Fruit juice - cancer trigger?

In the news...... fruit juice may trigger cancer?

A recent study suggests that people who drink a lot of fruit juice may be more susceptible to some cancers.
The ordinary person in the street (judging from news site comments) who hasn't spent time studying health and nutrition is fairly understandably puzzled and so dangerously contemptuous of this link because they have become used to the idea that natural = good and artificial = bad. Life isn't so simple, sadly.

Two kinds of sugar:

INTRINSIC sugars are those naturally present in foods - a banana is sweet because of its intrinsic sugars.
EXTRINSIC sugars are those added to a food by humans. A cookie is sweet because sugar (white, honey, syrup - whatever) is part of its recipe. Even naturally occurring sugars become extrinsic if they are added to another food. Refined white sugar - sucrose, and natural sugars - fructose, maltose, etc; have minor differences in absorption rate and one may have traces of bleach and the other traces of minerals but when you come right down to it from your bodys point of view (and that of cancer cells) there is very little difference between them. Too much too quickly of any of them = trouble.

Some tumours are known as 'sugar feeders'. Cancer cells hijack the mitochondria (the 'battery' every living cell has) and can multiply furiously if they have an easy supply of their favoured fuel - glucose. The cancer cell doesn't care whether its glucose originates from extrinsic or intrinsic sugars, its the amount of it available in the bloodstream that matters. When you eat a whole piece of fruit the fibre ingested has to be digested, breaking the pieces down to liquids, and that takes a little time for the sugars to reach your blood stream. If that piece of fruit is juiced half the digesting is done already (and a lot of the fibre is missing anyway as its stayed behind in the juicer as pulp) so the sugar from a juiced piece of fruit reaches the blood stream much more quickly.

And no ever drinks just one piece of fruit as a juice - 6 oranges or up to a dozen apples may be needed to make one glass of juice. All of that sugar, intrinsic and 'natural' though it is, hits the blood stream in a flood and forces the pancreas to secrete insulin quickly to protect your brain from that flood (which oddly has the effect of starving your brain of its glucose fuel as it can't take enough before the insulin hits, but thats another story.......) I believe that it takes around 18 inches of sugar cane to supply a teaspoon of white sugar. No one could naturally eat the amount of sugar cane required to supply the sugar in one can of fizzy drink. Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic sugars rather than just 'natural' or 'refined' and how the body uses both will go a long way to helping you keep a healthier you.

High blood insulin levels are associated with some cancers and other diseases, as are high blood sugar levels. The answer is not to regularly force your body to take emergency measures by not ingesting high amounts of any kind of sugar in an unnatural way, whether that is drinking juice, or full fat fizzy drinks, or eating cakes, sweets, chocolates. If you like juices and sweeties keep them for once a day with a meal, never as a snack, as the other food, particularly fat and protein, slows down the absorption of the sugars. Easy. Your teeth will thank you too.