A sweetener used in soda, cakes, biscuits and ice cream slowly develops a likely fatal liver disease in children, new researchers warn.

Fructose is the deadliest form of sugar and is far more disadvantageous to health than glucose. Scientists can now tell why this is so.

It triggers an early form of the fatty liver disease in the young ones, a state normally associated with alcoholics, which can develop into cancer, stroke and heart-related problems. The illness is a growing Issue, with one of four children now clinically obese by the time they are 15.

The first author, Dr Samir Softic, of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, said “the disease is much more worrisome in a child of age 13, who goes from normal liver to fatty liver to liver inflammation over the span of 7 years than in someone who has been overweight for 30years.

Kids eat more sugar than adults, so fructose is a risk factor in children, which will increase their years of poor health. High-fructose corn syrup is used in sweetened beverage and many other processed foods. They are found naturally in fruits but manufacturers extract them and then take out the fibre content and nutrients to give an instant sugar rush when consumed. Experiments show mice fed fructose suffer much more metabolic distress than those given similar calories of glucose, another component of table sugar.A study published in the journal of clinical investigation, the animals were given either regular or high- fat diet and drank either plain water or water sweetened with fructose or glucose. After 10 weeks, none of the animals on a regular diet developed insulin resistance, a key factor in metabolic. Although they both gained a substantial amount of weight.

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