Get Your Sugah Here!

Over at the LRC blog, Karen De Coster has fully bought into the latest bit of paranoia circulating there, namely, that there is something significantly different about taking your sugar as fructose rather than as sucrose and fructose is the result of a government plot, calling high-fructose corn syrup an "awful poison."

Well, let's have a look at Wikipedia:

"Fructose (also levulose or laevulose) is a simple reducing sugar (monosaccharide) found in many foods and is one of the three most important blood sugars along with glucose and galactose. Honey, tree fruits, berries, melons, and some root vegetables, such as beets, sweet potatoes, parsnips, and onions, contain fructose, usually in combination with sucrose and glucose."

So, also avoid those "awful poisons" such as berries, melons, beets, parsnips, and onions, please!

Wikipedia continues:

"Studies that have compared high fructose corn syrup (an ingredient in soft drinks sold in the US) to sucrose (common cane sugar) find that they have essentially identical physiological effects. For instance, Melanson et al (2006), studied the effects of HFCS and sucrose sweetened drinks on blood glucose, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin levels. They found no significant differences in any of these parameters.[13] This is not surprising since sucrose is a disaccharide which digests to 50% glucose and 50% fructose; while the high fructose corn syrup most commonly used on soft drinks is 55% fructose."

So, De Coster's "awful poison" has nearly identical effects to the good stuff she wants in soft drinks instead! And anyone who had any idea of the chemistry involved in digesting sucrose could have predicted as much -- it breaks down into the exact "awful poison" De Coster is freaking out about! Ah, to be blissfully untethered from reality!