Is it healthier (or less unhealthy) to eat glucose instead of sucrose based sweets?

[Saffer]

A short time ago I watched this video about the health affects of fructose (which is a component of sucrose). I am normally quite suspicious of ‘nutritional science’ advice, because so much of it is conflicting. But this video seems quite convincing.

So the first question is: is fructose as bad as this video makes it out to be?

The second question is: Assuming fructose is as bad as this, if I make my own sweets (chocolate, ice cream, cakes etc) and sweeten them with glucose instead of sucrose, will I have mitigated some of the negative health problems addressed in the video? Also, will I have introduced new health problems?

[dolphinboy]

I learned in college that ‘sugar is sugar is sugar’ as far are our body is concerned. So I don’t think it really matters, but I’ll let a knowledgeable biochemist elaborate.

[voltaire]

One issue is that glucose isn’t as sweet sucrose, so you would have to use more glucose or add some other sweetener to make up the difference. Sweetness - Wikipedia

[Exapno_Mapcase]

The video is from Dr. Robert Lustig, who is an anti-sugar crusader. His attitude is about as extreme as mainstream medicine gets, which is that sugar is poison. All sugar, especially the added sugars that appear in almost all processed foods and restaurant meals. He’s probably right about the amount of sugar in modern diet, and we know that it’s been deliberately introduced by food manufacturers because people really do love sugar.

Here is an article from the Harvard Health Blog, which I find reliable, about Lustig and that video. The science is far from being settled, but caution is being urged. The problem is that the bad effects are correlative and not yet known to be causal.

The question for the OP is the total amount of sugar in his or her diet. If you’re eating a normal American diet, then making your own sweets is probably not going to change the overall effect from sugar, unless you consume huge amounts of desserts. You’d probably be better off with moderation across the board rather than trying to target particular foods.

[watchwolf49]

I did some poking around the internet and I think it’s fair to say that in an otherwise balanced diet, sucrose is completely safe except under some specific health conditions (like diabetes) … Unfortunately, it can be argued that the typical American diet is anything but balanced and that Americans consume too much sucrose (a.k.a. table sugar) …

Sucrose is just about pure carbohydrates … completely lacking in the other two macronutrients (protein and unsaturated fats) and all the micronutrients … so the healthy option is to refrain from adding sugar as there’s plenty of carbohydrates in most of our foods …

I’d avoid adding two tablespoons of sugar to your bowl of Krusty’s Sugar-Coated Sugar Drops …

There’s an MSDS for sucrose:

PRACTICALLY NONTOXIC: PROBABLE ORAL LETHAL DOSE (HUMAN) ABOVE 15 G/KG, MORE THAN 1 QUART (2.2 LB) FOR 70 KG PERSON (150 LB).

[watchwolf49]

Missed edit window …

ETA: To the OP: sucrose is a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule … these are split in the digestive tract and absorbed into the bloodstream separately … since neither are bad for us (in proper proportions) then we don’t gain any health advantage by eating only glucose rather than sucrose … taste appears to be the only difference …

[Ann_Hedonia]

And if someone decides glucose based sweets are healthy and therefore they can eat them in unlimited quantities, that might be a net negative, healthwise. People are always looking for loopholes.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@watchwolf49

Missed edit window …

ETA: To the OP: sucrose is a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule … these are split in the digestive tract and absorbed into the bloodstream separately … **since neither are bad for us **(in proper proportions) then we don’t gain any health advantage by eating only glucose rather than sucrose … taste appears to be the only difference …

The part I bolded is exactly what the question is. Where is your evidence for this? … Other than “poking around the internet.”

[watchwolf49]

@Exapno_Mapcase

@watchwolf49

ETA: To the OP: sucrose is a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule … these are split in the digestive tract and absorbed into the bloodstream separately … since neither are bad for us (in proper proportions) then we don’t gain any health advantage by eating only glucose rather than sucrose … taste appears to be the only difference …

The part I bolded is exactly what the question is. Where is your evidence for this? … Other than “poking around the internet.”

