Reply to post: Re: Smaller portions will not work.

The ONE WEIRD TRICK which could END OBESITY

Nigel 11

Re: Smaller portions will not work.

glucose fructose syrup

Now on my won't buy list, along with margarine/ hydrogenated fats (trans fat sources).

Name one natural source of sugar that is 50% glucose. I don't believe there is one. When a plant wants to store energy in the short term it packages glucose up into sucrose or other di- and poly-saccharides. For the long term, it uses long saccharide polymers we call starch. When a plant wants its fruit to be eaten, it sweetens it with (mostly) fructose (which is a sort of cheating: it's six times sweeter than sucrose, so the plant only has to give away one-sixth as much of its energy stores! )

Glucose is immediately accessible for metabolism, and ingesting any significant amount of it is a serious whack to your metabolism. Sucrose or starch is less damaging because your body has to process it to release glucose (and fructose), which is what they do in a factory to make that syrup out of corn or similar starch.

There's also the possibility that chemical-plant processing of starch creates significant quantities of other saccharide stereo-isomers that are rare in nature. Same problem as trans fats in margarine. Stereochemisty *matters* to life, a fact which the public health authorites were very slow to wake up to.

I expect that when they get to the bottom of the diabetes epidemic, glucose or artificial saccharides will prove to be the cause, rather than just any sugar, just as trans fats were the source of much heart disease, rather than just any fat.

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