Fructose is a sugar that occurs in nature. Alternately, manufacturers can produce it by chemically modifying glucose, which is a closely related but more common sugar. You can find crystalline fructose in grocery and health food stores, where it's available as a food sweetener. It's also a common ingredient in some foods. The question of whether crystalline fructose, which just means fructose powder, is safe depends on how you're using it.
Fructose
Fructose is similar to the far more common sugar called glucose, which is found naturally in starch and in table sugar. You consume naturally occurring fructose any time you eat fruit -- a mixture of fructose and other sugars -- and any time you eat food sweetened with table sugar, which contains fructose. Fructose is sweeter than table sugar and much sweeter than glucose, meaning that it's sometimes used as a lower-calorie substitute for glucose or table sugar in foods and baked goods.
Source of Crystalline Fructose
Even though fructose occurs in nature, it's difficult and expensive to extract in its pure crystalline form from fruits and other natural sources. Instead, one of the easiest ways to produce pure fructose is to modify glucose, which many manufacturers obtain by chemically digesting the starch in corn. Treated with an enzyme called amylase, corn starch breaks down into pure glucose. Further treated with an additional enzyme called invertase, glucose becomes fructose, explain Drs. Reginald Garrett and Charles Grisham in their book, "Biochemistry."
Fructose Safety
Fructose isn't toxic; you can safely consume it. However, questions do exist as to whether eating fructose in proportions and quantities larger than those encountered in nature can lead to negative health effects. For instance, a 2000 study published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" found that consumption of pure fructose increases plasma lipids, which negatively affects heart health. A 2007 study in the same journal found that consumption of large quantities of fructose increases risk of cardiovascular and kidney disease.
Considerations
The mechanism by which fructose might have negative health effects upon the human body when consumed in proportions or quantities greater than those found in nature isn't well understood at this time. It's probably best to approach fructose with caution until research firmly establishes whether significant negative health effects come from fructose. The best alternatives for crystalline fructose in the meantime are glucose and table sugar, or sucrose. All sugars, however, can lead to weight gain and increased risk of type 2 diabetes if consumed in large quantities.
References
- "Biochemistry"; Reginald Garrett, Ph.D., and Charles Grisham, Ph.D.; 2007
- "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"; Effects of Dietary Fructose on Plasma Lipids in Healthy Subjects; John Bantle et al; November 2000
- "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"; Potential Role of Sugar (Fructose) in the Epidemic of Hypertension, Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome, Diabetes, Kidney Disease, and Cardiovascular Disease; Richard Johnson, et al; October 2007
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