Why too much sugar makes your liver fat
Role of Dietary Fructose and Hepatic De Novo Lipogenesis in Fatty Liver Disease
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Dietary fat and plasma fatty acids contribute the same amount of liver fat in both healthy people and NAFLD patients—only fructose-driven liver-made fat increases.
Everyone blames dietary fat for fatty liver, but this study says it’s not the fat you eat—it’s the sugar your liver turns into fat.
Practical Takeaways
Replace sugary drinks with water, sparkling water, or unsweetened tea. Avoid high-fructose corn syrup on ingredient labels.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Dietary fat and plasma fatty acids contribute the same amount of liver fat in both healthy people and NAFLD patients—only fructose-driven liver-made fat increases.
Everyone blames dietary fat for fatty liver, but this study says it’s not the fat you eat—it’s the sugar your liver turns into fat.
Practical Takeaways
Replace sugary drinks with water, sparkling water, or unsweetened tea. Avoid high-fructose corn syrup on ingredient labels.
Publication
Journal
Digestive Diseases and Sciences
Year
2016
Authors
Samir Softic, Samir Softic, David E. Cohen, C. Kahn
Related Content
Claims (7)
Eating too much sugar, especially fructose found in sodas and sweet snacks, tricks your liver into making excess fat, which can lead to a fatty liver, make your body less responsive to insulin, and raise your risk of heart disease.
Even if your body isn’t using insulin, eating too much fructose (like in sugary drinks) can still trick your liver into making more fat — thanks to special molecular switches called SREBP1c and XBP1s.
In people with fatty liver disease, the liver makes way more of its own fat from scratch than it should, but the fat we eat or that’s in our blood doesn’t change — it’s the liver’s internal fat factory going into overdrive.
When your liver processes fructose (a sugar found in fruit and soda), it burns through energy really fast, makes a waste product called uric acid, and this can damage the liver’s power plants and cause fat to build up—even if your insulin levels are normal.
Eating a lot of sugar like high-fructose corn syrup makes your liver produce more fat than eating a lot of fatty foods does, and this happens in both people and mice.