A provocative study published recently in the journal Oncology Reports reveals that a commonly used sweetener, maple syrup, inhibits the growth and invasion of human colorectal cancer cells.

This finding may strike some readers as surprising considering just how much research now exists implicating processed sugars like fructose in a wide range of chronic diseases. For instance, take a look at the toxicological data on fructose’s role in over 80 adverse health effects on our Fructose research page.

This study is all the more interesting considering a recent experiment demonstrated, for what looks like the first time, that sugar is capable of not just feeding cancer but inducing it, i.e. it possesses oncogenic properties.

Obviously, the glaring disparity observed here is due to the fact that not all “sugar” is alike. The difference, for instance, between glucose, fructose, and sucrose is highly significant, on both a chemical and metabolic level. Also, food is a source of information that has gene-modulatory and regulatory functions. This means that one can not reduce the informational/qualitative aspects of any food down to its nutritional composition which is primarily understood in terms of strictly quantitative macronutrient and micronutrient profiles.

When you add in this all important nutritional context, particularly the role that food plays as both a delivery system and a source for a set of co-factors for appropriate metabolism and utilization, a ‘sugar’ will behave far differently than when it is consumed in isolation, especially when consumed in the biologically inappropriate quantities characteristic of the modern Western diet. Another example is honey, which is also high in sucrose but does not act like regular purified “sugar” either. In fact, not only does honey not appear to act as a “fuel” for aerobic glycolysis (the preferred metabolic mode of cancer cells) as does purified fructose, but I recently reported on its potential as an anti-cancer agent, and with applications perhaps especially relevant to breast cancer.