Sugar

[hellymedic]

There's still sugar in bananas...
12g/100g.
Doesn't really matter if it's in fruit or not. It ends up the same.

Quite!
'Natural' and 'unrefined' sugars are treated exactly the same way once they are absorbed.

Whilst this absorption can be delayed by fat and fibre, it's still the same stuff!
Most starch gets converted to glucose.

Maple syrup is mostly sucrose.
It is cheaper and simpler to get (or avoid) sucrose from a bag of Silver Spoon and stop kidding yourself.

[Biggsy]

Things are getting a bit mad here! Even careful diabetics eat some sugar.

[Chris S]

Things are getting a bit mad here! Even careful diabetics eat some sugar.

Quite. Even boab and I can't avoid it - and we're more focused on this than most, currently. Don't get me started on separating sugars from total carbs from fibre. Our 'mercan cousins like to do everything differently to everyone else of course, bless 'em.

[hellymedic]

Things are getting a bit mad here! Even careful diabetics eat some sugar.

They certainly do, depending on many factors.
I merely object to the 'kidology' that labels 'natural' as 'better' than 'refined'.
A truly 'palæo' diet would be fairly low on sugars until the hunter-gatherers collected the low-hanging fruit of the autumn.

[Sergeant Pluck]

Drinking 2 litres of Tropicana orange juice per day caused my relative major health problems...

Interesting. What general sort of problems, if I may ask?

[hellymedic]

Drinking 2 litres of Tropicana orange juice per day caused my relative major health problems...

Interesting. What general sort of problems, if I may ask?

Uncontrolled diabetes & mesenteric infarction not necessarily in that order.

Said uncle was on insulin for some time then went totally palæo/vegetarian + fish if that's possible and now is off insulin. I don't believe he takes anything else to regulate his blood sugar.
He lives in Denmark and we're not in close contact.

He's eccentric enough to have appeared on TV ranting against the dairy and food industries.

[Edit] Google for 'Emil Bier' and find someone who knows Danish...

[ferret]

The only mad thing is the amount of added sugar in food stuff that doesn't need it, stuff that has sugar added just purely for taste, obviously natural sugar can't be avoided which has already been stated. I think the main thing is to avoid adding sugar to your diet were ever you can,
I said earlier I was adding about 40g of sugar to my drinks per day, adding sugar to my breakfast plus the odd jam sarnie so we could say anything upto 100g per day, that's without adding naturally occurring sugars. This is why I'm concerned about the amount of sugar in my diet.

I was using the term natural sugar to describe sugar that you can't avoid, such as that in fruit as opposed to refined sugar, I didn't mean to imply that it's better for you    

[rafletcher]

There's still sugar in bananas...
12g/100g.
Doesn't really matter if it's in fruit or not. It ends up the same.

Quite!
'Natural' and 'unrefined' sugars are treated exactly the same way once they are absorbed.

Whilst this absorption can be delayed by fat and fibre, it's still the same stuff!
Most starch gets converted to glucose.

Maple syrup is mostly sucrose.
It is cheaper and simpler to get (or avoid) sucrose from a bag of Silver Spoon and stop kidding yourself.

I am aware of that, and I totally agree, but then I'm not advocating removing all sugars, but rather reducing refined/processed sugars (although honey doen't really fall into the category, but it's  70% - or 70g/100g if you prefer - glucose and fructose, so significantly more "sugary" than bananas - none of which helps ferret!  )

[Pickled Onion]

Well, I would research how to make my own baked beans, without refined sugar

This recipe uses date paste with a bit of ketchup (id: sugar): http://nosugarsweetlife.com/content/mmaz-dates-no-sugar-baked-beans

And this one uses maple syrup: http://motherrimmy.com/sugar-free-baked-beans-recipe

Or this one: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=697714

This sounds like a bit of a hiding to nothing. "Baked Beans" are by definition beans in a sweet tomato sauce. If you don't want sugar, don't eat baked beans.

Granted, I haven't tried any of the above, my ownrecipe contains raw cane sugar...

The difference between raw cane sugar and white granulated is the colour: the "raw" version skips the bleaching process during refining.

Incidentally, the other non-white versions of sugar, demerara, muscovado, golden caster, etc, are all made by taking white sugar and adding a proportion of the mollasses back in that was taken out when refining.

[Toady]

By the way, I stayed on a farm in Canada once, where they made maple syrup.  They collected the sap from the trees and poured it into a big shallow square pan and boiled it down til it was syrupy.  Then decanted it into containers.  You can imagine how much liquid will slosh around inside a big shallowish container.  Now imagine that it's very hot syrup.

Two gnarly old geezers wielding a huge sloshy pan of boiling syrup.  Health and safety?

[mark]

By the way, I stayed on a farm in Canada once, where they made maple syrup.  They collected the sap from the trees and poured it into a big shallow square pan and boiled it down til it was syrupy.  Then decanted it into containers.  You can imagine how much liquid will slosh around inside a big shallowish container.  Now imagine that it's very hot syrup.

Two gnarly old geezers wielding a huge sloshy pan of boiling syrup.  Health and safety?

A co-worker from years back told me about making maple syrup in northern Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula. Apparently there's a fair bit of alcohol involved. Two drunk gnarly old geezers wielding a huge sloshy pan of boiling syrup.

[ferret]

elf n safety wos that all about then,

[Cudzoziemiec]

And sucrose is broken down in the body into what?
50% Glucose, 50% fructose...

Fructose (lævulose) is what makes fruits sweet; it's sweeter, weight for weight than sucrose, which is sweeter than glucose (dextrose/grape sugar). They are all 'natural'.

