A simple sugar found naturally in fruits and honey, sweeter than regular sugar and often used in processed foods.
From Latin 'fructus' (fruit) with the chemistry suffix '-ose' (indicating a sugar). Named in the 1800s when chemists identified and isolated this specific sugar from fruit.
Your body treats fructose differently than glucose—it goes straight to your liver instead of your bloodstream, which is why high-fructose corn syrup is so metabolically problematic, yet the name disguises this by suggesting 'fruit'.
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