Evidence that carbohydrates are a macronutrient?

From the Mayo Clinic “Carbohydrates: How carbs fit into a healthy diet”:

Carbohydrates often get a bad rap, especially when it comes to weight gain. But carbohydrates aren’t all bad. Because of their numerous health benefits, carbohydrates have a rightful place in your diet. In fact, your body needs carbohydrates to function well.

From Harvard School of Public Health “Carbohydrates”:

Foods high in carbohydrates are an important part of a healthy diet. Carbohydrates provide the body with glucose, which is converted to energy used to support bodily functions and physical activity. But carbohydrate quality is important; some types of carbohydrate-rich foods are better than others:

Note that glucose and fructose follow analogical metabolic pathways in an otherwise healthy individual.

Carbohydrates are an essential part of a balanced diet … they are the external energy source for most non-photosynthetic cells … this is something that could be called “common knowledge” and I think poking around a few nutritional web sites to confirm my claims was enough … and it’s real easy to come up with citations …

Eating nothing but table sugar is bad for you, but table sugar itself isn’t bad … just like breathing nothing but argon is bad, but argon itself isn’t …

[barbitu8]

Sugars are empty calories. They are needed to perform work, but if you ingest more than you need, they can impair insulin production, be converted to fat, and fructose is poorly metabolized in the body: DEFINE_ME
Too much sugar over time can result in diabetes type 2.

[Colibri]

Sucrose, High-Fructose Corn Syrup, and Fructose, Their Metabolism and Potential Health Effects: What Do We Really Know?

Both controversy and confusion exist concerning fructose, sucrose, and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) with respect to their metabolism and health effects. … In retrospect, recent controversies arose when a scientific commentary was published suggesting a possible unique link between HFCS consumption and obesity. Since then, a broad scientific consensus has emerged that there are no metabolic or endocrine response differences between HFCS and sucrose related to obesity or any other adverse health outcome. This equivalence is not surprising given that both of these sugars contain approximately equal amounts of fructose and glucose, contain the same number of calories, possess the same level of sweetness, and are absorbed identically through the gastrointestinal tract.

But:

Whether there is a link between fructose, HFCS, or sucrose and increased risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, or fatty infiltration of the liver or muscle remains in dispute with different studies using different methodologies arriving at different conclusions. Further randomized clinical trials are needed to resolve many of these issues.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@watchwolf49

Evidence that carbohydrates are a macronutrient?

Evidence of the actual words you wrote:

sucrose is a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule … these are split in the digestive tract and absorbed into the bloodstream separately … since neither are bad for us

The “these” and “neither” refers to glucose and fructose. I was asking why you think that neither are bad for us.

How you got from there to asking “Evidence that carbohydrates are a macronutrient?” is a mystery far greater than mere nutrition and metabolism.

[voltaire]

@watchwolf49

Note that glucose and fructose follow analogical metabolic pathways in an otherwise healthy individual.

Only if by “analogical” you mean anally-derived logic. Fructolysis - Wikipedia

[watchwolf49]

@Exapno_Mapcase

The “these” and “neither” refers to glucose and fructose. I was asking why you think that neither are bad for us.

How you got from there to asking “Evidence that carbohydrates are a macronutrient?” is a mystery far greater than mere nutrition and metabolism.

Glucose, sucrose and fructose are all carbohydrates … carbohydrates are good for you … therefore; glucose, sucrose and fructose are good for you …

… in their proper balance …

And after a balanced dinner, it makes not one iota of difference whether we use glucose or sucrose in our cupcake afterwards …

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@watchwolf49

Glucose, sucrose and fructose are all carbohydrates … carbohydrates are good for you … therefore; glucose, sucrose and fructose are good for you

Cool. You … managed … to crawl … under … your … previous … low bar.