If fructose is sweeter for the same weight, presumably that means using it as a sweetener rather than sucrose you would consume less sugar. I'm not sure you can buy fructose in the same way as cane/beet sugar, but if... Or am I misunderstanding?

[hellymedic]

And sucrose is broken down in the body into what?
50% Glucose, 50% fructose...

Fructose (lævulose) is what makes fruits sweet; it's sweeter, weight for weight than sucrose, which is sweeter than glucose (dextrose/grape sugar). They are all 'natural'.

If fructose is sweeter for the same weight, presumably that means using it as a sweetener rather than sucrose you would consume less sugar. I'm not sure you can buy fructose in the same way as cane/beet sugar, but if... Or am I misunderstanding?

That is correct. Some people like food very sweet.
Fructose is available though pricier than table sugar. You can use it to make cakes for diabetics.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CF0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fruisana.co.uk%2Fau%2Fhome%2F&ei=iAgQUdOnNuqj0QWHlYHgDg&usg=AFQjCNHzLYiPGj5J0UEYFjb0wODaN90b2Q&sig2=xpqUgdG070lIR4_TCZVKxg&bvm=bv.41867550,d.d2k

[Cudzoziemiec]

Thanks, I'll try to remember that if I ever have to make cake for a diabetic.

[hellymedic]

Fruisana.
Get it at Sainsbury's. Simples.

[zigzag]

i thought this little cartoon might be relevant to this thread:

http://vimeo.com/lucaszanotto/therealbears

[ferret]

excellent stuff and not just the cartoon

[hellymedic]

Good stuff!

I don't generally touch 'sugary soda'.
Dirt cola or the very occasional J2O in pubs. (There is close to 30g sugar in a 275ml bottle of J2O.)
I drink some orange juice.

[Wobbly John]

Incidentally, the other non-white versions of sugar, demerara, muscovado, golden caster, etc, are all made by taking white sugar and adding a proportion of the mollasses back in that was taken out when refining.

Incidently, if sulphur dioxide content is a concern, white sugar contains very, very little (a few ppm IIRC - I used to test how much 35 years ago). It all ends up in the mollasses. I suspect some brown sugars have much higher SO₂ content than white.   

[mrcharly-YHT]

Well, I would research how to make my own baked beans, without refined sugar

This recipe uses date paste with a bit of ketchup (id: sugar): http://nosugarsweetlife.com/content/mmaz-dates-no-sugar-baked-beans

And this one uses maple syrup: http://motherrimmy.com/sugar-free-baked-beans-recipe

Or this one: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=697714

This sounds like a bit of a hiding to nothing. "Baked Beans" are by definition beans in a sweet tomato sauce. If you don't want sugar, don't eat baked beans.

Granted, I haven't tried any of the above, my ownrecipe contains raw cane sugar...

The difference between raw cane sugar and white granulated is the colour: the "raw" version skips the bleaching process during refining.

Incidentally, the other non-white versions of sugar, demerara, muscovado, golden caster, etc, are all made by taking white sugar and adding a proportion of the mollasses back in that was taken out when refining.

I've made my own baked beans. It was hard work.  Used molasses instead of sugar; you get lots of flavour for not much sucrose.

[Toady]

Dirt cola or the very occasional J2O in pubs. (There is close to 30g sugar in a 275ml bottle of J2O.)

They could do with a rebranding exercise, that doesn't sound very nice

[hellymedic]

Dirt cola or the very occasional J2O in pubs. (There is close to 30g sugar in a 275ml bottle of J2O.)

They could do with a rebranding exercise, that doesn't sound very nice

Ooops! 

[Marco Stefano]

Incidentally, the other non-white versions of sugar, demerara, muscovado, golden caster, etc, are all made by taking white sugar and adding a proportion of the mollasses back in that was taken out when refining.

Incidently, if sulphur dioxide content is a concern, white sugar contains very, very little (a few ppm IIRC - I used to test how much 35 years ago). It all ends up in the mollasses. I suspect some brown sugars have much higher SO₂ content than white.   

The level is usually <<3ppm SO2 in white sugar. There is a labelling limit of 10ppm, so if it is higher than that it needs to be declared on the label (it is an allergen in EU law). White sugar is not bleached; the SO2 just prevents colour-forming reactions from occurring quite early on in the process. (I have to declare an interest; I work for a sugar company.)

Some browns are made by adding cane molasses to beet white sugars; different versions have different molasses addition rates and different particle sizes. Cane browns of various types are hived off from different parts of the process, but all are white crystals with molasses on the outside. Aside from the differences in colour-forming compounds in the white crystals, there is no appreciable difference between cane & beet=derived sucrose.

As said upthread, honey is a mixture of fructose & glucose, the ratio coming from the various plant nectars collected and which affects whether the honey is clear (a syrup) or set (a slurry of crystals in syrup).

Cane molasses does have a significant amount of sucrose; it's about 45 - 50% by weight. The sugars cannot economically be removed by crystallisation. However, the salts & other compounds from the cane take the edge off the sweetness. Don't try cooking with beet molasses though, unless you are a ruminant & enjoy eating such things.

As far as eating sugars goes, I do, but the delivery system makes a big difference. Soft drinks are too much in one go for me (all glucose & fructose); on the other hand, bananas (which at 12g / 100g have more sugars per unit weight than colas) are absolutely fine.

[hellymedic]

Yebbut when did you last eat more than 200g (2 medium bananas) in one sitting?
200 ml coke is a small glass. 200g banana flesh is a big portion...