or so
I've heard). I figure I have to live that long for it to be a problem but HCFS
makes me feel like crap in the here and now. (I have heard that, at least
during some parts of the year, you can get "kosher" sodas made with real cane
sugar and that some niche brands of sodas are available in some limited
markets with real cane sugar. But I haven't tripped across any myself.)

~~~
pauldino
You might also be able to find Mexican Coke, which is sweetened with cane
sugar. I've seen it at regular grocery stores in upstate NY and CT so I
imagine it's fairly common.

There's a grocery store in Los Angeles with a large collection of glass-bottle
sodas and they do sell online at <http://www.sodapopstop.com/>, but there are
other sites as well. Elsewhere in California, I've seen Beverages and More
have a small collection also.

~~~
seldo
I'm a devotee of mexicoke; in San Francisco's Mission district where I live it
is in every store, but even elsewhere in SF it can be hard to find.

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JunkDNA
This is an exceptionally well-written piece. It's a great window into why you
need to be on guard when getting your science news from breathless press
releases.

~~~
gregwebs
Exactly my thoughts, except for "be on guard". If someone is trying to get
science from news they are pretty screwed. In this case reading the news
probably made most people more ignorant on the science at hand.

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pan69
This is an interesting video on Youtube about the subject:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

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rsheridan6
"The bottom line is 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," said Heaney...

And then the author of this piece goes on to say

"And that, is how you go from cell culture work to sweeping policy
recommendations"

I guess it was cell culture work that implicated fructose in obesity,
diabetes, and fatty liver? Nice sleight of hand.

~~~
carbocation
No, the blogger is correct and you appear to have misunderstood him. He is
stating that the study itself does not merit making policy changes. As you
note, other studies do, but this is not one of those. The author of the study
may be making good policy recommendations, but using his study as the basis
for those recommendations would be unwise. Despite my agreement with his
recommendations, I disagree with the basis that he chose for his
recommendations, as does this blogger. Though I do not know if the blogger
supports the policy of reducing fructose—who knows, maybe he doesn't—it
doesn't materially impact my agreement with the narrow concern that he wrote
this blog post about.

~~~
rsheridan6
I understood the blogger just fine, but I read Heaney's statement differently.
I don't find it clear that he's saying that fructose use should be reduced
_strictly because of his paper and for no other reason_ , as the article
implies (if it did I would agree with the blogger), especially when he said
other bad things about fructose.

This is what we really know - in some undetermined context, in conversation,
Heaney said

"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,"

To me it doesn't seem perfectly clear that Heaney intended that the first
sentence, by itself, implies the second sentence, though the article sort of
makes it look like he did. It's certainly not clear enough to rip him a new
asshole, as the blogosphere has done, at least not based solely on the
information in this article.

If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something
in them to hang him. —Cardinal Richelieu

~~~
carbocation
"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications."

Extrapolating from tissue culture to public health is something that can be
rigorously done. This paper doesn't address public health; as such, I don't
see how it follows in a scientific fashion that this paper has public health
implications. I don't have a problem with the work, or with the author, or
with his beliefs about his paper. I simply disagree that his statement, quoted
above, is justified by his paper.

~~~
rsheridan6
I haven't read the paper, but the blog post says it cited prospective human
studies showing an association between pancreatic cancer and fructose
consumption, so it looks like he digressed into something beyond cell cultures
to make the case against fructose.

He could very well have been overselling his paper (the article certainly is),
but it's just possible that the journalist made it look that way to get a
sexier story. If the blogger had kept a more objective, factual tone, instead
of attacking Heaney, I wouldn't have a problem.

~~~
carbocation
Let me preface by saying that I don't want to overstate what I think is really
a rather modest difference of interpretation that you and I have.

I have read the paper, and much of their basic biology seems sound. They show
convincingly that pancreatic ductal cancer cell proliferation does not differ
between glucose and fructose at a variety of concentrations (figure 1).

They then compare pancreatic tumor to hepatic tumor to normal-ish tissues and
show a series of metabolic differences when grown in glucose-containing vs
fructose-containing media (figure 2). These changes include transketolase
activity, ribose synthesis, and release of C13-labeled lactate into the media.
Here, I have a bit of an issue. Nobody is claiming that our high-fructose diet
causes us to have a glucose-free plasma, so it's totally non-physiologic to
compare just glucose vs just fructose (which some of the panels appear to be
doing in this figure, while others are comparing glucose vs fructose+glucose,
which is a stronger comparison IMHO).

There are other figures; they are fine. I like their data. Where they lose me
is with the claims that they make from their data. They show in figure 1 that
there is no proliferative difference in Panc-1 cells between a glucose vs a
fructose "diet" at all concentrations, but then based on data in figure 4 they
claim that the TK-inhibitor oxythiamine reduces "fructose-induced Panc-1 cell
proliferation." Well, which is it: does fructose induce Panc-1 cell
proliferation, or does it not? Your answer will depend upon whether you like
figure 1 better or figure 4. While these claims appear to be contradictory to
me, it's also possible that I didn't read the paper carefully enough so please
correct me if I missed something.

At any rate, just because this paper _cited_ other work showing human studies
(which it did), that certainly does not mean that this paper itself has policy
implications. The human studies that it cited might have policy implications.

Especially given figure 1, which shows no difference in proliferation between
cancer cells given fructose and those given glucose, I would have a hard time
justifying policy claims with this paper.