[md2000]

There are several things to consider:

Several decades ago, the “common wisdom” was that fat was bad for you. So, to this day we have plenty of fat-free foods to cater to this. But fat made food tasty, so to compensate these fat-free foods instead have even more carbohydrates - sugars.

The folklore dietary “science” has for the last decade or so been lambasting high-fructose corn syrup as a culprit. First, yes, you’re adding much more sugar. Plus, there’s the concern about how quickly fructose is absorbed into the body vs. glucose, etc. starch carbs enter the blood at an even lower rate. The same folklore says that the bigger burst of sugar triggers a bigger burst of insulin, causing obesity, eventually Type II diabetes, etc.

The alarmists will say all sugars are bad - but obviously, it’s energy your body can use, and like anything you consume, past a certain point it will have less benefit and then eventually a detriment.

As mentioned, some sugars are sweeter to taste - so adding those to a product instead gives the initial taste a bigger jolt, encouraging repeat business. The ideal culprit is the much maligned high-fructose corn syrup.

Sorting out the competing claims is difficult- plus, we’re deep into conspiracy-theory-land by now. “The sugar industry paid to have fat maligned, and bury the truth” and that sort of thing. We’re about the same place we were in the 90’s with smoking…

The short answer is - everything is ok in moderation with a healthy lifestyle. Sugar may be causing obesity, but so is lack of activity. After all, portion control is another issue - the traditional Coke bottle, the little greenish thing, was IIRC only 10oz. One or two were good for the day.

[x-ray_vision]

@barbitu8

Sugars are empty calories.

Empty calories are typically defined as foods that offer little to no micronutrition. Sugars are macronutrients. That don’t contain micronutrients by definition. That includes fats and protein.

They are needed to perform work, but if you ingest more than you need, they can impair insulin production, be converted to fat

Very rarely converted to fat:

Human Body Does Not Turn Sugar to Fat

The process of synthesizing fat from sugar is known as de novo lipogenesis—the new production of fat. This activity is highly efficient in some animals, such as pigs and cows—which is one reason they have become popular people foods—these animals can convert low-energy, inexpensive carbohydrates—grass, say, in the case of cows and grains for pigs—into calorie-dense fats.5 However, human beings are very inefficient at this process and as a result de novo lipogenesis does not occur under usual living conditions in people. Thus the common belief that sugar turns to fat is scientifically incorrect—and there is no disagreement about this fact among scientists or their scientific research.5-8

Under experimental laboratory conditions, however, where people are overfed large amounts of simple sugars, the human body will resort to converting a small amount of sugar into a small amount of fat (triglycerides) in the liver. For example, in one recent study, trim and obese women were overfed with 50% more calories than they usually ate—note, 535 of these extra calories each day came from four and a half ounces (135 grams) of refined sugar. In this forced-fed situation, the women produced less than 4 grams (36 calories) of fat daily from the extra carbohydrate.8 Extrapolation from these findings means a person would have to be overfed by this amount of food and table sugar every day for nearly 4 months in order to gain one extra pound of body fat from the conversion of sugar to fat—by de novo lipogenesis. Obviously, even overeating substantial quantities of sugar is a relatively unimportant source of body fat. (So where does all that fat come from?—the fat you eat is the fat you wear.)

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/4/895.full

and fructose is poorly metabolized in the body

See the following:

Fructose is evil, context be damned

So, is fructose really the poison it’s painted to be? The answer is not an absolute yes or no; the evilness of fructose depends completely on dosage and context. A recurrent error in Lustig’s lecture is his omission of specifying the dosage and context of his claims. A point he hammers throughout his talk is that unlike glucose, fructose does not elicit an insulin (& leptin) response, and thus does not blunt appetite. This is why fructose supposedly leads to overeating and obesity.

