The truth about HFCS

[flanum]

Nobody eats pantyhose.

[amar]

[Jack]

I wonder if Julia Child ever cooked her pantyhose?

[jsluder]

I wonder if Julia Child ever cooked her pantyhose?

Probably not on purpose.

[Nanohedron]

I wonder if Julia Child ever cooked her pantyhose?

Probably not on purpose.

There's Beano® for that.

[Walden]

Anything that ends in "ose" (fructose, lactose, glucose) is sugar.

Or so I've been told.

It depends on whether or not you think sugar is bad, I guess.

Waldcose is not bad... and after only 18 years, the FDA is considering lifting the ban on it.

[Nanohedron]

Sugars aren't necessarily bad as such. The sugar types and degrees of refinement count, I think. For example, honey and raw sugars have nutrients that you wouldn't get out of refined products.

White table sugar, for instance, undergoes a long series of processes and chemical treatments to bleach it, make the flavor consistent, and make it dissolve more readily. Don't like the idea of that at all.

I had relatives who were bakers many years ago, and their primary sugar of choice was dextrose, being sweeter than sucrose so they didn't have to use as much of it. Whether that was out of a sense of economy or the wish to keep sugar content down for nutritional purposes, I'm unsure. I have no idea where dextrose stands in the "bad sugars" spectrum, if there is one.

[bradhurley]

It's funny, in my world HFCs are hydrofluorocarbons, an ozone-friendly substitute for chlorofluorocarbons (e.g., Freon)! HFCs are now used in automobile air conditioners (HFC 134a) and some building/room air conditioners and heat pumps.

[hyldemoer]

High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Is it an abomination? Is it as bad as some would claim or no worse than table sugar?

Are we talking a "pick your poison" sort of thing?
Of all the sweeteners on the market its the artificial ones that frighten me the most,
but I'm none too crazy about most of the natural ones either.

Boy howdy, do I love those Weston Price crazies!
Here's what they say about the subject.
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/ ... ctose.html

[Flyingcursor]

High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Is it an abomination? Is it as bad as some would claim or no worse than table sugar?

Are we talking a "pick your poison" sort of thing?
Of all the sweeteners on the market its the artificial ones that frighten me the most,
but I'm none too crazy about most of the natural ones either.

Boy howdy, do I love those Weston Price crazies!
Here's what they say about the subject.
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/ ... ctose.html

I read that one. Interesting. Well I'm still avoiding the high fructose corn syrup if only because cutting down sugar in any form will help me lose more weight.

[chas]

Anything that ends in "ose" (fructose, lactose, glucose) is sugar.

Or so I've been told.

It depends on whether or not you think sugar is bad, I guess.

I'd rather say, anything ending in -ose is a carbohydrate. Like, I wouldn't consider cellulose as a sugar, not sure if one can, from a chemical standpoint, either. Well, not anything, but you know what I mean.
but I could be wrong

Isn't cellulose basically glucose with a different chirality?

As far as high-fructose corn syrup, I dunno that there is anything bad about it per se. Fructose and corn sugar (can't remember the name) are very similar single-ring sugars, which means they're very easily metabolized, and they're both naturally-occuring sugars made AFAIK in normal ways. OTOH, I likely steer clear of most foods that have the stuff in them. I prefer my empty calories in beer.

[missy]

chemistry lesson time:

Sucrose (common table sugar) is a carbohydrate (a molecule made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen). It's chemical formula is C12, H22, O11. It is a disaccharide and is made up of two monosaccharides - fructose and glucose. Sucrose must be broken down in the stomach into those two monosaccharides by hydrolysis in order to be able to be absorbed into the blood system.

Fructose is a mono-saccharide. It's chemical formula is C6, H12, O6. Glucose actually has the same formula - but glucose is a ring structure, where Fructose is a straight line molecule.

What this all basically means, as far as the human body is concerned, is simple (mono) sugars such as fructose are absorbed a LOT quicker by the body then di (complex) sugars such as sucrose, that need to be broken down first. So you get a sugar "buzz" a lot faster with fructose or glucose then you do with sucrose.

And, just another little tidbit - sucrose is not just a ring structure, it is what is called a "chair" form in the way it presents in space. It has -OH groups sticking off of it at 8 points. Olean (olestra), the "fake fat", is made by removing those -OH portions and sticking long chain fatty acids (from vegetable oil) on each of those 8 sites - making a huge molecule that cannot be absorbed through the intestinal wall.

[amar]

Anything that ends in "ose" (fructose, lactose, glucose) is sugar.

Or so I've been told.

It depends on whether or not you think sugar is bad, I guess.

I'd rather say, anything ending in -ose is a carbohydrate. Like, I wouldn't consider cellulose as a sugar, not sure if one can, from a chemical standpoint, either. Well, not anything, but you know what I mean.
but I could be wrong

Isn't cellulose basically glucose with a different chirality?

yeah, I think it's a polysaccharide with glucose as its monomer.

As far as high-fructose corn syrup, I dunno that there is anything bad about it per se. Fructose and corn sugar (can't remember the name) are very similar single-ring sugars, which means they're very easily metabolized, and they're both naturally-occuring sugars made AFAIK in normal ways. OTOH, I likely steer clear of most foods that have the stuff in them. I prefer my empty calories in beer.

[Flyingcursor]

Thanks Missy and Amar. That explains it. I had read that fructose was a complex molecule. That was apparently incorrect blather.

[Congratulations]

I love all sugars equally.