The Prime Minister's chief science adviser has criticised what he calls outrageous media coverage of research indicating a link between a high-fructose diet and foetal damage in rats.
The main sugar found in fruit, fructose is often used to sweeten refined foods like soft drinks and cakes.
Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, who is also the founding director of the Liggins Institute, where the research was done, told a science convention in Auckland it was wrong of some media to run headlines linking fruit eating and foetal impairment.
He says that in India some newspapers signalled that pregnant women should not eat fruit - advice he describes as catastrophic.