Hold on a second…Lustig is forgetting that most fructose in both the commercial and natural domain has an equal amount of glucose attached to it. You’d have to go out of your way to obtain fructose without the accompanying glucose. Sucrose is half fructose and half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is nearly identical to sucrose in structure and function. Here’s the point I’m getting at: contrary to Lustig’s contentions, both of these compounds have substantial research showing not just their ability to elicit an insulin response, but also their suppressive effect on appetite [3-6].

But wait, there’s more. In studies directly comparing the effect of fructose and glucose preloads on subsequent food intake, one showed no difference [7], while the majority have shown the fructose preload resulting in lesser food intake than the glucose preload [8-10]. A recent review of the literature on fructose’s effect on satiety found no compelling case for the idea that fructose is less satiating than glucose, or that HFCS is less satiating than sucrose [11]. So much for Lustig’s repeated assertion that fructose and fructose-containing sugars increase subsequent food intake. I suppose it’s easier to sensationalize claims based on rodent data.

In the single human study I’m aware of that linked fructose to a greater next-day appetite in a subset of the subjects, 30% of total daily energy intake was in the form of free fructose [12]. This amounts to 135 grams, which is the equivalent of 6-7 nondiet soft drinks. Is it really that groundbreaking to think that polishing off a half-dozen soft drinks per day is not a good idea? Demonizing fructose without mentioning the dose-dependent nature of its effects is intellectually dishonest. Like anything else, fructose consumed in gross chronic excess can lead to problems, while moderate amounts are neutral, and in some cases beneficial [13-15].

I’m obviously not in favor of replacing anyone’s daily fluid intake with soft drinks, but I can already see a number of straw man arguments headed my way. This is because people have a tendency to think in either-or terms that strictly involve extremes. I’ll quote an elegant review by independent researcher John White that echoes my thoughts [16]:

Although examples of pure fructose causing metabolicupset at high concentrations abound, especially when fed asthe sole carbohydrate source, there is no evidence that thecommon fructose-glucose sweeteners do the same. Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption.

Too much sugar over time can result in diabetes type 2.

That’s a misleading statement. Too much sugar can help one to become obese, and obesity is a risk factor for diabetes, but the sort of cause and effect you mention has not been established. And in most Americans, it’s high fat consumption to blame for obesity. From the American Diabetes Association:

**Myth: If you are overweight or obese, you will eventually develop type 2 diabetes.

Fact:** Being overweight is a risk factor for developing this disease, but other risk factors such as family history, ethnicity and age also play a role. Unfortunately, too many people disregard the other risk factors for diabetes and think that weight is the only risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Most overweight people never develop type 2 diabetes, and many people with type 2 diabetes are at a normal weight or only moderately overweight.

…

**Myth: Eating too much sugar causes diabetes.

Fact:** The answer is not so simple. Type 1 diabetes is caused by genetics and unknown factors that trigger the onset of the disease; type 2 diabetes is caused by genetics and lifestyle factors.

Being overweight does increase your risk for developing type 2 diabetes, and a diet high in calories from any source contributes to weight gain. Research has shown that drinking sugary drinks is linked to type 2 diabetes.

Obese people are more likely to drink sugary drinks, so the link is definitely there, but not cause and effect.

[engineer_comp_geek]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Cool. You … managed … to crawl … under … your … previous … low bar.

You managed to snip off the most important part of what he said in your quote - “… in their proper balance …”

I have type 2 diabetes, which is currently controlled with diet. So you might be thinking that sugars of all kinds and carbs are bad for me. They aren’t. There’s nothing inherently bad about me eating sugars or carbs. But, being diabetic, it is extremely important for me that I be careful about how much of these I eat. My diet is basically planned around how much sugars and carbs I can eat with every meal. I can have a candy bar in the afternoon if I want, but only if I didn’t eat too many carbs for lunch.

I’ve pretty much cut soda out of my diet. It’s not that soda and high fructose corn syrup are “bad” for me. If I want a soda, I can have a soda. But since I spend the day counting carbs, I’d rather spend my carbs somewhere else than on a soda. Similarly, if I want some cookies or ice cream, I can have cookies or ice cream, but only as long as my daily count of carbs isn’t too high.

