This headline appeared in the Indian media on August 4: “Fructose-rich Western diets fuel growth of pancreatic cancers.” The story can be found at http://www.dnaindia.com/health/report_fructose-rich-western-diets-fuel-growth-of-pancreatic-cancers_1418765 and similar stories appeared elsewhere in Asia.
This story relates to a particularly dreadful and deadly form of cancer so it is important to understand if the story provides useful insights or not into dietary precautions. The original research was published in the journal Cancer Research and the abstract can be found at
If you read the abstract carefully you will see that it has been known for a long time that sugars can “feed” tumors and help them grow. For this reason, many doctors will prescribe lower sugar intake for cancer patients. What the authors of the original research describe is their experiments where, using pancreatic cancer cells in test tubes, they were able to show that two different types of sugars, glucose and fructose, are metabolized differently by the cancer cells. They do not, however, make a compelling case for why fructose might be considered more dangerous than glucose.
