Research
Macro partitioning
Excessive dietary intake of carbohydrates, particularly fructose and sucrose, drives hepatic de novo lipogenesis through the activation of the transcription factor ChREBP, contributing to NAFLD progression.
If you have fatty liver, reducing sugar and refined carbohydrates (especially fructose from sodas and juices) can directly reduce the liver's production of new fat. This is because high carbohydrate intake activates specific genes (ChREBP) that turn sugar into fat in the liver, even if you aren't eating much dietary fat.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
ChREBP mediates glucose-induced both glycolytic and lipogenic genes... ChREBP is also a bHLH-LZ transcription factor, and the major function of ChREBP is regulation of fructose metabolism... Deletion of Chrebp suppresses high sucrose diet-induced and leptin-deficient obesity...
Why this rating
Supported by mouse models (Chrebp-/-) and human genetic studies.
Source
Homeostasis of Glucose and Lipid in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Hsu‐Wen Chao et al. · International Journal of Molecular Sciences · 2019
DOI 10.3390/ijms20020298
narrative_reviewCited 170×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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