Ok, people are saying:
If white rice and white bread are as bad, why can’t I just eat the same number of calories in the form of sugar, then? Sugar sure tastes better than most carbohydrates. If it’s a matter of GI, can’t I just eat small portions?
One notable different between table sugar and ‘refined’ carbohydrates such as white rice and white flour, is that sugar is 50/50 glucose/fructose, whereas starchy foods are mostly glucose. Fructose must be processed through your liver, rather than by your gut, and therefore has quite a different effect on your physiology.
Ah that’s a good point, thanks. Can glucose be spun into cotton candy?
Well, you shouldn’t *really *eat refined carbohydrates as a staple either.
And even if you do, it’s more likely than sugar to go with something with more nutritional value, like you might have white rice and vegetables. But if you wanted to put sugar on your vegetables instead, well, it might not make a huge amount of difference.
Well, actually you CAN do that, but pure sugar has even less nutritional value than white bread, which actually has a teeny bit of fiber and is usually vitamin enriched. Likewise for white rice. Rice and bread also have bulk which helps you feel full whereas pure sugar does not.
It’s not so much that sugar is “bad” for you as there is little good there, it lacks vitamins, minerals, etc.
Sugar doesn’t sate. Eat half a cup of sugar five times a day and you will be starving long before bed.
When I was young ( long long ago ) the sugar industry was advertising that if you used sugar, it satisfied your hunger and you would eat less, therefore losing weight.
In Thailand, they often use white sugar on their rice and vegetable meals.
It’s not just about calories. Even Wonder Bread has some protein (2 slices has 110 Calories, 4g protein, 28g carbs). If you took 7 teaspoons of sugar you’d be getting about the same calories but no protein, nothing else but Calories. White sugar is a simple carbohydrate, compared even to white flour.
and you never stopped to think that the people encouraging you to eat the stuff they were selling might have ulterior motives?
Depending on how much processed food you eat, you may be doing this already.
And phat thai.
You can run a diesel Mercedes on filtered cooking oil, but the performance & MPG are lacking, and there’s the possibility of gunking up the works something fierce. It might also have trouble starting in cold weather. Plus, your car will smell like doughnuts.
Okay, that last one’s kinda cool.
The reason is that staples are a bit rough on the stomach.
LOL…nobody else finds this amusing?!? I must be drunk.
Interesting question too…can it? (Grabs my beer)
When I was young, we were indoctrinated to accept whatever we were told by “adults”.
It took a few years to make me as cynical as I am now.
Well, if they eat too much sugar, yes.
Table sugar is so incredibly non-nutritive that almost nothing can eat it.
Ever seen sugar go bad?
Ever seen moldy sugar?
What does that tell you?
Ant, rats, humans eat sugar. Not much else.
This is an utterly absurd statement. Sugar is precisely as nutritive as any other carbohydrate: 4 kcal/g. And the reason mold doesn’t grow on table sugar is because table sugar is dry; water is an absolute precondition for life. And even if you got sugar wet, at high concentrations it inhibits life due to high osmotic pressure; only a few microorganisms can survive living in such an environment.
Some animals, like cats, can’t really digest carbohydrates and sugar won’t be useful for them. For humans, and myriad other species (it’s not just humans, ants, and rats), sugars are perfectly nutritive. Whether it’s a good idea to eat it as a staple, well, probably not; there’s a lot of research on insulin spikes and how that impacts a number of diseases, and refined sugar doesn’t provide any other nutrients alongside.
Refined sugar does not provide nutrients.
vs
**Table sugar is so incredibly non-nutritive **
I don’t see much of a distinction there, do you?