Study finds diet high in fructose may inhibit appetite suppression

NEW YORK A study on rats at the University of Florida suggests that a diet high in fructose can inhibit the hormone that controls appetite.

The study, published in the American Journal of Physiology, found that fructose can prevent the hormone leptin from suppressing appetite in rats, which began to gain weight rapidly after being fed large amounts of fructosefor six months when they began eating food with high amounts of fat, compared with rats that also consumed high-fat foods but no fructose.

“Leptin resistance is a condition that leads to obesity in rats when coupled with a high-fat diet,” said Philip Scarpace, the study’s senior author and a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics, in a statement. “The surprising finding here was that increasing the amount of fructose in the diet without increasing the amount of calories led to leptin resistance and later exacerbated obesity when paired with a high-fat diet.”