Fructose appears to be a particularly nasty substance. Besides being a substantial carb, it fools the body into not releasing insulin to help scavenge it simply because the blood sugar per se doen't proportionally raise like other simple sugars. Thus, if part of your reaction to sugar comes from what the sugars USUALLY do to your blood sugar followed by whatever you feel as a reaction to it, you don't get any of these "warning signals" and can thus easily ingest way too much of it.

However, in all other ways, it's as bad as any other simple sugar: raises tryglycerides when combined with fat while the fat alone wouldn't do it, etc. And it WILL ruin ketosis real good regardless of BS levels just like any other simple sugar can trivally mess you up in this regard, etc.

btw, a lot of these recent press releases are slipping in a few other non-truths, such as the fact that it's "bad" to allow ketosis because somehow this is the "wrong" fuel for the brain, etc. [Although that article about the little girl avoiding epileptic seizure by being on an especially high-fat diet to REALLY encourage ketosis should cinch it for you.] [Bear in mind that this girl has to SEVERELY avoid carbs more than we need to because of the extremely negative consequences of combining fat AND carbs!]

Perhaps there is also another, albeit foolhardy, explanation: Over the years, some ignorant detractors of Atkins attempted to claim that the diet causes epilepsy! Their "reasoning" is that there IS a correlation between epileptic seizures and ketone levels in the blood. Therefore, in a stroke of illogic, they conclude that ALL events that cause ketosis ARE epilepsy!

It would appear that the presence of the ketones is likely a feeble attempt by the body to inadequately counter the epilepsy, thus the Atkins diet reinforces this effect, but only works if taken to the extreme of an 80% fat diet, presumably with virtually no carbs.

Personally, back in around 1976, I was forced to take a physical with a semi-competent "company doctor" as a condition of employment. [This was not random drug testing, just their notion of a general screening.] It included a blood test that came back with alarm bells going off that I MUST be an epileptic because of ketones present. That it could be because of my diet was beyond their comprehension. It took quite awhile to convince them that the diet CAUSES ketosis as a "good thing" and does not indicate seizures are immenant, etc.

cjl