Question and Answer
Q&A: 'Toxic' effects of sugar: should we be afraid of fructose?
Department of Physiology, and Service of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne, 7 rue du Bugnon, CH-1005 Lausanne Switzerland
BMC Biology 2012, 10:42 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-10-42
Published: 21 May 2012First paragraph (this article has no abstract)
Fructose is a hexose with the same chemical formula, C6H12O6, as glucose. These two sweet-tasting molecules differ structurally, however, as fructose has a keto-group on the second carbon while glucose presents an aldehyde group on the first carbon. Free fructose, together with free glucose, is present in small amounts in fruits and honey. The main part of today's dietary fructose intake comes from sucrose, a disaccharide composed of one molecule of glucose linked to a molecule of fructose through an alpha 1-4 glycoside bond.
