One day, I made sugar-free papaya milkshake for my classmates. They tasted it and said, it's a little bitter. I put another spoonful of honey, and they changed their tune and said, delicious. Another day, I made a box of homemade yogurt, and my friend said it was too sour to eat. Then, I added a spoonful of sugar, and she tasted it again, saying that it tasted much better, and it was no problem to have a drink. In fact, the difference lies in this spoonful of sugar or honey. Almost no child doesn't like sweets and sweet drinks, because sweetness is the first taste that people are born with, which means safety, non-toxicity and energy supply. However, apart from honey, a precious natural sweet source, other products used for sweetening are not that long ago. Compared with hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, they are quite new. According to ancient records, China people had the word "caramel" more than 2,000 years ago, which means maltose. The raw materials of caramel are grain and malt. Grain contains a lot of starch, and germinated barley contains a very capable "maltase", which can cut starch into small pieces, each of which is in the state of two glucose molecules holding hands, and the chemical structure is maltose. After malt treatment, the grain is boiled and becomes sticky, with sweet and soft taste, commonly known as caramel. The honeydew melons and candy bars that northerners eat in the New Year are all made of maltose. So what do southerners use as a source of sweetness? Naturally, the best way is to squeeze sugarcane juice. "Zhejiang" mentioned in the Songs of the South is said to be sugarcane juice. But at that time I didn't know how to turn it into sugar. People just boil it into thick paste to sweeten it. In the Tang Dynasty, both China and India learned sugar-making technology, and since then, there has been white sugar. Therefore, in The Water Margin, which describes life in the Song Dynasty, we can see various descriptions of sweetened desserts. The chemical name of white sugar is sucrose, which, like maltose, is composed of two sugar groups, except that maltose is a combination of glucose and sucrose is a combination of glucose and fructose. In terms of sweetness, maltose is only 70-80% sweeter than sucrose. From the convenience of use, white sugar is much more convenient than sticky maltose. The production method of white sugar has gradually expanded from China and India to many countries. However, until the18th century, Europeans could not eat much sucrose, because sugarcane could only grow in the tropics. Westerners still mainly rely on honey to provide sweetness, so in English, the word honey is only used to address their favorite people. /kloc-in the 0 th and 8 th centuries, westerners discovered that beetroot can also be used to make sugar. Since then, a large number of beets have been planted in Europe, and the mechanized sugar production method has been quickly mastered and improved. The core work of these methods is four things: 1 make sucrose in raw materials come out of raw materials quickly and run into water; 2. Separating sucrose dissolved in water from a large number of impurities to obtain a relatively clear sucrose solution; 3. Remove the black from this sticky sucrose solution and turn it into white; 4 heating and concentrating, and then crystallizing it into pure products such as white sugar or rock sugar, which is called "refined sugar". A large number of raw materials and mature technology have made the cost of sugar drop again and again, and the output has been greatly improved. In this way, more people can afford sweetened sweets. But the word "essence" has a good meaning at other times, and it has a bad meaning only when it is used in food. After extracting brown sugar and white sugar sugarcane juice, it contains most nutrients in sugarcane. Although vitamin C will be lost when boiled into syrup, rich minerals such as potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron still exist, as well as molasses and brown substances produced by Maillard reaction during cooking. Concentrated and dried, it is brown sugar with a sugar content of 88-96%. At this time, people can get some beneficial ingredients while getting sweetness. When refined into white sugar and rock candy, the sugar content is as high as 99.5%, and almost all the nutrients in it are removed. Therefore, although the intake of brown sugar can't be too much, eating too much will make you fat, but since sugar must be put, it is better to add brown sugar to nutrition than white sugar. How do you eat a lot of sugar? However, most of the sweet foods in our life are added with white sugar. White sugar is not found in countless products such as drinks, sweets, bread, snacks, biscuits, energy bars, jam, jelly, candied fruit, ice cream, instant cream powder and so on. After adding sugar, the food will not become bigger at all, and the taste will be better. People will not eat less because of increasing the energy of sugar, but will want to eat more. For example, a steamed bread made of100g flour can't be eaten without white mouth. As long as 8% sugar is added to steamed bread, it will feel delicious and can be eaten easily without anything. The energy gained by eating sweet steamed bread is roughly increased by 10% compared with eating white steamed bread, but the satiety is not increased at all. One breakfast, which contains 60g of slightly sweet two pieces of bread (sugar content is 5%), 1 spoon of 25g of jam (sugar content is 60%), 1 small cup of coffee with10g of sugar, and one * * * contains 28g of sugar. Drink a bottle of 500 ml cool sweet drink (8% sugar) in the morning and get 40 grams of sugar. In the afternoon, about 30 grams of 4 biscuits (sugar content is 20%) get 6 grams of sugar. In the evening, I drank a small bowl of light sweet tremella soup 160g (5% sugar) and 8g sugar. On the menu for lunch and dinner, there are fish-flavored shredded pork, diced Kung Pao, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and a tortilla flavored with 8 grams of sugar. In this way, the total sugar intake in