Re: Comparing hot dogs to vegetables and natural fruit sugar to HFCS?

Actually, I have read the link entirely and nothing in it suggests anything counter to what I said earlier, which was that you cannot compare hot dogs and vegetables based on nitrate and nitrite content because it is not nitrates and nitrites that are dangerous but rather the nitrosamines which are formed when processed and cured meat is cooked.

You are the one who compared hot dogs to vegetables, not me.  No matter how you try to justify it, such a comparison simply does not work.

Regarding cancer cells and fructose:  However well cancer cells may be able to utilize fructose in vitro, it is quite a different ballgame in vivo. You see, virtually no fructose actually makes it to the cells, cancerous or otherwise, in the first place.  Fructose is circulated from our digestive tract through the hepatic portal vein to the liver (The hepatic portal vein is a vein that brings all digested nutrients from the digestive tract to the liver before it goes into the general circulation.).  Thus fructose from the digestive system reaches the liver before any other cells in the body.  The liver then converts about 50% of this into glucose or lactate and the rest is primarily converted into triglycerides (fat).  Fructose is not used directly by any cell in the body, it is almost 100% metabolized by the liver. 

I don't doubt that high consumption of fructose may increase the growth of cancer cells, but would opine that it does so primarily from the increased glucose that comes from the body's processing of fructose.  When it comes to natural fructose in fruits, a bowl of fruit may contain only a couple of grams of natural fructose, whereas a large soft drink may contain 60 grams of fructose from high fructose corn syrup.  The best advice for cancer patients is to go easy on the fruits (consume three to four times as much vegetables as fruits), avoid heavy consumption of pure fruit juice, and avoid all high fructose corn syrup sweetened drinks and products as much as possible. 

And finally, I did not say that man has been living ON fruits or that man has been consuming fruits on a year round daily basis for all of our existence.  However, it is undeniable that man has been consuming fruits wherever and whenever they were to be found for as long as they have been found.  Such has not been the case with high fructose corn syrup.