Dietary carbohydrate source and copper bioavailability.

The accentuation of deficiency signs in male rats indicates that a high intake (60% of calories) of fructose and sucrose decreases the bioavailability of dietary copper as compared with the bioavailability when starch is the carbohydrate source. While there are few quantitative data, it appears that under these conditions copper bioavailability may be 30% lower in the presence of sucrose or fructose. This phenomenon has not been observed in female rats, and there is little evidence that the results can be extrapolated to the adult human. In human subjects and pigs that consumed 20% of calories as starch or fructose in a low-copper diet, there was no appreciable difference in the indexes of copper status and none in the apparent absorption of copper.