Word: sugar
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...first detailed analysis comparing how our systems respond to glucose (which is made when the body breaks down starches such as carbohydrates) and fructose, (the type of sugar found naturally in fruits), researchers at the University of California Davis report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that consuming too much fructose can actually put you at greater risk of developing heart disease and diabetes than ingesting similar amounts of glucose. In the study, 32 overweight or obese men and women were randomly assigned to drink 25% of their daily energy requirements in either fructose- or glucose-sweetened drinks. The researchers...
...expect to be able to exercise your new sugar-smarts at the grocery store quite yet. Most of the sugar we encounter in products and in restaurants isn't glucose, but rather high fructose corn syrup or sucrose, each a combination of glucose and fructose (sucrose is an even 50-50 split between the two, while high fructose corn syrup comes in either 55%-45% fructose-glucose or 42%-58% pairings). It's difficult to find anything that's mostly glucose, which means our sweeteners are setting us up for weight gain, and more insidiously, metabolic changes that can make...
...Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, notes that studies have shown that long-term consumption of sugared drinks can double the risk of diabetes, with half of that risk due to the excess weight brought on by the calories, and the other half due to the beverages' high sugar content - mostly fructose. "This study provides the best argument yet that we should either decide to consume less sugar-sweetened beverages in general, or that we should conduct more research into the possibility of using other sweeteners that may be more glucose...
...that's the case, then why the glut of blended sugars rather than pure glucose in our foods today? Glucose isn't as sweet as fructose, and because our collective sweet teeth have become accustomed to a certain level of sweetness, anything less might be unsatisfying. "The proportion of fructose in food probably hasn't increased that much, since high fructose corn syrup simply replaced sucrose in many cases," says Havel. "But people are also simply consuming more sugar in their diet." In fact, if you think that the study subjects drank way more sweetened beverages (25% of their daily...
...actual maple syrup industry has grown some 10% in each of the past four years - and no, maple syrup it not just for flapjacks. These days, some maple syrup devotees use the liquid sweetener as a substitute for sugar in everything from cakes to stir fry. And let's not forget the Master Cleanse diet - more accurately a fast - in which people eat nothing for days on end, subsisting only on a drink made of water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup...