guys, my point (as per below post) was that
a) fructose from whole foods (eg fruit, veg etc) is good so don't cut it out. The exception for limiting is if you have fructose malabsorption (like poor me) or HFI, in which case fructose would be deadly, so avoid
AND
b) fructose extracted and concentrated in a "purified" form such as HFCS or indeed agave syrup and substances like that, are not so good.
Bazza, with regard to HFCS, it's not so much that it has around the same level of fructose as sucrose from cane sugar. It's that it is usually included in larger quantities than sugar and so pervasive in the US diet (read processed foods).
Here in Australia, it's not as widely used for the reason I point out earlier. Cane sugar is produced locally, corn not as much (corn is a staple in the US obviously, not cane sugar).
But agave and even HFCS have become increasingly more common.
I'd be more worried about agave as it's touted as a health food, which is it is definitely not.
It all comes down to how the body processes this stuff. As part of a whole food, like fruit etc, you have the context of all the other nutrients and stuff and the quantities of fructose are relatively small. The liver can process it slowly and in easy loads. When you concentrate it, the liver gets a bigger load and that makes for a whole different story.
Plus, there's the increasing incidence of fructose and fructan intolerances. About 1/3 of the population actually have some degree of malabsorption but only a proportion of these will have symptoms that become unbearable. On the rise in fact. Maybe that's due to greater awareness and better diagnosis but maybe also because we do tend to overload our systems. The food pyramid is a bit to blame too.
The article is mostly about chronic diseases and it's a very balanced article and review. It leaves all the open questions about long term effects of higher fructose loads in our diets over long periods unanswered because there has been no decent study to date that provides any real insight.
