I'd have to back up most of what Adam has argued here. We've had a couple of plenary lectures on fructose and urate over the last few years at Australian clinical biochemistry conferences. People are complex systems so always difficult to isolate individual causative factors without lots of peer reviewed research. In general, glucose is the sugar our bodies can most effeciently burn. Every sucrose molecule however consists of one glucose and one fructose molecule. Metabolically our bodies can't do anything with fructose until its transformed in some way - that means a trip to the liver for a re-arrangement of the fructose or simply shunting it off to fat stores if your body already has plenty of energy. All this activity messes with other metabolic activities.
Anyway, enough gross generalisation - the issue these researchers are flagging is indeed the excess of fructose we consume in foods which are historically speaking unusually rich in fructose - fruit drinks, sugar in foods, HFCS in many processed foods (which also tend to include excessive salt levels to fight blandness).
I'm hungry talking about this. I wish I hadn't eaten the last of the ice-cream last night.
The French seem to have it pretty right actually - lots of walking to public transport or bikes, not afraid to eat stacks of yummy sweet things, but in moderation. I was amazed how few obese people I saw in the streets of Paris last year (excepting American tourists of course). It's surprising with all the yummy bread, patisseries, cheese and wine they gobble, albeit in moderation. There's hope for us food hedonists after all.