one day is as high as 90 grams! According to the energy contained, it is almost equivalent to a bowl of rice, but people don't feel like eating more! Is this life sweet? You didn't eat cake, dessert and candy, did you? Is this normal? Therefore, adding sugar to food is a very tangled thing. If you don't reduce other foods after eating, you will get fat. If you eat it and cut down on other foods, you won't get fat, but you will be malnourished. Because other foods can provide a variety of nutrients, it has nothing but energy; If you want to metabolize these sugars, you need a lot of vitamins to help. Too much sugar will inevitably lead to the contradiction between supply and demand of nutrients. Unfortunately, this is the reality of modern people's diet. An American survey found that preschool children actually take 17 spoonfuls of sugar from their diet every day! Children's health and physique are damaged by these sweets, because once children give their appetite to sweets, they can't eat enough other natural foods, which are the key to ensure their nutrition and health. China's survey also shows that the increase in income has not brought about the improvement of nutrition. With the abundance of food, the supply of vitamin B 1 in diet is greatly reduced. The emergence of such problems is not only related to the popularity of refined white staple food, but also related to the ubiquitous sugar in food. Where does high fructose corn syrup come from? Besides sugar, fructose corn syrup is the most popular source of sweetness in sweet drinks. It is usually made of grain starch. Firstly, starch is hydrolyzed into glucose, and then it is converted into mixed syrup of sugar and glucose by glucose fructose isomerase. Glucose is sweet and cool, but its sweetness is only 60-70% of that of white sugar; Fructose becomes sweet at low temperature, and its sweetness is 1.6 times that of white sugar. When the two are mixed together, it is a perfect match for sweetening cold drinks and cooling drinks-there is pure sweetness at low temperature and the sweetness is also very satisfactory. Unfortunately, the nutritional value of this product is also very low, as good as sugar. According to the current research evidence, fructose corn syrup is not superior to white sugar in health. Glucose people usually think that glucose is a good thing, because patients have to inject glucose intravenously if they can't eat anything, so they think it is a nutrient and buy it for children and weak people. In fact, for people who can digest and absorb glucose normally, it is better to eat all kinds of starch staple foods directly, because starch is a macromolecule connected by a large amount of glucose, and the human body is very good at disassembling this molecule into a single glucose. Glucose powder is also very pure and contains no other nutrients, so there is really no "nourishing" benefit in buying glucose, and drinking it will also cause gastrointestinal discomfort due to high osmotic pressure. Glucose has lower sweetness than white sugar, lower sweetening efficiency and poor antiseptic performance. Therefore, merchants rarely use it to make ordinary sweet drinks or preserved fruits, and even if there are, other sweeteners should be added to sweeten them. However, it also has advantages: it is relatively difficult to absorb moisture, and baking in pasta can also promote coloring and browning, so I often like to add a little glucose syrup when making cookies. Glucose can be directly absorbed by the human body without digestion, so it is a kind of sugar with high blood sugar response, and its blood sugar index is higher than that of white sugar. After drinking glucose water, the blood sugar level will quickly turn down after rapidly raising blood sugar and causing a huge blood sugar peak. For many people (non-diabetics or normal people with hypoglycemia), blood sugar will drop below the normal lower limit, which will bring about a certain degree of hypoglycemia reaction. So when you feel hungry after drinking glucose, you will be particularly hungry. People with poor blood sugar control ability on weekdays will also have obvious hypoglycemia reactions such as palpitation, impatience, shaking hands, weak legs, sweating, decreased thinking ability and even blackness in front of their eyes. So whether hypoglycemia or diabetes, it is best not to use glucose. If glucose is suitable, such as severe diarrhea, you can't eat anything. Liquid with appropriate osmotic pressure made of glucose and electrolyte can be used to supplement energy consumption and correct electrolyte imbalance. It should not be too thick at this time, otherwise it will stimulate the gastrointestinal tract. In addition, athletes and bodybuilders can also combine glucose with electrolytes, vitamins, amino acids or protein in order to eliminate fatigue and quickly restore glycogen reserves in the body, and drink it after training. Fructose Fructose is a compound, which is different from the concept of "sugar in fruit". There are usually three kinds of sugars in fruits: fructose, glucose and sucrose, but their proportions in different fruits are slightly different. For example, in grapes, fructose and glucose usually account for nearly half each, and less than 10% is sucrose; Among strawberries, half is fructose, the remaining 80% is glucose and 20% is sucrose. In watermelon, more than half is fructose, and half is glucose and half is sucrose. In peaches, sucrose accounts for more than half, the remaining fructose is equivalent to glucose, and there is a trace of maltose (US Department of Agriculture Food Composition Database). Fructose and glucose have different properties. It is not only sweeter, but also very soluble in water and likes to absorb water. Therefore, it is suitable for making drinks or adding to sweets that want to keep soft. Fructose is characterized by a slow rise in blood sugar and does not require insulin to regulate it. Therefore, products selling fructose usually make a fuss about it, which makes people mistakenly think that it is suitable for diabetics. But this is actually