Sugar isn’t bad. Carbs aren’t bad. It’s how much you eat of them that can be bad.

I have the typical American type 2 diabetes that was caused by me being overweight and eating too much sugars and carbs. But it’s not because carbs and sugars are inherently bad, it’s because I was eating too much of them and not exercising enough. What happens is you get overweight and you have a lot of fat in your body, all of that fat blocks the insulin receptors in your cells. This forces your pancreas to work harder to regulate your blood sugar, putting a strain on the cells in your pancreas that produce insulin. Unlike a lot of other cells in your body, if these cells are strained and die off, they aren’t replaced, and once enough of them die off then your body can’t regulate its blood sugar properly. The cells are gone forever. Go on a diet and lose some weight (like I did) and now the remaining cells might be able to regulate your blood sugar properly, which is where I am now. I’m not “cured” of diabetes. Those cells are permanently gone in my pancreas. But that’s how I ended up being diabetic.

The sugars and carbs didn’t cause my diabetes. It was my consumption of too many of them that caused it.

There’s nothing wrong with what watchwolf49 said, as long as you include the next line from his post.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@engineer_comp_geek

There’s nothing wrong with what watchwolf49 said, as long as you include the next line from his post.

I disagree. I gave thought to whether I needed to include that qualifier and finally decided against it.

The statement “… carbohydrates are good for you … therefore; glucose, sucrose and fructose are good for you” is wrong in and of itself; the qualifier doesn’t save it. It doesn’t even make sense in context.

As I said earlier the question of whether glucose, sucrose, and fructose are equally good is still being determined. It is, literally, the question, the one asked by the OP. It is possible, maybe likely, that the best way to treat all sugars in the diet is in moderation. Again, I said that explicitly. The evidence that HFCS or other sources of added fructose is uniquely dangerous is slim to nonexistent, as I’ve argued in the past, but that is still not the heart of the matter.

The issue is stating that individual types of carbohydrates are good for you as a blanket statement, whether in “proper balance” or not. (What is the “proper balance” for glucose, fructose, and sucrose? I have no idea what this means. Is it just moderation? Does he mean an exact ratio? It is a meaningless statement.) That is simply not true for many people. Some people do need to preferentially avoid fructose. Fructose malabsorption and heredity fructose intolerance are real conditions. So is lactose intolerance, for that matter. And so are various other malabsorption and processing syndromes.

At best, the posts of watchwolf49 are meaningless noise. I don’t rate them that high. I think they are actively harmful advice for many people. They certainly get in the way of understanding the answers to the OPs legitimate question. Adding worthless qualifiers to blanket statements that are completely false doesn’t give him a pass. I called him on the harmful part. And I’m repeating that here.

[constanze]

@engineer_comp_geek

I have type 2 diabetes, which is currently controlled with diet. So you might be thinking that sugars of all kinds and carbs are bad for me. They aren’t. There’s nothing inherently bad about me eating sugars or carbs. But, being diabetic, it is extremely important for me that I be careful about how much of these I eat. My diet is basically planned around how much sugars and carbs I can eat with every meal. I can have a candy bar in the afternoon if I want, but only if I didn’t eat too many carbs for lunch.

Isn’t it also very important to how quickly accesible the sugars you eat are - the difference between complex sugars like starch, and simple sugars like sucrose? Because that’s what I always hear as advice for diabetics (of both types) - avoid spikes in blood sugar from simple sugars, prefer complex sugars like starch.

From what I’ve read over the past years, the recommendation for diabetics used to be to replace normal sugar (sucrose) with fructose, because it would be absorbed slower by the body and not trigger insulin mechanism because of the different structure/ composition.
Then some non-diabetics thought this sounded like a good idea to avoid obesity, and watching a large group of people, it suddenly turned out that fructose, while being processed differently, is even worse for obesity than sucrose. More research needed, as usual for nutititon topics.