Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double sugars, are molecules made of two bonded monosaccharides; common examples are sucrose, lactose, and maltose. White sugar is a refined form of sucrose. In the body, compound sugars are hydrolysed into simple sugars.
Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a ketonic simple sugar found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose, that are absorbed by the gut directly into the blood of the portal vein during digestion. The liver then converts both fructose and galactose into glucose, so that dissolved glucose, known as blood sugar, is the only monosaccharide present in circulating blood.
Corn syrup is a food syrup which is made from the starch of corn and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor. Corn syrup is not the same as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is manufactured from corn syrup by converting a large proportion of its glucose into fructose using the enzyme D-xylose isomerase, thus producing a sweeter substance.
In cooking, syrup is a condiment that is a thick, viscous liquid consisting primarily of a solution of sugar in water, containing a large amount of dissolved sugars but showing little tendency to deposit crystals. Its consistency is similar to that of molasses. The viscosity arises from the multiple hydrogen bonds between the dissolved sugar, which has many hydroxyl (OH) groups.
Fructose malabsorption, formerly named dietary fructose intolerance (DFI), is a digestive disorder in which absorption of fructose is impaired by deficient fructose carriers in the small intestine's enterocytes. This results in an increased concentration of fructose. Intolerance to fructose was first identified and reported in 1956.
Sweet sorghum is any of the many varieties of the sorghum grass whose stalks have a high sugar content. Sweet sorghum thrives better under drier and warmer conditions than many other crops and is grown primarily for forage, silage, and syrup production.
Brown rice (malt) syrup, also known as rice syrup or rice malt, is a sweetener which is rich in compounds categorized as sugars and is derived by steeping cooked rice starch with saccharifying enzymes to break down the starches, followed by straining off the liquid and reducing it by evaporative heating until the desired consistency is reached. The enzymes used in the saccharification step are supplied by an addition of sprouted barley grains to the rice starch or by adding bacterial- or fungal-derived purified enzyme isolates.
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), also known as glucose–fructose, isoglucose and glucose–fructose syrup, is a sweetener made from corn starch. As in the production of conventional corn syrup, the starch is broken down into glucose by enzymes. To make HFCS, the corn syrup is further processed by D-xylose isomerase to convert some of its glucose into fructose. HFCS was first marketed in the early 1970s by the Clinton Corn Processing Company, together with the Japanese Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, where the enzyme was discovered in 1965.
Glucose syrup, also known as confectioner's glucose, is a syrup made from the hydrolysis of starch. Glucose is a sugar. Maize (corn) is commonly used as the source of the starch in the US, in which case the syrup is called "corn syrup", but glucose syrup is also made from potatoes and wheat, and less often from barley, rice and cassava.p. 21
Agave syrup, also known as maguey syrup or agave nectar, is a sweetener commercially produced from several species of agave, including Agave tequilana and Agave salmiana. Blue-agave syrup contains 56% fructose as a sugar providing sweetening properties.
Yacón syrup is a sweetening agent extracted from the tuberous roots of the yacón plant indigenous to the Andes mountains.
The history of sugar has five main phases:
- The extraction of sugar cane juice from the sugarcane plant, and the subsequent domestication of the plant in tropical India and Southeast Asia sometime around 4,000 BC.
- The invention of manufacture of cane sugar granules from sugarcane juice in India a little over two thousand years ago, followed by improvements in refining the crystal granules in India in the early centuries AD.
- The spread of cultivation and manufacture of cane sugar to the medieval Islamic world together with some improvements in production methods.
- The spread of cultivation and manufacture of cane sugar to the West Indies and tropical parts of the Americas beginning in the 16th century, followed by more intensive improvements in production in the 17th through 19th centuries in that part of the world.
- The development of beet sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ian Cheney is an American documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and producer.
Curtis Cleland 'Curt' Ellis is an American filmmaker, social entrepreneur, and advocate for sustainable agriculture and healthy food. He serves as co-founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit organization FoodCorps. He shared a Peabody Award in 2008 for King Corn, which he co-produced and starred in, and in 2011 he won the 17th Annual Heinz Award with longtime collaborator Ian Cheney for their work in the sustainable food movement.
Robert H. Lustig is an American pediatric endocrinologist. He is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he specialized in neuroendocrinology and childhood obesity. He is also director of UCSF's WATCH program, and president and co-founder of the non-profit Institute for Responsible Nutrition.
Critics and competitors of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), notably the sugar industry, have for many years used various public relations campaigns to claim the sweetener causes certain health conditions, despite the lack of scientific evidence that HFCS differs nutritionally from sugar. The HFCS industry has tried to respond to these campaigns with their own efforts.
High-maltose corn syrup is a food additive used as a sweetener and preservative. The majority sugar is maltose. It is less sweet than high-fructose corn syrup and contains little to no fructose. It is sweet enough to be useful as a sweetener in commercial food production, however. To be given the label "high", the syrup must contain at least 50% maltose. Typically, it contains 40–50% maltose, though some have as high as 70%.
Added sugars or free sugars are sugar carbohydrates added to food and beverages at some point before their consumption. These include added carbohydrates, and more broadly, sugars naturally present in honey, syrup, and fruits. They can take multiple chemical forms, including sucrose, glucose (dextrose), and fructose.
The production of corn plays a major role in the economy of the United States. The US is the largest corn producer in the world, with 96,000,000 acres (39,000,000 ha) of land reserved for corn production. Corn growth is dominated by west/north central Iowa and east central Illinois. Approximately 13% of its annual yield is exported.
Obesity and the environment aims to look at the different environmental factors that researchers worldwide have determined cause and perpetuate obesity. Obesity is a condition in which a person's weight is higher than what is considered healthy for their height, and is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Obesity can result from several factors such as poor nutritional choices, overeating, genetics, culture, and metabolism. Many diseases and health complications are associated with obesity. Worldwide, the rates of obesity have nearly tripled since 1975, leading health professionals to label the condition as a modern epidemic in most parts of the world. Current worldwide population estimates of obese adults near 13%; overweight adults total approximately 39%.