a misunderstanding. Because the existing research has proved that fructose-rich drinks are harmful to prevent diabetes and promote obesity and gout. Some studies believe that compared with glucose, fructose can not raise blood sugar in time, bypassing some appetite control mechanisms, so it can not bring enough satiety after intake, and high fructose foods are easy to be ingested excessively. Too much fructose will synthesize fat in the liver and increase triglycerides in the blood. Some studies have also found that fructose will hinder the use of chromium in human body, which is also not conducive to blood sugar control. At the same time, fructose also has some troubles. It is that some people with weak digestive ability are intolerant of it and can't absorb fructose well. Unabsorbed fructose will stimulate the small intestine because of high osmotic pressure, and also promote the proliferation of bacteria in the small intestine, thus bringing discomfort symptoms such as diarrhea. Besides honey, there is the oldest honey. Its main components are fructose, glucose and sucrose, and the proportion varies with varieties. Generally speaking, the natural honey that is not easy to crystallize in winter has a larger proportion of fructose, because fructose is the most difficult to crystallize. The lowest solubility is glucose, so honey with high glucose is more likely to crystallize and precipitate. When honey is adulterated, it is the most difficult to identify if fructose syrup is added, because these two substances are already in honey. In naturally mature honey, the total sugar content exceeds 85%, which is enough to inhibit all kinds of microorganisms, so honey is a food that can be preserved for a long time without worrying about the shelf life. If you see that the honey you bought has changed, such as bubbling, smelling of alcohol and turning sour, it is almost certain that the honey is not pure enough, mixed with water and sweeteners, or not mature honey, and the sugar content is not up to standard. There are already many microorganisms in this honey. If you really can't bear to throw it away, you can steam it, kill the microorganisms, and then store it in the refrigerator (it will continue to grow at room temperature) and cook it. Honey with high glucose is often said to be "nourishing", just as glucose powder is superstitious; Honey with high fructose is often described as "moistening dryness" because it is easy to absorb water to quench thirst and has a cool feeling after freezing. But because honey has such a high sugar content, it is not suitable for eating more. If you want to drink honey water, it is recommended to make it as thin as possible. Natural honey does contain amylase, sucrase, protease and so on, but if its health care function is blown too magical, there is no need to be superstitious. These are the most commonly used sources of sweet sugar in daily life. They are all genuine sugars, which can be digested and absorbed by the human body and then oxidized into carbon dioxide and water; It can also be converted into human fat. Summary: substances such as sugar are easily ingested too much unconsciously. Excessive, harmful to health. If the intake is controlled below 10% of the total daily energy, the limit is about 50 grams; Don't worry about anything under 20 grams. Don't eat more common sweet foods, whether it is malt syrup, white sugar (sucrose), glucose or fructose. These sugars have low nutritional value, and there is a danger of getting fat if you eat too much. There are some B vitamins in traditional maltose, but they are not the main source of B vitamins, except for Chinese New Year. Brown sugar contains many minerals, but it is not the main source of minerals. When it is really necessary to sweeten, it is more economical to use it instead of white sugar, but there is no need to eat a lot. There are many products on the market, such as ginger juice brown sugar, brown sugar in one acre field and so on. The main efficacy comes from ginger and other medicinal materials in the ingredients, and sugar is just a pleasant ingredient to relieve the taste. Glucose can't nourish, and it can also cause blood sugar to fluctuate violently. People who can eat normally without physical training don't need to eat all their lives. If hypoglycemia patients want to use glucose, they can only use glucose in small quantities, and they can't always use glucose as health food, so as to avoid the rapid decline of blood sugar again in the future. Fructose is not good for diabetics, but fructose syrup has a negative effect on controlling blood lipid and preventing obesity. Fructose and sucrose are intolerant, and there will be adverse reactions after eating them, such as diarrhea, eczema, increased mucus and acne on the face. Honey is easy to be adulterated, so it is ok to use a small amount as a sweet source, so there is no need to expect it as a health care product. All sugary and sweet foods should not be eaten at will. In addition to the above, there are many other sources of sweetness in food, but they are not traditional sugars. Among them, there are various sugar alcohols (xylitol, maltitol, mannitol, galactitol, erythritol, etc. ), stevioside, all kinds of natural oligosaccharides that the human body can't digest, isomeric sugar, arabinose and other new products that are not well known. They are somewhat "natural" because they do not raise blood sugar and cause dental caries. They are all developed as sweeteners with more technical content. But too much sugar alcohol may cause diarrhea, and too much oligosaccharide may cause flatulence. Although the amount of natural glycoside products is very small, it is not easy to cause excessive problems, but it can not replace the role of traditional sugar in cooking. For details, please check the relevant information online. There are also synthetic sweeteners, such as saccharin sodium (o- sulfonimide sodium), acesulfame-k, sodium cyclamate (sodium cyclamate), aspartame (L- aspartame), sucralose (sucralose) and so on. They can't talk about nutritional value and health care value.