So the majority of the biochemistry in the article is more or less correct - though the whole "fructose is the worst thing ever!" bit is more than a little overblown, there are a lot of dumb mistakes in the chemistry, and those combined with the rather hysterical tone leave me skeptical about the information regarding the agave industry. Well, and some things are just silly. For instance, the majority of fructose in honey is in monosaccharide form, so claiming otherwise is just incorrect. And the idea that agave is horrible and awful because it's not a whole food, but honey is pure is, well, religion rather than science. (I'm not saying there aren't plenty of reasons to prefer whole foods - but honey is a refined sugar, even if it's been refined by the bees.) A lot of the discussion of the different grades of agave nectar could be applied as well to maple syrup.
I'm kind of grimly amused by the "Oh, no, fructose is evil!" thing that's going around at the moment - in part because what, five years ago? it was just the opposite. Yes, the new study is very good. Yes, I'm personally deeply suspicious of concentrated fructose* as a food additive. But this particular bit has been bouncing back and forth for the last few decades, and one single study does resolve the issue either way, despite the media hype.
The whole glycemic index bit, with regard to fructose, is kind of a joke. Fructose won't raise your GI because GI counts glucose release into the bloodstream, not fructose, but that's almost a matter of playing with definitions. However, fructose feeds into glycolosis just like glucose, and in fact it bypasses the most highly regulated step of glycolosis, so your body has less control over the rate of uptake. (Which is one of the reasons an awful lot of biochemists - and me, though I'm being a neurobiologist rather than a biochemist at the moment - are pretty suspicious of fructose. However, there is lab data both supporting and refuting that fear.)
* But then, I rarely eat refined foods, and few sweets, and if my body isn't under unusual strain, my metabolism regulates itself fairly well - then again, that's with a couple of hours of training a day. (And when I'm training really a lot... I still eat well, but I don't avoid sugars, or particularly worry about them. It's *hard* to get enough calories when you're training that much.)
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I'm kind of grimly amused by the "Oh, no, fructose is evil!" thing that's going around at the moment - in part because what, five years ago? it was just the opposite. Yes, the new study is very good. Yes, I'm personally deeply suspicious of concentrated fructose* as a food additive. But this particular bit has been bouncing back and forth for the last few decades, and one single study does resolve the issue either way, despite the media hype.
The whole glycemic index bit, with regard to fructose, is kind of a joke. Fructose won't raise your GI because GI counts glucose release into the bloodstream, not fructose, but that's almost a matter of playing with definitions. However, fructose feeds into glycolosis just like glucose, and in fact it bypasses the most highly regulated step of glycolosis, so your body has less control over the rate of uptake. (Which is one of the reasons an awful lot of biochemists - and me, though I'm being a neurobiologist rather than a biochemist at the moment - are pretty suspicious of fructose. However, there is lab data both supporting and refuting that fear.)
* But then, I rarely eat refined foods, and few sweets, and if my body isn't under unusual strain, my metabolism regulates itself fairly well - then again, that's with a couple of hours of training a day. (And when I'm training really a lot... I still eat well, but I don't avoid sugars, or particularly worry about them. It's *hard* to get enough calories when you're training that much.)